Faye Emerson - Marriages

Marriages

Faye Emerson married her first husband, William Crawford, a naval aviator, in 1938. However, Faye's activities in the movie industry were not conducive to a stable marriage, and though it produced one son, William Crawford, Jr., the marriage was over by the time Faye met President Franklin D. Roosevelt's son, Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, in August 1943.

Howard Hughes was instrumental in bringing the two together when Colonel Roosevelt visited the Hughes Aircraft Company to evaluate the proposed Hughes XF-11. Though Elliott was married, Faye and he linked up, strongly urged on by the generous efforts of Hughes and his social facilitator, Johnny Meyer. Faye later asserted that despite her doubts, Hughes urged her to advance the relationship, and she knew that she could not defy Hughes. In December 1944, Hughes and Meyer provided the funding and airplanes for Faye's and Elliott's well-publicized marriage at the rim of the Grand Canyon. When Elliott went back to Europe, he named his reconnaissance aircraft "My Faye."

The intelligent and mannered Faye was very popular in the White House, and kept up a warm connection with Eleanor Roosevelt and the rest of the family even after her split with Elliott.

After some months in Beverly Hills in 1945, the couple resided with Eleanor Roosevelt at Hyde Park, N.Y. They had no children. The marriage began breaking up by 1947. In December 1948, Faye Emerson slit her wrists and was briefly hospitalized. In January 1950, Faye obtained a divorce in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Next year, she married band leader and conductor Lyle "Skitch" Henderson in the same town, and after Skitch got into some problems, divorced him in 1957 in Acapulco, Mexico. Former brother-in-law James Roosevelt wrote that "after an incident involving some teen-age girls he (Skitch) was dropped from Johnny Carson's Tonight TV show and his career went into eclipse. Faye's marriage to Skitch hit the skids. She didn't have much luck in her married life, but she endures, and we think of her fondly."