Personal Life
After twice marrying and divorcing Joyce Mathews, a showgirl, Berle married Ruth Cosgrove, a onetime publicist on December 9, 1953; she died in 1989. In 1989, Berle stated that his mother was behind the breakup of his marriage to Mathews. He also said that she managed to damage his previous relationships: "My mother never resented me going out with a girl, but if I had more than three dates with one girl, Mama found some way to break it up." He was married for a fourth time in 1992 to Lorna Adams, a fashion designer 30 years younger than he was, whom he credited for 'keeping him young'. He had two children, Victoria (adopted by Berle and Mathews) and William (adopted by Berle and Cosgrove). Berle also had two stepdaughters from his marriage to Lorna Adams—Leslie and Susan Brown, who is married to actor Richard Moll. He also had three grandsons, James and Mathew, the sons of his daughter, Vicki, and Sgt. Tyler Roe (US Army Iraq/Afghanistan wars), the son of his son, William.
In later life, Berle found solace in Christian Science and called himself a Jew and a Christian Scientist. Oscar Levant, commenting to Jack Paar about Berle's conversion, quipped, "Our loss is their loss."
Read more about this topic: Milton Berle
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were “anti-family.” . . . It was motherhood that got me into the movement in the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the women’s movement that put self-esteem back into “just a housewife,” rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of “instinct” and making it human, deliberate, powerful.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“All mothers need instruction, nurturing, and an understanding mentor after the birth of a baby, but in this age of fast foods, fast tracks, and fast lanes, it doesn’t always happen. While we live in a society that provides recognition for just about every life event—from baptisms to bar mitzvahs, from wedding vows to funeral rites—the entry into parenting seems to be a solo flight, with nothing and no one to mark formally the new mom’s entry into motherhood.”
—Sally Placksin (20th century)