Dean Martin Revealed the 8 Stars Who SABOTAGED Their Co Stars’ Careers in Old Hollywood HT
Dean Martin revealed the eight stars who secretly sabotaged their co-stars careers in old Hollywood. For over 50 years, Dean Martin was the most relaxed man in Hollywood. He was the singer who made everything look effortless, the actor who never seemed to break a sweat, the television host who showed up, cracked a joke, and made 40 million viewers feel like they were hanging out with their coolest friend.
They called him the king of cool, and he earned that name every single day of his career. Martin was a member of the legendary Rat Pack alongside Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. He starred in 16 films with Jerry Lewis. He headlined his own NBC variety show for nearly a decade. He performed alongside virtually every major star in the entertainment industry from the 1940s through the 1990s.
And through all of it, Dean Martin was known as the guy who got along with everybody. He did not start feuds. He did not hold grudges. He did not talk behind people’s backs, but that did not mean he was not paying attention. Behind that easy smile and that glass of apple juice he pretended was scotch, Dean Martin saw everything.
He watched friendships turn into wars. He watched careers get destroyed by people who smiled to your face while making phone calls behind your back. He watched the most powerful people in Hollywood use their influence to erase colleagues, exile friends, and sabotage anyone who crossed them. These are the eight stars who secretly sabotaged their co-stars careers in old Hollywood, and Dean Martin had a front row seat to all of it.
Number one, Frank Sinatra, the loyalty executioner. Frank Sinatra was Dean Martin’s closest friend. They were the two pillars of the Rat Pack, the men who set the tone for everything the group did. Martin loved Sinatra. He respected Sinatra, but he also witnessed first hand what happened when Frank Sinatra decided that someone had betrayed him, and it was one of the most ruthless acts of career destruction in Hollywood history.
The victim was Peter Lawford, a fellow Rat Pack member married to Patricia Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy. In 1962, Sinatra was expecting a presidential visit to his Palm Springs home. He spent a fortune preparing, even building a helipad so that the president’s helicopter could land in style.
But at the last minute, Attorney General Robert Kennedy convinced the president to stay at Bing Crosby’s home instead, concerned about Sinatra’s rumored connections to organized crime. Sinatra was beyond furious. He reportedly took a sledgehammer to the helipad and destroyed it with his own hands. But the helipad was not the real target of his rage. Peter Lawford was.
Sinatra believed Lawford should have intervened with the Kennedys. The fact that Lawford had no power to overrule the Attorney General did not matter. Someone had to pay. What happened next was swift and absolute. Sinatra exiled Lawford from the Rat Pack overnight. No discussion, no second chance.
One day Lawford was part of the most famous group in entertainment. The next day he was erased. Sinatra had Lawford’s name removed from their next film, Robin and the Seven Hoods, and replaced him with Bing Crosby. Dean Martin watched the aftermath unfold over two decades. Once Lawford was cut, the rest of Hollywood took the hint.
If Sinatra decided you were finished, nobody was going to risk their own career by standing up for you. Friends turned cold overnight. Studios stopped returning phone calls. Doors that had been open for years suddenly closed without explanation or apology. Lawford’s marriage to Patricia Kennedy fell apart under the pressure.
His career collapsed completely. By the mid-1960s, the man who had been part of Hollywood’s most exclusive inner circle was reduced to a tabloid curiosity, taking whatever small roles he could find just to keep the lights on. The fall was so steep and so public that it served as a warning to everyone else in the industry.
Frank Sinatra’s loyalty was absolute, and so was his punishment. When Peter Lawford died on December 21st, 1984, not a single Rat Pack member attended his funeral. Sinatra offered no public condolences, no flowers, no statement, nothing. The funeral bills went unpaid for weeks because Lawford’s family refused to cover the costs. The mortuary eventually absorbed the expenses just to put him in the ground.
The man who had once been welcomed at the White House was buried without dignity because the man who had exiled him from Hollywood had made sure there was nothing left. Number two, Joan Crawford, the Oscar thief. Dean Martin moved through the same Hollywood circles as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis during the 1960s, and he had a clear view of one of the most calculated acts of sabotage in Academy Award history.
In 1962, Crawford and Davis co-starred in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. On set, Crawford’s cruelty was physical and deliberate. Knowing Davis suffered from back problems, Crawford wore a weightlifter’s belt loaded with rocks during scenes where Davis had to drag her across the floor. She forced multiple takes while Davis suffered in agony.
Director Robert Aldrich confirmed it. There is a way of making it easy on the actor who is doing the carrying, but Crawford wanted Bette to suffer. But the real sabotage came at the 1963 Academy Awards. Davis received a best actress nomination. Crawford did not. Most people would have accepted the slight and moved on. Crawford executed a plan so diabolical it still shocks people today.
She personally called every other nominee and offered to accept the award on their behalf if they could not attend. She was not being generous. She was not being collegial. She was positioning herself to steal the spotlight from Davis no matter who actually won. When Anne Bancroft won but was unable to make the ceremony, Crawford had her moment.
She swept past a stunned Davis backstage, walked to the podium in front of the entire industry, and accepted the Oscar herself. She turned Davis’s night into her own personal triumph without a single shred of remorse, and she did it with a smile that told everyone in the room exactly what she had done and exactly how much she enjoyed doing it.
Davis never recovered from the humiliation. When Crawford died in 1977, Davis delivered the most savage eulogy in Hollywood history. You should never say bad things about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good. Number three, Hedda Hopper, the career killer. Dean Martin performed throughout the era when one woman could make a single phone call and end your career before lunch.
That woman was Hedda Hopper, and she was the most feared person in Hollywood for three decades. Hopper was a gossip columnist whose readership peaked at 75 million people. She called herself the of the world and referred to her Beverly Hills mansion as the house that fear built. Both descriptions were accurate.
Hopper did not just report gossip, she weaponized it. She cooperated with the FBI to systematically destroy Charlie Chaplin’s career, printing leaked information about his political affiliations. Her campaign was one of the primary factors that led to Chaplin being denied re-entry to the United States in 1952. One of the greatest artists in cinema history was exiled from his own country, and Hopper’s column was one of the weapons used to do it.
>> >> Ingrid Bergman was also blacklisted largely because of Hopper’s relentless negative coverage. Hopper cooperated enthusiastically with congressional investigations, feeding names of alleged communist sympathizers to investigators, and helping destroy the careers of writers, directors, and actors whose politics she disapproved of.
Every performer in Dean Martin’s era understood the rules. You stayed on Hedda Hopper’s good side, or you risked everything. She earned $250,000 a year at her peak, roughly 2 million in today’s money, and every cent was built on the fear she inspired. Number four, Jerry Lewis, the partner who made him invisible.
This was the sabotage Dean Martin did not just witness from a distance. He lived it. For 10 years, from 1946 to 1956, Martin and Lewis were the biggest comedy act in the world. They released 16 films together and reached a level of fame the industry had never seen. But behind the laughter, Dean Martin was slowly being erased from his own career.
Jerry Lewis controlled everything about their partnership, the writing, the direction, the creative decisions, the spotlight. Martin was reduced to playing the handsome straight man who stood around looking confused while Lewis mugged for the camera and got all the laughs. Film after film, year after year, Martin watched his own creative contributions get minimized while Lewis turned their act into a one-man show that happened to have a second person standing in the frame.
Martin finally said what he had been feeling for years, “They were Jerry Lewis movies. I played an idiot in every one.” That was not self-deprecation from a humble man. That was a decade of professional suffocation summed up in a single sentence. By their final film in 1956, the aptly named Hollywood or Bust, the relationship was beyond repair.
Martin described Lewis as, “Nothing to me but a dollar sign.” They split on July 25, 1956, exactly 10 years to the day after their first performance together, and did not speak privately for 20 years. The industry assumed Martin was finished. Without Lewis, the wisdom went, “He was nothing.” But Martin proved everyone wrong.
He reinvented himself as a solo star, joined the Rat Pack, and launched one of the most successful television shows in history. The reunion came in 1976 when Sinatra orchestrated a surprise appearance by Martin on Lewis’s Labor Day telethon. Sinatra walked him on stage saying, “I have a friend who loves what you do every year.
” The two men embraced and the audience wept. But 20 years of silence is a wound that no single hug can fully heal. Number five, Olivia de Havilland, the sister who erased her own blood. Dean Martin worked in an industry where sibling rivalries could turn deadly and none was more vicious than the war between Olivia de Havilland and her sister Joan Fontaine.
Their feud lasted from childhood until Fontaine’s death in 2013. The sabotage started before either sister was famous. As children, their fights were physical and violent. Joan accused Olivia of tearing up her outgrown clothes rather than letting them pass down. Olivia allegedly broke Joan’s collarbone during one of their confrontations.
When both found success in Hollywood, Olivia escalated the rivalry to a professional level. She was under contract at Warner Brothers and made it clear she did not want Joan at the same studio. In Olivia’s mind, there was room for only one de Havilland in Hollywood. She pressured Joan to use a different last name entirely, forcing her younger sister to become Joan Fontaine instead of Joan de Havilland.
The most public humiliation came at the 1942 Academy Awards when both sisters were nominated for best actress in the same year. Olivia was widely expected to win. The industry considered it her year and most predictions had her name on the envelope. But when the winner was announced, it was Joan Fontaine, the younger sister, the one who had been forced to change her name, the one who had been told there was no room for her in Hollywood, had beaten the older sister on the biggest stage in the entertainment industry. When Joan
walked to the podium, she appeared to ignore Olivia’s outstretched hand of congratulations. Whether the snub was intentional or Joan simply did not see her sister’s gesture in the excitement of the moment has been debated for decades. But the image of one sister refusing to acknowledge the other on the most important night in Hollywood became the permanent symbol of their relationship.
It was played and replayed, discussed and analyzed, and it followed both women for the rest of their lives. The feud never ended. When their mother died, the funeral became another battleground. Joan once said about their competition, “I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it.
” Joan died in 2013. Olivia died in 2020 at 104. They never reconciled. Number six, Louella Parsons, the other queen of destruction. If Hedda Hopper was Hollywood’s most feared gossip columnist, Louella Parsons was her only equal. Together, these two women controlled the entertainment industry’s information flow for three decades with a combined readership exceeding 75 million people.
Parsons’ column appeared in over 700 newspapers worldwide, reaching 20 million readers at her peak. Like Hopper, she could launch careers with a positive mention or destroy them with a negative one. Dean Martin navigated his entire career knowing that these two women were watching everything. The gossip columnists were not journalists.
They were power brokers who traded in secrets, favors, and fear. Studios fed them stories about rival stars. Agents planted items to boost clients and anyone who fell out of favor with either woman could face sustained negative coverage that no amount of talent could overcome. The cruelest part was that Hopper and Parsons did not even like each other.
They were bitter rivals competing for scoops and influence. But their shared power meant Hollywood had to keep both happy simultaneously, which was nearly impossible. Pleasing one often meant offending the other and offending either meant risking everything. Dean Martin survived by being the one person in Hollywood that nobody had anything bad to say about.
His easygoing personality, his refusal to engage in gossip, and his habit of going home early instead of staying out at the clubs where secrets were spilled after midnight kept him off the radar of both women. But he watched plenty of others who were not so careful get ground up between the two most powerful typewriters in America.
One wrong quote at a party, one affair that got noticed, one political opinion expressed too loudly, and either Hopper or Parsons would make sure the whole country read about it over breakfast the next morning. Number seven, Elia Kazan, the director who sold out his friends. Elia Kazan was one of the most acclaimed directors in Hollywood history.
He directed A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden. He won two Academy Awards and helped launch the careers of Marlon Brando and James Dean. But Kazan also committed what many consider the ultimate act of betrayal. During the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, Kazan cooperated with investigators and named colleagues who had been associated with the Communist Party.
His testimony directly contributed to the blacklisting of fellow artists who had trusted him. The Hollywood blacklist destroyed lives. Actors, screenwriters, directors, and musicians were barred from employment based on their political beliefs. Careers that took decades to build were wiped out overnight. Families lost their incomes.
Marriages crumbled under the financial pressure. Some of the blacklisted artists never worked in Hollywood again and spent the rest of their lives in obscurity, unable to practice the craft they had devoted their entire existence to. Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the most talented writers in the industry, was forced to write under fake names for years just to survive.
The blacklist did not just end careers, it erased people from the industry as if they had never existed. The wound never healed. When Kazan received an honorary Oscar in 1999, the ceremony became one of the most uncomfortable moments in Academy Award history. As Kazan walked to the stage, the audience split. Some stood and applauded.
Others, including Nick Nolte, Ed Harris, and Amy Madigan, sat with their arms crossed refusing to acknowledge a man they considered a traitor even after 50 years. Dean Martin’s entire era was defined by the blacklist. Every performer of his generation knew someone whose career had been destroyed and they knew Elia Kazan’s testimony helped make it happen.
Number eight, Robert Aldrich, the director who weaponized hatred. Robert Aldrich directed Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, the 1962 film that brought Bette Davis and Joan Crawford together. The film was a success, but what most people do not know is that Aldrich and producer Jack Warner deliberately manufactured the hatred between their stars because they believed real animosity would produce better performances and more publicity.
Aldrich encouraged the rivalry rather than mediating it. When Crawford wore the weighted belt to cause Davis physical pain, Aldrich could have intervened and told her to stop. He did not. When Davis hit Crawford hard enough to require stitches, Aldrich could have stopped production and demanded professionalism from both women.
He did not. When both actresses tried to undermine each other’s scenes through every trick they had learned over decades in the business, Aldrich sat back and watched it happen because every moment of genuine hatred was captured on film and he knew audiences would feel the difference between acted animosity and the real thing.
The strategy worked commercially. Baby Jane turned a significant profit, earning $955,000 domestically and $658,000 internationally against modest production costs. Davis was nominated for an Oscar. The film became a cultural phenomenon that people are still talking about more than 60 years later. But the human cost was devastating.
Two aging actresses who had earned the right to be treated with dignity and respect were instead pitted against each other like gladiators in an arena, encouraged to inflict real emotional and physical damage on each other while their director counted the box office receipts. Dean Martin understood this dynamic.
He had spent his career in an industry where the people in charge would sacrifice their performers’ well-being for a better product. The difference was that Martin never let anyone use him that way. He kept his distance, kept his cool, and kept his dignity intact while watching others lose theirs. Dean Martin spent five decades watching Hollywood’s most powerful people destroy each other through sabotage, betrayal, exile, and manipulation.
He watched Sinatra erase Lawford from existence. He watched Crawford sabotage Davis at the Oscars. He watched Hopper and Parsons hold entire careers hostage. He lived through Lewis making him invisible for a decade. He watched sisters erase each other, directors sell out their friends, and studios weaponize hatred between their own stars.
Through all of it, Martin followed one unspoken rule. Never give anyone a reason to come after you and never care enough about the politics to get pulled into someone else’s war. When Martin negotiated his television deal with NBC, he made demands that should have gotten him laughed out of the room.
He wanted to work one day a week. That day had to be Sunday. He did not want to do anything except announce the acts. He did not even want to sing if he did not feel like it. NBC agreed to everything. Martin later said, “They should have thrown them in my face, but they agreed to it all.” That was Dean Martin’s genius.
While everyone else in Hollywood was scheming, sabotaging, and destroying each other, he figured out the one strategy nobody else tried. He simply refused to play the game and for 50 years it worked. The eight people on this list represent the worst of what Hollywood had to offer during its golden age.
They lied, manipulated, betrayed and destroyed each other in pursuit of power and revenge. Dean Martin watched every moment of it, shook his head, poured himself another glass of apple juice and walked away untouched. That is why they called him the king of cool, not because he pretended not to care, but because he was smart enough to know that in an industry built on sabotage, the only winning move was to never give anyone a target to aim at.