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Tag: bigamy

  • Sophia Loren Book Reveals Bigamy Past

    When sex symbol Sophia Loren was only 15 years old, she fell in love with a man 22 years her senior. His name was Carlo Ponti, and they would eventually marry and stay married for 50 years. They had two children together. Since Ponti’s death in 2007, Loren has said that he is irreplaceable.

    But that is not all of the story about Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti. The rest of the story is that, when they were married, Ponti was still married to another woman. In fact, the couple had to have their storybook marriage annulled once to keep from being charged with bigamy.

    The trouble all came about because Carlo Ponti had indeed been married, but was no longer with his wife. However, at the time he married Loren, in 1957, Italy’s laws did not recognize divorce. Ponti and Loren had to go to France and become citizens for him to be able to finally get a legal divorce.

    The two then married again in France and remained so until Ponti’s death at the age of 94.

    This story and many like it are part of Sophia Loren’s new tell-all book, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. In it, she talks about her love life, her childhood in poverty without a father, and the many stars she crossed paths with along her career.

    Loren’s publisher says, “Her long awaited memoir gives her many fans a glimpse of the woman who has left her mark on an era — from the challenges of growing up poor and hungry in wartime Italy to the flowering of her career and the joys of being a mother and grandmother.”

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Other Wife Found on Facebook: Bigamist Caught by Social Media

    Keeping a double life organized must be hard enough without the intrusion of social media. One man learned the hard way this week that Facebook only allows users to link their relationship status to one person at a time.

    According to an Associated Press report, a corrections officer in Seattle was outed as a bigamist after one of his wives found him on Facebook. The man, Alan O’Neill, is now facing bigamy charges.

    The court documents show that O’Neill married one woman in 2001. He then left his wife, changed his name, and remarried in 2009. O’Neill’s first wife found out about his second wife through a “People You May Know” suggestion on the Facebook sidebar. She and O’Neill, though separated, had not been divorced.

    According to the AP, O’Neill has been placed on administrative leave and is awaiting a court hearing for bigamy charges later this month.

  • Reese Witherspoon’s Dad Sued For Bigamy

    For as long as she’s been in the spotlight, actress Reese Witherspoon has seemed like a well put-together, family-loving Southern girl. She’s frequently quoted as saying her parents were huge influences in her life, raising her with devout Episcopalian values and helping her keep ego at bay once she became famous.

    But a recent incident involving her mother and father–Mary Elizabeth (Betty) and John Witherspoon–may lead to some embarrassing press for the star.

    Betty Witherspoon has filed suit against her husband on the grounds of bigamy, claiming he remarried even though he’s still legally married to her. She also says John is showing signs of dementia and may not be fully aware of the situation and its consequences. She says she doesn’t want a divorce, because she still loves her husband, but simply wants his new marriage annulled. Interestingly, she also says John told her he doesn’t “remember” marrying another woman when she confronted him about it.

    Family has always been important to Reese, who has two children with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe and is expecting a third with new husband Jim Toth; no comment from the star yet on her parents’ marriage troubles.