Famous People Divorced in Reno
Compiled by Mella Rothwell Harmon
A
Sherwood Anderson (novelist and short story writer). Anderson was divorced by his wife, the sculptor Tennessee Mitchell, in Reno in 1924. During this time, Anderson became friends with Judge George Bartlett and his daughter Margaret Bartlett Thornton, who was an aspiring poet (photo).
B
Max Baer (heavyweight boxer). Divorced by his wife actress Dorothy Dunbar Wells Baer in Reno in 1933.
Tallulah Bankhead (stage and screen actress). Bankhead divorced film actor John Emery in 1937. (photo)
Mercer Beasley (tennis coach). Beasley was divorced by Audrey Browne in 1938. He was the best-known tennis coach in the first half of the 20th century and the author of the influential book How to Play Tennis: The Beasley System.
Ralph Bellamy (stage and screen actor). Bellamy was divorced by Catherine Willard in Reno in 1945.
Saul Bellow (Nobel Prize-winning author). Bellow stayed at the Pyramid Lake Guest Ranch at the same time Arthur Miller was there for a divorce. Bellow was divorcing his wife Anita Goshkin to marry Sondra Tschacbasov in 1956. See the transcript of an interview with Jean Cullen. Bellow’s short story “Yellow House” was based on people he met at Pyramid Lake.
Constance Bennett (film actress). Bennett divorced French film director Henry James La Bailly, Marquis de la Falaise de la Coudraye, and the former husband of actress Gloria Swanson, in Reno in 1940.
Alberto Bolet (Cuban violinist). Bolet was divorced by Elizabeth Noble in Reno in 1934.
Albert Borden (heir to the Borden Dairy Company fortune). Lesley Borden divorced her husband Albert in 1949. Mrs. Borden served her residency period at the Flying M E Ranch in Washoe Valley.
André Breton (French writer and poet; a founder of Surrealism). Breton divorced Jacqueline Lamba in Reno in 1945. The day following his divorce, he married Elisa Claro.
Clare Boothe Brokaw (Luce) (author, journalist, playwright, editor, diplomat, Congressman). Clare Brokaw divorced George Tuttle Brokaw in Reno in 1929. In 1936, she wrote the Broadway play The Women, loosely based on her Reno experience. The play was released as a feature film of the same name in 1939. Clare Brokaw married Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines in 1935.She later became a Congresswoman in the U.S. House of Representatives and an Ambassador to Italy and Brazil (photo).
Pearl S. Buck (novelist, best known for The Good Earth). Buck divorced her missionary husband John Lossing Buck in 1935 and soon after married her publisher Richard J. Walsh. Walsh’s wife and Pearl Buck’s close friend, Ruth Abbott Walsh, received a divorce at the same time. See an excerpt from her memoir about her six-month stay in Reno.
C
Frank Campeau (film actor). Campeau was divorced by his wife Lilyan Stratton in Reno in 1917.
Dale Carnegie (writer and lecturer). Carnegie divorced his first wife Lolita in Reno in 1931.
John Carradine (actor). Carradine was divorced by his wife, the actress Sonia Sorel, in Reno in May, 1957.
William Challee (Broadway actor). Challee was divorced by the actress Ruth Nelson in Reno in 1937.
Robert Husted Chambers (son of the author Robert W. Chambers). Chambers divorced his wife Olive in Reno in 1925.
Ruth Chatterton (Stage and film actress). Chatterton was divorced by Ralph Forbes in Reno in 1932. (photo)
Marguerite Sykes Chrysler (wife of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. son of the founder of Chrysler Motors). Divorced in Reno prior to May 1941.
James C. Clark (son of J. William Clark, New York thread manufacturer). Clark divorced his second wife Lady Irene Cubitt of England in 1937. This was Mr. Clark’s second Reno divorce.
Eric Arthur Cleugh (British ambassador to Panama and Rugby player). Cleugh was divorced by Frances Stevens in Reno in 1935.
Harry Conover (head of the Conover Modeling Agency and creator of the “cover girl” concept). Conover was divorced by the fashion model Gloria Dalton in Reno in 1946. He subsequently married Candy Jones, another one of his models.
William E. Corey (President of U.S. Steel Corp.). The Laura versus William Ellis Corey divorce was one of two high profile cases in 1905 and 1906 that put Reno on the map as a migratory divorce destination. W. E. Corey was the head of the largest American corporation of its day and that he fell in love with the actress Mabelle Gilman (photo) and paid his wife Laura $1 million to go to Reno for a divorce was big news and ultimately led to Corey’s expulsion from U. S. Steel’s top job. In 1907, Corey married Gilman in France, where he had bought her a chateau. When the two were divorced in Paris in 1923, Corey’s Reno divorce was still news.
Leonard Cox (prominent New York architect). Cox divorced Frances Montague Ward in Reno in 1930.
D
Anna Roosevelt Dall (daughter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt). Dall divorced stock broker Curtis Bean Dall in Minden in 1934.
Allessandro Olioli Dandini (Italian Count). Count Dandini divorced the San Francisco socialite Lillian Remillard in 1942. In 1946, Dandini married Juliana Louisa Sesena in California. The marriage was ruled void because California did not recognize the count’s earlier divorce from Remillard. Dandini and Sesena returned to Reno, where they were married. Count Dandini stayed in Reno and established a prominent career. He was an inventor with 22 patents, including one for the three-way light bulb. He was on the faculty of the University of Nevada, where he taught engineering and foreign languages. With his third wife Angela, he was instrumental in procuring the land for the Desert Research Institute and Truckee Meadows Community College and the Angela Dandini Garden that lies between the two institutions.
Joseph E. Davies (powerful and influential lawyer, politician, businessman, and diplomat). Davies was divorced by his wife Mary Emlen Knight in Ormsby County (Carson City) in 1935.
Julio de Diego (Spanish-born muralist). De Diego was divorced by the well-known strip-tease dancer Gypsy Rose Lee in Reno in 1955.
Frederic J. DeLongchamps (beloved Reno architect). DeLongchamps was divorced by his second wife Rosemary in August 1932. He married Mrs. Thelma Robinson in Minden in December of that year. Thelma and Fred were divorced in Ormsby County (Carson City) on August 10, 1933. Fred and Rosemary were remarried on August 19, 1933 and stayed married until DeLongchamps’s death in 1968.
Jack Dempsey (professional boxer). Dempsey came to Reno for a divorce in 1931 (photo).
George Denny, Jr. (moderator of the TV show America’s Town Meeting of the Air that ran from 1935 through 1956). Denny was divorced by his wife Mary in Reno in 1943.
Pasquale (Pat) DiCicco (De Cicco) (Hollywood agent and movie producer). DiCicco was divorced in Reno in 1945 by actress and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt.
Maynard Dixon (artist). Dixon divorced his wife Dorothea Lange, the noted Depression-era photographer, in Ormsby County (Carson City) in October 1935.
Brian Donlevy (film actor). Donlevy was divorced by his wife Yvonne in Reno in 1936.
Doris Duke (tobacco heiress). Duke divorced James H. R. Cromwell, one-time U.S. minister to Canada, in Reno in 1943, and international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa in 1951.
Allan Dwan (film producer and director). Dwan was divorced by his wife, the silent screen star Pauline Bush in Goldfield in 1919.
E
Mignon Good Eberhart (mystery writer, known as America’s Agatha Christie). Eberhart stayed at the Flying M E Ranch in 1947 while awaiting her divorce from her second husband John Hazen Perry in order to remarry her first husband Alanson Eberhart.
John Emery (film actor). Emery was divorced by Tallulah Bankhead in Reno in 1937.
F
Dustin Farnum (stage and screen star). Farnum divorced leading lady Mary Bessie Cornwell in 1924.
Nicholas Feodoroff (author of the book A Cossack Galloped Far Away, an autobiography of his life fighting the Bolsheviks in Russia). Feodoroff was divorced by his wife Olga in Reno in 1943.
Marshall Field, Jr. (publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and The Chicago Daily News, and son of Marshall Field, founder of the famed Chicago department store). Field, Jr. was divorced by his wife, Katherine Woodruff Field in Reno in 1963.
Marshall Field, III (investment banker and heir to the Marshall Field Department Store fortune). Field was divorced by his wife Evelyn Marshall Field in Reno in 1930. The settlement was reported to be $1,000,000.
James A. FitzPatrick (Film producer , director writer, and narrator of the travel documentary series Travel Talks: The Voice of the Globe). FitzPatrick was divorced by his wife Ruth in Reno in 1936.
G
Col. William Ganoe (writer, English professor, military officer. Author of many works including The History of the United States Army). Col. Ganoe divorces Honora Russell in Reno in 1933.
Hy Gardner (entertainment reporter and syndicated columnist for the New York Herald Tribune). Gardner was divorced by his wife in Reno in 1955.
Luella Gear (Heckscher) (Broadway and film actress who played opposite Fred Astaire in The Gay Divorce). Gear divorced her husband G. Maurice Heckscher in Reno in 1933.
Paulette Goddard (film actress). Goddard divorced her first husband, the industrialist Edgar James, in Reno in 1932.
Huguette Clark Gower (daughter of W. A. Clark, former Montana senator and founder of Las Vegas). Gower obtained a Reno divorce in 1930.
Carol Grace (aka Carol Marcus) (actress and author). In 1949, Carol Grace was divorced in Reno by her husband, the author William Saroyan. They briefly remarried in 1951-52. She later married the actor Walter Matthau.
Jane Greer (film actress). Greer divorced the bandleader Rudy Vallee in Reno in 1944.
H
William S. Hart (silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer). Hart was divorced by his wife, the silent screen actress Winifred Westover in Reno in 1927.
Dick Haymes (actor and singer). Dick Haymes was the fourth husband of actress Rita Hayworth. She divorced him in Reno on December 12, 1955.
Rita Hayworth (actress and dancer). Hayworth divorced her third husband, Prince Aly Khan, in Reno in 1953. Hayworth stayed at a rustic house at Sawmill Harbor at Lake Tahoe. She divorced her fourth husband, singer Dick Haymes, in Reno in 1955.
William Randolph Hearst, Jr. (journalist, newspaper publisher). William Randolph Hearts, Jr., of the Hearst newspaper empire, was divorced by his wife Alma in Reno in 1932.
Daphne (Bull) Hellman (renowned harpest). Hellman divorced Harry Bull, editor of Town & Country magazine, in Reno in 1941 and immediately married the New Yorker Magazine writer Geoffrey T. Hellman.
Audree Henderson (film actress). Henderson divorced movie director A. Edward Henderson in Reno in 1935.
Malvina Hoffman (Grimson) (world-renowned sculptress). Grimson divorced her violinist husband Samuel B. Grimson in Reno in 1936.
Miriam Hopkins (film actress). Hopkins came to Reno in 1939 to divorce the film director Anatole Litvak. She was accompanied by her friend, the actress Kay Francis.
Barbara Hutton (Woolworth heiress). Hutton was in Reno in 1935 divorcing Prince Mdivani.
J
Jackie Jensen (American professional baseball player). Jensen was divorced by his wife, the American Olympic diver, Zoe Anne Olsen, in Reno in 1968.
Constantin Joffé (professional photographer known for his fashion work for Glamour Magazine and for photographing the Marlboro Man). Joffé was divorced by Andreé in Reno in 1945.
Arline Judge (screen actress). Judge divorced the film director Wesley Ruggles in 1937 and immediately married wealthy New York sportsman and co-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team Daniel Reid Topping in Virginia City. Ms. Judge gained notoriety for being divorced seven times.
John M. Kirkland (playwright, most notably for adapting Erskine Caldwell’s Great Depression book Tobacco Road as a Broadway play). Kirkland was divorced by his wife Julia Laird in Reno in 1937.
K
Alexander Kirkland (movie actor). Kirkland was divorced by the famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in Carson City in 1944.
L
Dorothea Lange (photographer). Lange was divorced by her husband, the artist Maynard Dixon in Ormsby County (Carson City) in October 1935.
Gypsy Rose Lee (burlesque entertainer, actress, author, and playwright). Gypsy Rose Lee divorced second husband, the actor Alexander Kirkland, in Carson City in 1944. She did her residency at Washoe Pines Ranch (see video). She divorced her third husband, Spanish-born muralist Julio de Diego in Reno in 1955, while she was appearing in the Mapes showroom.
Wynn Laurence LePage (engineer instrumental in the development of the first helicopter and its predecessor the autogiro). LePage was divorced by Edna in 1934.
Anatole Litvak (film director). Litvak was divorced by his wife, the actress Miriam Hopkins in Reno in 1939.
Carole Lombard (comic screen actress). Lombard divorced her first husband, the famed actor William Powell, in Carson City in July 1933. She subsequently married actor Clark Gable, who had been divorced by his wife Ria Langham in Las Vegas.
Bela Lugosi (film actor best known for his role as Dracula). Lugosi was divorced by his third wife, Beatrice Woodruff Weeks, in Reno in 1929.
Myrna Loy (film actress). Loy received a Reno divorce in 1942.
Ida Lupino (film and television actress and director). Ida Lupino divorced her second husband, the writer and producer Collier Young in Minden, Douglas County in 1951, to marry actor Howard Duff. Miss Lupino stayed at Sawmill Harbor at Lake Tahoe.
M
General Douglas MacArthur (U. S. Army general). General MacArthur was divorced by his wife Henrietta Louise MacArthur in Reno in 1929 on the grounds of failure to provide.
Leopold Mannes (musician and co-inventor of Kodachrome, the first practical color transparency film). Mannes was divorced by his wife Edith in Reno in 1933.
Bonita Edwards Manville (showgirl and fifth wife of Tommy Manville, heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune). Edwards divorced Manville in Reno in 1941.
Marcelle Edwards Manville (New York show girl and fourth wife of Tommy Manville, heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune). Marcelle Edwards divorced Manville in Reno in 1937, receiving a large settlement.
Tommy Manville (Thomas Franklyn Manville, Jr.) (heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune). Manville was known for his penchant for blonds and multiple marriages and divorces. He had 11 wives in 13 marriages and at least two Reno divorces. See Marcelle Edwards Manville (1937) and Bonita Edwards Manville (1941) above.
Hilde Marchant (Breweer) (author and journalist; one of the first women war correspondents). Marchant was divorced by her husband Sam Pope Brewer in Reno in 1946.
Queena Mario (Queena Marion Tillotson Pelletier) (renowned singer with the New York Metropolitan Opera). Queena Mario divorced husband Wilfred Pelletier in Reno in 1936.
Eleanor McClatchy (head of the McClatchy newspaper empire). McClatchy divorced husband Raymond Crozier, date unknown, c. late 1920s.
Jeanne Wingfield McKeever (daughter of George Wingfield, known as the owner and operator of Nevada). Jeanne Wingfield divorced Chauncey McKeever, prominent in Chicago and San Francisco society, in Reno in 1937.
Richard W. Millar (chairman of the Northrop Corporation and influential in the development of southern California’s aerospace industry). Millar was divorced by Margaret Millar in Lyon County in 1932.
Arthur Miller (playwright, best known for the play The Crucible and the film The Misfits). Miller divorced Mary Miller in Reno in 1956. He married film actress Marilyn Monroe three weeks after receiving his divorce. Miller stayed at the Pyramid Lake Guest Ranch at the same time Saul Bellow was serving his residency period. His short story “The Misfits,” published in Esquire, was based on people he met while staying at Pyramid Lake (photo).
Owen Moore (Irish-born film actor). Owen Moore was divorced by the actress Mary Pickford in Minden, Douglas County, in March.
N
Ruth Nelson (film actress). Nelson divorced the actor William Challee in Reno in 1937.
O
Princess Obolensky, the former Ava Alice Muriel Astor (daughter of Col. John Jacob Astor). Astor divorced Prince Serge Obolensky, former Russian minister to Poland in Reno in 1932.
Katherine Mackay O’Brien (daughter of Clarence Mackay and granddaughter of Comstock King John Mackay). Mackay divorced New York Supreme Court justice Kenneth O’Brien in Reno in 1937. She married Reno lawyer Robert Ziemer Hawkins in 1938.
Maureen O’Hara (film actress). The 21-year-old O’Hara divorced the British film director George Brown in Reno in 1941.
Zoe Anne Olsen (American Olympic diver). Olsen divorced the baseball player Jackie Jensen in Reno in 1968.
Eugene O’Neill (Nobel Prize-winning playwright). O’Neill was divorced by his wife Agnes Boulton O’Neill in Reno in 1929. Agnes was a successful writer of pulp fiction at the time of her marriage to O’Neill.
Ida May Owens (wife of Nye County sheriff John Owens, who mysteriously disappeared from Tonopah in 1910). Mrs. Owens was granted a divorce from the missing sheriff in the Nye County courtroom of Judge George Bartlett in 1918. Reports suggest Sheriff Owens was involved in a dispute with the George Wingfield group at the time of his disappearance.
P
William Graves Perry (architect known for his reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg). Perry was divorced by his wife Eleanor Fray in 1934.
William Haggin Perry (prominent Virginia owner and breeder of Thoroughbred racehorses). Perry was divorced by Elizabeth Crofton in Reno in 1945.
Mary Pickford (film actress). Mary Pickford, known as America’s sweetheart, was delivered to the Campbell Ranch in Genoa, Douglas County, by her attorney Patrick McCarran on Februay 15, 1920. Despite the six month residency requirement, Miss Pickford was granted a divorce on March 3rd in Minden, the Douglas county seat, from her actor husband Owen Moore, who was also in Nevada at the time. Pickford married her lover, the motion picture leading man Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. on March 28. The case highlighted a loophole in Nevada’s divorce law that allowed Pickford and Moore to collude to obtain a divorce without doing through the statutory residency period. The legality of the divorce was upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court in 1922 and Nevada voters passed an amendment to the law eliminating the loophole (article).
William Powell (film actor). Powell was divorced by actress Carole Lombard in Carson City in July 1933.
R
Lillian Remillard (from the wealthy Oakland, California family. Tutored the author Jack London in French). Remillard was divorced in Reno by Count Alesandro Olioli Dandini de Cesena in 1942.
H. Ridder (New York newspaper publisher). Ridder divorced his wife Nellie in 1930 and married Helen B. Shearer, a Boston poet who had divorced her husband. Ridder’s daughter Rosemary wrote a poignant letter to Judge Bartlett asking him to refuse to grant a divorce for her father.
Mary Rockefeller (wife of Nelson Rockefeller, American businessman, philanthropist, public servant, and politician—then governor of New York). Mary Rockefeller’s 1962 Reno divorce was intended to be private, but the local press tracked her down to the Donner Trail Ranch (ledger).
Norman Rockwell (painter and illustrator). The illustrator Norman Rockwell was divorced by Irene O’Connor Rockwell in Reno in 1930.
Millicent Rogers (socialite, fashion icon, art collector, and granddaughter of Standard Oil tycoon Henry Huttleston Rogers). Rogers was divorced in Reno in 1935 by her husband, the wealthy Argentinian Arturo Peralta-Ramos. After the divorce was final, Peralta-Ramos returned to Argentina with Audree Henderson, the ex-wife of Eddie Sutherland (Albert Edward), who had received a Reno divorce at the same time.
Elliott Roosevelt (son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt). Roosevelt was divorced in Minden in 1933 (photo).
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. (son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt). Roosevelt, Jr. divorced by his wife, the former Ethel duPont, in Carson City in 1949.
Lillian Roth (singer, dancer, actress, and Ziegfield Follies girl). Roth divorced Judge Benjamin Shalleck in Reno in 1939.
Porfirio Rubirosa (diplomat from the Dominican Republic and noted playboy). The tobacco heiress Doris Duke divorced Rubirosa in Reno in 1948. Rubirosa was married briefly (1953-54) to the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton.
S
William Saroyan (dramatist and author). Saroyan divorced wife Carol Marcus (aka Carol Grace) in Reno in 1949. They briefly remarried in 1951-52.
Alexander Schneider (violinist and conductor). Schneider divorced his wife Gerda in Reno in 1945. He later married American film actress Geraldine Page (1954-57).
Artie Shaw (bandleader and clarinetist). Shaw’s eighth wife, the author Kathleen Winsor, divorced him in Reno in 1949. Shaw was married a total of ten times.
Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel (gangster and owner of the Flamingo in Las Vegas). Siegel was divorced by his wife Esther Siegel in Reno in 1946. Bugsy was killed in the mansion of Virginia Hill in Las Vegas in 1947.
Alma De Bretteville Spreckles Awl (San Francisco socialite and widow of San Francisco sugar magnate Adolph Spreckles). Awl divorced Elmer Awl in 1943 .
Lilyan Stratton (Corbin) (author and stage actress). Stratton divorced her second husband, the actor Frank Campeau, in Reno in 1917. Stratton authored the book Reno in 1922. Advertisements for the book promised, “Romance, Tragedy, and Humor of the Divorce Colony. Nevada Divorce Laws Explained.”
Mrs. John (Gwyn) Steinbeck (wife of the noted author John Steinbeck). Mrs. Steinbeck received her decree in October 1948.
Adlai Stevenson II (Illinois governor and U.S. presidential nominee). Ellen B. Stevenson divorced Governor Stevenson in Reno in 1949. Three years later, Stevenson won the Democratic nomination for U.S. President. He lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Leopold Stokowski (famous conductor and composer). Stokowski was divorced by his second wife, Evangeline Brewster Johnson, in Reno in 1937. Stokowski married the heiress Gloria Vanderbilt in 1945 a few days after she received a Reno divorce from Pat De Cicco.
Albert Edward Sutherland (film director and actor). Sutherland was divorced by his wife Audree Henderson in Reno in 1935.
T
Lana Turner (film and television actress). Turner divorced her third (out of 7) husband, the millionaire sportsman Henry J. Topping, in Ormsby County (Carson City) in 1952. She served her residency at Cave Rock in Douglas County.
V
Rudy Vallee (bandleader, musician). Vallee was divorced by Fay Webb Vallee in Reno in 1932. In 1944, he was later divorced by his third wife, the actress Jane Greer.
Consuelo Vanderbilt (heir the Vanderbilt fortune and wife of Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough). Vanderbilt received a Reno divorce prior to May 1941.
Cornelius Vanderbilt IV (journalist, author, world traveler, and member of the Vanderbilt dynasty). Neil Vanderbilt came to Reno for a divorce in 1927 and became a fixture. Six of his seven marriages ended in divorce, all but one obtained in Reno/Carson City. In 1929, he wrote the book Reno, which was made into a film of the same name in 1930. Vanderbilt owned a number of properties in Reno including a divorce ranch.
Gloria Vanderbilt (actress, author, heiress, developer of designer blue jeans). Vanderbilt divorced Pasquale (Pat) Di Cicco in Reno in April 1945. Later that month, she married the conductor Leopold Stokowski in Mexico.
John von Neumann (Hungarian-born mathematician and physicist). Princeton University professor van Neumann has been called one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. He was divorced by his first wife Mariette in Reno in 1937. Mariette spent her six weeks at the Pyramid Lake Ranch.
W
Willem van de Wall (professor of music education and inventor of music therapy). Van de Wall divorced his wife Blanca in Reno in 1937.
Richard Guy Walton (painter and photographer). As a boy of 15, Richard Guy Walton came to Nevada with his mother who was here for the usual reason—to get a divorce. Young Walton had become fascinated with the Nevada landscape and returned to northern Nevada after completing his studies at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. He made Nevada his home and home base for his art until his death in 2005.
Esther DuPont Weir (philanthropist and member of the elite DuPont family). DuPont divorced Campbell Weir in Reno prior to May 1941.
Johnny Weissmuller (Olympic swimmer and actor, best known for playing Tarzan). Weissmuller divorced his third wife, Beryl Scott, in Reno in 1948 so he could marry the golf star Allene Gates.
Christian Arthur Wellesley (English lord Earl Cowley and descendant of the Duke of Wellington). Wellesley divorced his wife Mae Josephine Callicott Wellesley in Reno in 1933. Wellesley stayed and bought a ranch at the south end of Washoe Valley that was later owned by Nevada governor Robert List.
Orson Welles (film actor and director). Virginia Nicholson Welles divorced the “Boy Wonder” in Reno in 1939.
Winifred Westover (silent screen actress). Westover divorced her husband, the actor William S. Hart, in Reno in 1927.
Hannah Williams (vaudeville star and Broadway actress and singer). Williams divorced band leader Roger Wolff Kahn in 1933. She was connected with the band leader Russ Columbo, but subsequently married the boxer Jack Dempsey.
Kathleen Winsor (American author). Winsor divorced the famous bandleader Artie Shaw in Reno in 1948. Ms. Winsor was Shaw’s eigth wife (out of 10). She served her residency at the Donner Trail Ranch in Verdi (photo).
Ed Wynn (comedian and actor; father of actor Keenan Wynn). Wynn was divorced by his wife Hilda Keenan Wynn in Reno in 1937.
Y
Catherine W. Young (San Francisco socialite). Young divorced Hawaiian financier Alexander K. Young in Reno in 1941.
Collier Young (film producer and writer). Young was divorced by the actress Ida Lupino in Minden, Douglas County, in 1951.