Dipping once more into vital statistics via the ol’ photo collection, we find that talented screenwriter/producer/director Norman Krasna was wed this day, in 1951, to the lovely Erle Chennault Galbraith Jolson, the comely widow of show business legend Al Jolson.  Jolie had passed away over a year before; he and Miss Galbraith — whom he met when she was a 22-year-old hospital X-ray technician, and he was the nearly sixty-year-old world’s greatest entertainer — were married for just a little over five years, and had adopted two children together.

Krasna was, of course, the award-winning writer of movies like 1945’s Princess O’Rourke (for which he won an Academy Award), The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), Indiscreet (1958), Sunday in New York (1963), and particularly pertinent to this month, White Christmas (1954), co-written with Norman Panama and Melvin Frank.  The Krasna/Jolson union brings to mind other situations which have always fascinated me, that is, when notables marry the widows or ex-wives of other notables.  Krasna married Jolson’s widow; Frank Sinatra’s last wife was the ex-wife of Zeppo Marx; Groucho once married the ex-wife of Bowery Boy Leo Gorcey; Richard Widmark married Henry Fonda’s ex-wife; Jason Robards married Lauren Bacall, Bogie’s widow, to name a few.

It all seems a little incestuous, doesn’t it, but then again, people marry who they know.  And back in the day, the whole serial monogamy thing was much more common.  Many gals (and guys, too, possibly), married the people they slept with, which could partially explain the long list of marriages for stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, Rita Hayworth, Mickey Rooney, the aforementioned Henry Fonda, Lana Turner, star musician Artie Shaw, and many others.  Frank Sinatra, for instance, married Ava Gardner after she had divorced Mickey Rooney and then Artie Shaw, who had earlier been married to Lana Turner, who later married Lex Barker, who earlier wed Arlene Dahl, who later married Fernando Lamas, who then married Esther Williams.  And so on….

But back to Krasna and Erle; they had a long and happy marriage which ended with his death in 1984.  Sometimes, just like in real life, people in Hollywood manage to live happily ever after.

(Friday 12/8 update:  I just found out that Jack Benny played matchmaker for Erle and Norman back in 1951.  Very appropriate, as Jack (one of my favorite comedians) was born on St. Valentine’s Day.  Good work, Cupid!)