Graphic By: Julie Brennan

I love reading biographies and autobiographies of actors, but I restrict my reading material to that of the classic stars, strictly because today stars and their exploits are just plain boring. If someone's getting a divorce, it's in the tabloids for months. The biggest shocker I can remember was when Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton wore vials of each other's blood...and that was around four or five years ago.

Perhaps it's because things were kept secret (often by the studios, in order to prevent a scandal) more often back then or because today it's harder to keep a secret. Perhaps because it's harder to shock people today. Either way, if I want to read about something scandalous, juicy, or eccentric, I turn to the biographies in the classic section. Let's do a little comparing and contrasting...

Errol Flynn, apart from having three trials for statutory rape whose fame would have overshadowed R Kelly's recent one (where do you think the phrase "In like Flynn" came from?), was eccentric, to say the least, when it came to the subject of sex. Flynn was known to be something of a sex addict, owning many objects that were shaped like genitals (lighters, chairs, you name it). To open his bar one would need to squeeze a pair of bull's testicles. There are many other interesting stories about Flynn, but none of them would look too nice in print, if you know what I mean.

For years, Hollywood covered up the fact that Clark Gable and Loretta Young had an illegitimate daughter, and their scandal wasn't the only one that was covered up. For years, many people did not know that Rock Hudson was gay; he went so far as to marry his agent's female secretary to cover it up.

Running rampant in old Hollywood was the number of suicides, affairs, and mysterious or abrupt deaths, like that of Natalie Wood, whose mysterious drowning has been shadowed with theories and suspects (her husband at the time, Robert Wagner, and friend, a young Christopher Walken, were and still are included as suspects in her death). There are far too many to count, much less list.

Brad, Angelina, and Jennifer, move over. Elizabeth Taylor not only "stole" Eddie Fisher away from his wife, Debbie Reynolds, but then married him, adding him to the list of her seven husbands and eight marriages. If that's not eccentric enough, film great George Sanders not only married Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor (who also had a record nine husbands under her belt)...he also married her sister, Magda, some years later!

Apart from scandal, both classic screen legends Rita Hayworth and Grace Kelly married princes and became princesses. No movie star of this decade can make that claim.

So, before you think that the '30s, '40s, '50s and '60s were boring times to live in, remember Errol Flynn, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and the rest.