Fritz Mandl: the first marriage, at eighteen, to a man fourteen years older who appears to have used the marriage to control her. She left. She was right to leave. The legal mechanism of the departure — whether she fled, was annulled, or negotiated an exit — is less important than the fact that she identified the situation accurately and ended it.
Gene Markey: a Hollywood screenwriter and producer, married in 1939 when she was twenty-four and recently arrived in America. Markey was urbane, well-connected in the film industry, and reportedly charming. The marriage lasted two years. The patent bearing his surname was filed during this period. Whatever the marriage’s difficulties, he does not appear in the historical record as a controlling figure in the way Mandl did. They divorced; she moved on.
John Loder: a British actor, married in 1943. This was her longest marriage and the one that produced children — James and Denise. Loder was steady, not particularly ambitious, and by several accounts attentive. The marriage lasted four years. In her later accounts, she did not speak disparagingly of Loder; the reasons for the divorce are not clearly documented in the public record.
Teddy Stauffer: a Swiss bandleader and restaurateur who was operating in Acapulco. Married in 1951, divorced in 1952. Less than a year. Whatever she had hoped to find there, she did not find it.
W. Howard Lee: a Texas oil executive, married in 1953 when she was thirty-eight. This was, in terms of duration, her second longest marriage — seven years, until 1960. Lee was wealthy, which provided stability of a specific kind. Whether she found what she was looking for is not documented.