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Linda Cristal Profile
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| (Marta Victoria Moya Burges / Pego) |
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| 24 February 34 | is born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her father is French; her mother is Italian. |
| c. 39 | when she is not yet in school, her parents flee to Uruguay after her father, a publisher, becomes involved in a political dispute with the ruling party |
| 47 / 48 | her parents are killed in a car crash near Buenos Aires; she’s the only survivor of the accident / her parents die in what is considered a suicide pact. She will later believe that her mother, a diabetic, became comatose from lack of insulin, and that her father, deeply humiliated by his failure to provide for his family in exile and discovering his wife dead or dying, turned on the gas. |
| ? | attends Conservatoria Franklin in Uruguay |
| 50 | is married for five days and gets an annulment |
| c. 50 | is discovered by Mexican producer-director Miguelito Aleman, son of the Mexican president, Miguel Aleman. She'll do nine films in four years for him. |
| 56 | is one of Mexico's leading lights, when a car accident sets her career back briefly |
| 58 | is named "Motion Picture Sweater Queen of 1958" by the Knitted Outerwear Association of America |
| 9 January 58 | she and Universal-International are sued by Carl Kruger, independent producer, in Los Angeles Superior Court for $4.000,000 in damages. Kruger also seeks an injunction to prevent her from working on The Perfect Furlough. His complaint alleges that the studio "conspired" with her and "fraudulently" induced her to disregard a seven-year exclusive service contract assertedly made with him in 1955. She appeared in one movie, Comanche, for him before she left the company in November 1956. The complaint adds that she later appeared in The Western Story for Universal and that Kruger took no legal action because the film was made in Mexico. Kruger asks $2.000,000 damages from Linda, who is sued under her real name, Marta Victoria Moya Pego, and an equal amount from Universal-International. |
| March 58 | is George Dewitt’s date in Havana |
| April 58 | dates John Saxon, who is also signed at Universal-International |
| c. April 58 | meets oilman / industrialist Bob Champion, when both are invited by Conrad Hilton to the opening of his Havana, Cuba, hotel. Actress Ann Miller introduces them on the plane going down. It is love at first sight. Champion is half-brother of dancer-actor Gower Champion, but the two aren't in contact. Champion's headquarters are in Caracas, Venezuela. |
| 24 April 58 | secretly marries Robert W. Champion in Pomona, California. The ceremony is performed by a justice of the peace. |
| 6 May 58 | announces her engagement to Champion in Hollywood and says no definite date is set for the wedding, but it will not be before July. He's 34; she's 23. When she finishes her next picture, The Hell Bent Kid, they'll have a real honeymoon in Acapulco. The stone in her engagement ring is a 10 1/2-karat yellow diamond. |
| Late May 58 | columnist Earl Wilson reports that she and Champion actually married in Colton, California, on April 24 |
| June 58 | is named "The Latin Lovely" by a corps of South American newspapermen |
| September 58 | despite the political unrest in Venezuela, her husband plans to leave for his native country. "I tried to talk him out of it," she says on the Cry Tough set, "but he assured me he can take care of himself." |
| Mid-October 58 | leaves Hollywood for Mexico City where she will represent movieland at the world review of cinematographic festivals |
| November 58 | she and fellow starlet Jean Blake are pictured as candidates for mayor of Universal City, the 400-acre community of Universal-International studios. The mayoralty situation got underway in 1940 with Deanna Durbin as first mayor. |
| goes to New York to attend a midnight show business preview of her latest film, Universal-International's The Perfect Furlough at the Paris Theater. She stays at the Hotel Drake at 56 Street, Park Avenue. |
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| December 58 | her husband flies in from South America to spend the holidays with her. He will fly back the first of the year, and she will take off on a 27-city tour to ballyhoo The Perfect Furlough. |
| February 59 | hopes to join the junket to the opening of the Cairo Hilton. She tells columnist Harrison Carroll that her husband will be in from Venezuela in March. Carroll knows: "These two, married nine months, have spent only about three of them together." |
| Early March 59 | is pictured in front of the sphinx, sight-seeing in Gizeh, Egypt |
| March 59 | she and Champion separate after 11 months. She blames the break up of her career and his job in Venezuela, which kept them apart. |
| April 59 | can't wait for the divorce hearing so that she can date. "She attended The Diary of Anne Frank premiere with director Hugo Fregonese, ex-husband of Faith Domergue." |
| tells Carroll that she and Champion will sign the property settlement any minute. "They are still living under the same roof." |
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| June 59 | columnist Walter Winchell thinks that she's the reason why actor "William Campbell wears that big grin" |
| September 59 | columnist Harrison Carroll reports: “A way has been found to speed up the divorce of actress Linda Cristal and her husband, Robert Champion. Linda won’t become a resident of California until later this year, but her husband is. Through his attorney Stanley Gleis, he has filed the suit. The law allows Linda to cross-file. If the judge grants her plea, she’ll be the one to get the divorce. The property settlement already is signed, so that’s no problem. No hearing date has been set, I’m told. This may have to await Linda’s return from the Texas location of The Alamo.” |
| October 59 | her friends predict she will marry musician Buddy Bregman, who almost became the husband of Anna Maria Alberghetti, as soon as her divorce from Champion becomes final |
| December 59 | Carroll reports her back from the Texas location of The Alamo. "I don't know when I will go to court to get my divorce," she says. "I haven't had time to talk to my attorney yet." When she gets around to it, she will divorce Champion, who filed first, on account of residence qualifications, but who has been waiting for her to get the last legal word. |
| c. 9 December 59 | divorces Champion in Santa Monica after less than a year of marriage charging mental cruelty. He doesn't contest the divorce. |
| Late December 59 | flies to the Mexican Film Festival with her friend Jane Lait. "Taking the two girls to the airport was Marshall Shellhardt, the frozen orange juice manufacturer. He and Linda have been dating often." |
| January 60 | will star opposite Fernando Lamas in Simon Bolivar, filmed in Mexico |
| 28 April 60 | receives an engagement ring from Shellhardt in Hollywood |
| April 60 | is back from Europe and at the Luau with Shellhardt |
| September 60 | columnist Walter Winchell reports that she "and Shellhardt, her ex-fiancé, resumed after all those lonely weeks" |
| Mid-December 60 | says in Mexico City that she plans to spend her honeymoon and the Christmas holidays in Acapulco around December 22. She plans to marry actor Yale Wexler in Chicago December 21. He's operator of the Wilshire House in Beverly Hills. |
| December 60 | doubts if her fiancé will fly down to Texas where she's filming Two Rode Together |
| Late December 60 | marries Wexler at the Thorndike Hilton Chapel of the University of Chicago. He's 30; she's 26. Wexler formerly lived in Chicago and is an actor-director / part time actor and full time millionaire. |
| April 61 | quits Hollywood to live with Wexler in Chicago |
| September 61 | she and Wexler expect their first baby in January |
| 2 January 62 | her son Gregory S. is born in Los Angeles |
| 13 December 63 | her son Jordan R. is born in Los Angeles |
| January 64 | her husband's Wilshire House in Beverly Hills is heralded a big success |
| December 66 | divorces Wexler, with whom she has two sons, in Los Angeles |
| 68 | is crowned "Azalea Queen" at the Azalea Festival of Wilmington, North Carolina |
| January 68 | her frequent escorts are TV actors Adam West and Christopher George. She speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and English. Her sons, whose nurse is Spanish, also speak Spanish. |
| May 68 | is seen around Hollywood on the arm of her steady, Adam West. Both still insist they have no wedding plans. |
| July 68 | gets closer with millionaire businessman Arthur Symington, ex-escort of starlet Anjanette Comer. "Their romance, sparked several weeks ago when Linda was filming near Tucson, home of several of Symington's business enterprises, seems to have burst into a steady flame. Over the 4th of July holiday, Arthur and Linda flew to Hollywood in his private Lear Jet to pick up her sons, Jordan and Gregory, and zipped to his villa in Acapulco for the long weekend. You know what it means when romance starts taking the children along." |
| October 70 | plans to spend Thanksgiving with George Kaufman, "who used to have an interest in Gina Lollobrigida" |
| 71 | when "The High Chaparral" ceases production, she returns to Mexico for a six-month stint on a soap opera and is then off to Argentina for years |
| December 71 | columnist Earl Wilson reports that Hollywood attorney Greg Bautzer "is training his sex appeal on Linda Cristal. Linda somehow resembles Greg's former wife Dana Wynter." |
| October 72 | columnist Dorothy Manners knows that "never has anyone asked for a 'clarification' as nicely as Charles Collins, wealthy Texan husband of Linda Cristal." |
| Late 80s | has a home in Beverly Hills, a residence in Palm Springs, and a flat in Buenos Aires |
| 27 June 20 | dies at age 89 at her home in Beverly Hills, California |
| Sources: Whatever became of... #11 by Richard Lamparski, The Complete Directory to Prime Time TV Stars by Tim Brooks, Dell's Who's Who in Hollywood, Silver Screen, Celebrity Sleuth, Modern Screen, Screen Stories, Hollywood Album, The Lima News, The Odessa American, Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star, The Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, Nevada State Journal, The Newark Advocate, The Vidette-Messenger, Times-Mirror, The Zanesville Signal, The Coshocton Tribune, The Daily Gleaner, Picturegoer, The Post-Standard, Sunday Post-Crescent, The Daily Courier, News Journal-Mansfield, The New York Times, pro.corbis.com | |
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| Links: Filmography | |