Famous Weddings & Divorces in 1940

Jan 1 68th Prime Minister of UK Harold Wilson (23) weds poet Mary Baldwin (23) in the chapel of Mansfield College, Oxford

Feb 13 American actress Lana Turner (19) weds American bandleader Artie Shaw (29) in a Las Vegas elopement; divorce after 4 months

Feb 18 Molecular biologist Francis Crick (23) weds Ruth Doreen Dodd; divorce 1947

Mar 7 Comedian Oliver Hardy (48) marries film assistant Virginia Lucille Jones (30)

Mar 30 Broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite weds Mary Elizabeth Maxwell at the Grace and Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

Apr 7 Writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (21) weds Natalya Reshetovskaya

May 5 Actress Mary Martin (26) weds producer Richard Halliday (35)

May 25 MLB outfielder Stan Musial (19) weds his high school sweetheart Lillian Labash in Daytona Beach

Jun 4 American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey (21) weds radio producer Lynne Cooper

Jun 21 37th US President Richard Nixon (27) weds Pat Ryan (28) at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California

Jul 4 British actress Gertrude Lawrence weds American theater producer Richard Aldrich (37) on her 42nd birthday, until her death in 1952; second marriage for both

Jul 13 American jazz pianist and bandleader Count Basie weds second wife American Catherine Morgan at the King County courthouse in Seattle, Washington, until her death in 1983

Jul 31 Actress Loretta Young (27) weds advertising executive Tom Lewis at the chapel of St. Paul's Church in Westwood

Aug 12 PGA golfer Sam Snead (28) weds high school sweetheart Audrey Karnes

Aug 30 American CBS news correspondent Mike Wallace (22) weds Norma Kaphan in Brookline, Massachusetts; divorce in 1948

Aug 31 Football player and coach Vince Lombardi (27) weds Marie Planitz at Our Lady of Refuge Church in Bronx, New York

Sep 1 American "Dragnet" and "M*A*S*H" actor Harry Morgan (25) weds Eileen Detchon

Sep 22 "Adventures of Superman" actor George Reeves (26) weds Ellanora Needles at the Church of Our Savior in San Gabriel, California

Nov 1 Theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer (36) weds biologist Katherine Harrison Puening

Nov 5 American "A Farewell to Arms" novelist Ernest Hemingway (41) weds for a third time, to American novelist and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (31); divorce in 1945

Nov 23 Film director David Lean (32) weds actress Kay Walsh (29)

Nov 23 RAF pilot Guy Gibson (22) weds show dancer and actress Eve Moore in Penarth’s Anglican Church

Dec 3 French author and future Nobel laureate Albert Camus (27) weds French pianist and mathematician Francine Faure (25) in Lyon, France

Dec 31 Actress Bette Davis (32) weds New England innkeeper Arthur Farnsworth at 15,000-acre ranch in Lake Montezuma, Arizona

Jul 22 Jacqueline Kennedy's parents John Vernou "Black Jack" Bouvier III and Janet (Norton Lee) divorce

Nov 4 American "A Farewell to Arms" novelist Ernest Hemingway (41) divorces 2nd wife American journalist Pauline Pfeiffer (44) divorce after 13 years of marriage