Stan Laurel and wife No. 4 Illiana (or, according to a revised count, wife No. 3)

When
they met, Illiana, born Sept. 24, 1912, was 25 and the film comedian
was 43 and freshly divorced. In fact, he was so recently divorced from
Virginia Ruth Laurel (wife No. 2) that on Jan. 1, 1938, she stopped by
the hotel where the newlyweds were staying to "consult with her
ex-husband," according to The Times. Understand that this wasn’t in Los
Angeles but at the Del Ming Hotel in Yuma, Ariz.

Judging by news
accounts,  it wasn’t a friendly call: "While others may have viewed the
situation with a smile, says Laurel, it did not seem funny to him when
Mrs. Laurel disturbed his honeymoon at Yuma, Ariz., with his recent
bride … with loud knocks at his hotel door and threats to have him
arrested as a bigamist."

Everything was untangled, the divorce
was upheld and in February, just to make sure, Stan and Illiana
returned to Yuma to be married a second time. 

What followed
was about a month of bliss, then in April there was a lawsuit by Lois
N. Laurel (wife No. 1, 1926-1933). [Note that Lois is sometimes listed
as wife No. 2, but in 1937, Mae Laurel, Stan’s longtime vaudeville
partner, entered into an
agreement in which she promised to drop all contentions that they
had a common law marriage from 1919 to 1925].

Lois wanted $1,355
($19,751.14 USD 2007) a month support for their 10-year-old daughter,
including $100 a month each for a chauffeur, governess and cook, $35 a
month to entertain friends and $10 a month to visit beauty shops. 

Despite
two ceremonies, Illiana wanted a traditional wedding, so in April 1938,
the Laurels took out a marriage license and got married again in a
Russian Orthodox ceremony.

And then the storybook marriage became more of a Grimm’s fairy tale.

lliana was sentenced to jail for hitting two parked cars in Beverly Hills while she was driving without a license.

Then
it was Stan’s turn in court for a drunk driving charge, which he blamed
on being upset over Illiana rather than being intoxicated.

Before
he was arrested, Stan said, he and Illiana had a fight in which she
tried to hit him with the handset of a telephone, threatened him with a
skillet full of potatoes and threw sand in his eyes. In the struggle,
he put his arm through a window, Stan said.

"She has a terrific temper," he told the court.

By
the end of 1938, Illiana sued for divorce, saying that Stan drank too
much, "repulsed her efforts to show him affection, behaved rudely
toward their friends and on several occasions remained away from home
for several days at a time without explanation," The Times said.

The
couple reconciled and Illiana began 1939 with a day in jail for the
reckless driving charge, soon followed by an arrest for being drunk and
disorderly in a nightclub "while loudly discussing the Russian
situation with herself."   

By March 1939, Illiana renewed her
divorce case. She charged that Stan’s account of their fighting was
invented to avoid a drunk driving conviction that would cost him his
movie contract. In fact, she said, on the night in question he planned
to bury her alive in the backyard of their San Fernando Valley home.
She said she was rescued by friends and that Stan was coming after her
when he was arrested for driving on the wrong side of the road.

Their
divorce was granted in May 1939 and they finalized an agreement in 1940
in which Illiana agreed to never publish anything about their
relationship and that he had sole rights to dramatize "their stormy
married life," The Times said.

Postscript: In 1942, Illiana was rescued after a fire broke out at the Radio Center
Hotel in New York’s Times Square. She had fled to the roof and was
about to jump when firefighters saved her, The Times said. No further
trace can be found of her.

In 1941, Stan remarried wife No. 2, Virginia Ruth, who filed for
divorce in January 1946. On May 6, 1946, he married Ida Ketiva (Kitaeva) Raphael,
widow of an internationally known concertina virtuoso named "Raphael
Raphael Raphael."