Key Points
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Brenda Vaccaro made a rare comment about ending her engagement to Michael Douglas in the late 1970s.
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“I fell in love with somebody else,” said the actress, who had started a new relationship with Don Stroud.
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Vaccaro also revealed she called off the wedding as “the invitations were being printed.”
Brenda Vaccaro is opening about her seven-year itch with Michael Douglas.
The Midnight Cowboy actress was engaged to her Summertree costar in the 1970s when she changed her mind at the very last minute — and ended the relationship to start a new one with actor Don Stroud. “I fell in love with somebody else, and I knew it,” Vaccaro, now 86, admitted on The Tom & Mickey Show.
And she realized it not a moment too soon. “The provocative thing was that the [wedding] invitations were being printed and there were 175 people I think,” recalled Vaccaro.
Technically, the longtime couple were already married, just not in the eyes of the law.
Vaccaro and Douglas, who was five years her junior, had organized a “hippie wedding” in their agent’s backyard. “We got married, just with words and love, and there was no priest.” The two exchanged leather rings and “decided to be together forever,” she recalled.
But that wasn’t enough for the actor’s father, Kirk Douglas, who was pushing for a big Hollywood celebration. “And so I felt the pressure to do it,” admitted Vaccaro. “Pressure, not love.”
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Although the couple shared a home on Hollywood Boulevard, Douglas was often away in Northern California shooting his ABC crime drama, The Streets of San Francisco, which aired from 1972 to 1976.
Down in Los Angeles, “my life was changing,” said Vaccaro, who starred opposite Stroud in 1976’s The House by the Lake. “It was very provocative. I got into my Mercedes. I drove out to Malibu and jumped into bed with the guy I was in love with. That’s what I did.”
In his recent memoir, One Helluva Ride, Douglas shared his side of the end of his relationship with Vaccaro.
After overhearing her on the phone “sweet talking” Stroud, he revealed he decided to break things off for good. “I packed up and moved out,” Douglas wrote. “I walked out to my car, holding back tears.”
Later, he added, “I heard through mutual acquaintances that Brenda regretted ending our relationship and especially ending it for Don Stroud.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
