Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Crawford, photographed by Edward J. Steichen in 1931.
Fairbanks and Crawford met on the set of Our Modern Maidens and were married on June 3, 1929 in New York City. He was 19 and she was 24; they came from very different backgrounds. Fairbanks' father and stepmother, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford, were huge stars, and his biological mother was heiress to a cotton fortune. Consequently he led a charmed life and attended the finest schools. Crawford, on the other hand, had to work her way up from near poverty; her father had abandoned the family before she was born.
Pickford disapproved of their marriage, perhaps out of jealousy towards Crawford's rising stardom, and Crawford would not be invited to the Pickford-Fairbanks home, a 56-acre estate in Beverly Hills, for some time. Only Fairbanks' mother attended their wedding; Pickford and Fairbanks Sr. were not in attendance. Though it was definitely a love match, there was some speculation that Crawford was also motivated by a desire to further her career. The couple honeymooned in England, where they were entertained by the likes of Noël Coward and Prince George, Duke of Kent. However, Crawford subsequently had an affair with Clark Gable and the couple divorced in 1933.