22 Facts About Tommy Manville

Tommy Manville was a celebrity in mid 20th-century Manhattan due to both his inherited wealth and his record-breaking 13 marriages to 11 women, which won him an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Tommy Manville stated that he and his father did not get along and that his father repeatedly disinherited him.

Tommy Manville arranged a second wedding ceremony in New Jersey, tried to have another in Maryland, and said that he would, if necessary, remarry his bride in most of the then-46 states.

When his father shut the family treasury against him, Tommy Manville took a $15-a-week job in the family's Pittsburgh factory in order to get by.

Tommy Manville alleged that her husband and his father had agreed to pay her $15,000 per year to live apart from her husband.

Tommy Manville next married Lois Arline McCoin, his father's 22-year-old stenographer, in September 1925.

In December 1930, McCoin secured a Reno divorce on grounds that Tommy Manville had deserted her in 1926.

Tommy Manville equipped it with burglar alarms, peephole doors, armed guards, a public-address system, a radio in every room, and 20 telephones.

Tommy Manville called the estate his fortress, and often wore two heavy pistols on his belt.

In June 1967, while Tommy Manville was in Doctors Hospital, three gunmen wearing black masks invaded his estate and stole an undetermined amount of cash, jewelry, furs, and clothing.

Tommy Manville had been in ill health for several years, and his 11th wife, the former Christina Erdlen, was with him at the hospital when the estate was robbed.

Tommy Manville reportedly used marriage as a means of personal publicity.

In October 1933, Tommy Manville married Marcelle Edwards, a showgirl with The Earl Carroll Vanities.

Tommy Manville had been married four times by age 20.

Tommy Manville left him after five weeks and was reported to be seeking a divorce.

Tommy Manville said they were not planning a reconciliation but had "been friends".

Tommy Manville divorced him again in Reno in 1955, and remarried actor John Sutton, who in 1960 was granted an annulment on the grounds that her 1955 divorce was invalid due to failure to satisfy the required residency period.

In May 1957, Tommy Manville married his 10th wife, Pat Gaston, a 26-year-old Texas showgirl.

In January 1960, Tommy Manville married his 11th and final wife, Christina Erdlen from Heidenheim an der Brenz, West Germany.

Tommy Manville was probably the model for Gary Cooper's character in the 1938 motion picture Bluebeard's Eighth Wife.

Tommy Manville was considered something of a clown, but was secretly admired by some for his number of conquests and his extravagant bank account.

At the time of his death it was estimated that Tommy Manville spent more than $1.25 million on divorce settlements.