Thomas Franklyn Manville, Jr. was born on April 9, 1894 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was the son of Thomas Franklyn Manville, who developed a regional business manufacturing insulation materials into the international Johns-Manville Corporation, and Clara Coleman. His parents were divorced in 1909.
Thomas Franklyn Manville Jr. took 11 wives in 13 marriages; he remarried twice and was divorced from 10 of them a total of 11 times. Once he was widowed. This extraordinary cycle of marriage and divorce was his only claim to celebrity. He reportedly used marriage as a means of personal publicity. In a story appearing under his name in the American Weekly magazine in 1936, he made sport of his marital propensities and pledged that his next wife would be a blonde – almost any blonde. The next year he took full page advertisements in New York newspapers, publicly seeking a new lawyer to represent him in family disputes.
Manville was a celebrity in the mid 20th Century, by virtue of his large financial inheritance, and his 13 marriages to 11 women. This feat won him an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, and made him the subject of much gossip. The termination of his marriages usually ended in widespread publicity and huge cash settlements.
Tommy, as Manville became known to the press and public, matured early. He began smoking at eleven, took his first drink in London at the same age, shaved when he was twelve, and at seventeen was wearing his fourth mustache. Astutely, he played his parents off against each other. This was not difficult to do, since their interests lay in directions other than parenting. His father lived at luxury hotels or in one of his clubs and concentrated upon his career as a multimillionaire and industrialist. Manville's mother traveled extensively in Europe and lived from 1927 until her death in 1941 in a hotel suite in New York City, busy with her collection of porcelains, 200 exotic birds, and, at one time, twenty-one dogs who occupied individual kennels. So far as Manville was concerned, the situation was, a psychiatrist said later, "precisely the right environment to develop something spectacular. "At an early age Manville became an object of journalistic interest as the heir of "the asbestos king" and as one given to precocious adventures eight runaways from school by the time he was fifteen and random employment during his teenage years as an elevator boy, night clerk, baker, chauffeur, crewman on a cattle boat, and common laborer nailing up boxes in an asbestos factory. His relationship with his father was stormy, oscillating between disinheritance and reconciliation. When he was seventeen years old Manville found his career marriage. Newspaper editors scoffed at Manville yet found the combination of money, beauty, and outrageous behavior irresistible and cooperated in making him a public figure. Manville, in turn, developed a flair for giving the newspapers the story they wanted. He met his first wife, he told the press, under the marquee of a Broadway theater. "I like your looks, " he told her. "And I like yours, " she replied. Two days later they were married. Often, during the marital difficulties that followed each wedding, the brides contributed statements that served to brighten up a story. "What is it that you have that Mr. Manville's other chorus-girl wives lacked?" a reporter asked the fourth wife, Marcelle Edwards, who had been Miss Broadway of 1933. "I don't know, " snapped Marcelle, "unless it's this cold in my head. " Following the death of his father in 1925, Manville inherited a fortune of approximately $10 million. The next year he developed a lavish property on Long Island Sound between New Rochelle and Mamaroneck, N. Y. The twenty-eight-room residence and environs were known as Bon Repos. Among the unusual features of the house were a radio and record player in every room, a telephone switchboard in the master bedroom, a motion-picture theater, and a completely equipped guesthouse, to which Manville retired when pandemonium reigned. Security was well maintained. Watchtowers were staffed by armed guards, supplemented by loudspeakers and giant floodlights in the treetops. A siren and red light were installed on the roof for summoning the police when there was a domestic contretemps, such as the time when Manville's angry eighth wife heaved a hot plate of cheese dreams at him. New Yorkers, the London Daily Mirror assured its readers, paid a dollar a head to stand outside the palisade surrounding Bon Repos just to listen to one of Manville's quarrels with his wife-of-the-year or his blonde secretary. These bouts, which were often refereed by what the Mamaroneck Police Department came to call "the bedroom detail, " sometimes ended in charges of second-degree assault. In 1955, describing himself as "really retired, " Manville acquired a more modest property in Chappaqua, N. Y. , which he called Bon Repos No. 2. It was while living there that his thirteenth and last marriage was, as he informed the United Press International, "kaput. ” Most of the divorce settlements Manville negotiated were comparatively modest though their total ran to an estimated $2. 5 million. This figure does not include the costs of courtship limousines, orchids, nightclubbing, diamonds, wedding rings, lawyers, liquor, furs, and aspirin. On several occasions Manville took large display space in New York City newspapers to advertise for a lawyer or a secretary. Press agents in his employ kept in touch with the newspapers and Manville himself often issued communiqués on his marital situation from the Stork Club, then a center of New York City night life. Seen in perspective, the marriages and divorces were devices to attract the notice Manville craved and constituted his only claim to public attention. Happy to be called "the marrying Manville, " he was simply, in Daniel Boorstin's felicitous phrase defining celebrity, "well known for his well-knownness. " Manville was of medium height, dapper, sunlamp ruddy, soft-spoken except when bored or aroused, and distinguished by a crest of wavy, prematurely white hair. He died in Chappaqua.
He was married thirteen times to eleven comely young women, most of them blondes and most recruited from Broadway chorus lines. The discrepancy in the marriage figures results from the fact that he married two of his wives twice. The longest marriage lasted seven years, the shortest seven hours and forty-five minutes, while reported engagements that fell short of the altar ranged between 27 and 529, according to conflicting scores compiled by reporters, columnists, and the wire services.
6 November 1862 - 19 October 1925
20 January 1867 - 24 August 1941
A showgirl, married him in October 1933. They were divorced in October 1937 after a $200.000 settlement.
A 22-year-old showgirl, wed Manville in November 1941. They were divorced in January 1942.
They were married in May 1957 and divorced in November of that year.
A 20-year-old actress, in October 1942. They were divorced in February 1943.
She obtained a Mexican divorce in August and accepted S100,000 in lieu of alimony.
They married in January 1960
She wed Manville in August 1943. She had been married four times by age 20. They were separated after eight hours and divorced in October 1943.
They married in December 1945 at age 51. The two were separated when Mrs. Manville was killed in an automobile collision in 1952 while driving to have breakfast with her husband at "Bon Repos".
