National Enquirer gets way up in French star Brigitte Bardot’s business in this issue published today in 1960, with its claim that the “man in Bardot’s life” left his wife for her, but “she won’t even talk to him.” The editors are referring to Irish actor Stephen Boyd, who you may know from the 1959 epic Ben Hur.
How did such a rumor get started? After Bardot had become an international sensation in 1956’s And God Created Woman she was allowed to choose her next leading man and fingered Boyd. Their steamy scenes in the resulting film, 1958’s Les bijoutiers du clair de lune, aka The Night Heaven Fell, stimulated tabloid musings.
Bardot and Boyd’s first encounter had been epic. According to Boyd, “When I arrived in Paris, Brigitte’s husband (Roger Vadim) picked me up at the airport, and took me directly to their apartment to meet my new leading lady. When we got there, he asked me to be patient a moment while he told his wife I had arrived. A few minutes later, Brigitte, wearing nothing but what nature had endowed her with, stormed into the room, threw her arms around me and told me how delighted she would be to work with me.”
As minor pranks go, that’s a fun one. Bardot naked for a stranger? Love it. Well, they weren’t strangers after that. By the end of Les bijoutiers du clair de lune they had become good friends. Boyd later said in an interview that Bardot asked him to marry her: “I don’t know if she was joking, but I said no. I did not explain that I couldn’t marry an actress who could never be faithful to me. Or at least try. Like I would at least try for the first year or two.”
With various stories circulating, the tabloids had all the fuel they needed to flog rumors of Bardot/Boyd sexual involvement. We don’t think Boyd really divorced his wife, theatrical agent Mariella di Sarzana, to be with Bardot. He had been with di Sarzana since summer 1958, while Bardot had divorced Roger Vadim in April 1957, and married Jacques Charrier in 1959. It’s easy to think in terms of free time between marriages, but in reality an affair could have happened at any point.
Ultimately the public will never know, and interest wanes year by year as a function of human mortality. Bardot, aged ninety, has outlived many of her formerly obsessed fans, while Boyd died way back in 1977 and isn’t well known today. But if you’re curious about him and Bardot, there’s an interesting and detailed blog about his life and career. It’s the type of site many vintage film stars probably deserve, but only a lucky few get. You can find it at this link.
