This feature was originally published in The Kansas City Kansan newspaper on June 9, 1995.
By Steve Crum
Infidelity or cheating on a spouse is business as usual in Hollywood. Don’t confuse me with Bob Dole, who is Dan Qualing Hollywood for mishandling values and mores in the celluloid product. The fact is that infidelity has long been a plot device in motion pictures since the days of silent films as well as a pervasive element in plays and print fiction.
Case in point: does anyone really care about a middle-aged farm housewife who has an affair with a passerby photographer? Bet your Clint Eastwood boots on it. That basis sold millions of books for Robert James Walker and is raking in big bucks at neighborhood theaters as The Bridges of Madison County. Repackage the old tried-and-true and keep on selling. Maybe the romantic angle is the selling point, while the emotional negatives are ignored.
“No one is devastated like in real life,” reflects Pam Finley. “In the movies, you don’t see the effect on the children involved either.”
Finley, the Project Choice teacher at both Washington and Wyandotte High Schools, has unique insight into infidelity. As a marriage therapist and founder-president of Helping Hearts Heal, a national foundation to support spouses hurt by infidelity, Finley has appeared on over 20 TV talk shows (including Donahue and Geraldo, pictured) to emphasize the harm and pain of marital unfaithfulness.
“You also don’t see people so destroyed due to emotional breakdowns,” she adds.
Realistically portrayed or not, adultery as entertainment is a bankable commodity. Consider this sampling of Tinseltown history.
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Recent movies that have infidelity as a key plot element:
•THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL AND CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN, 1995 [Lonesome for their husbands to return from WWII, several wives have children by a local innkeeper.]
•IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU, 1994 [Bittersweet love story built around cop leaving his wife for a waitress.]
•JEFFERSON IN PARIS, 1995 [Ambassador Tom romances a married French aristocrat.]
•LEGENDS OF THE FALL, 1994 [Two brothers vie for their married brother’s wife’s attention.]
•MIAMI RHAPSODY, 1995 [Infidelity Central! Everyone in this family has ongoing affairs.]
•THE PEREZ FAMILY, 1995 [Tired of waiting for her husband to be released from 20 years in a Cuban jail, the wife starts fooling around with a local policeman.]
•SCHINDLER’S LIST, 1993 [Oskar had his fidelity problems.]
•TRUE LIES, 1994 [Schwarzenegger goes to extremes when he suspects wife Jamie Lee Curtis of infidelity.]
•WYATT EARP, 1994 and TOMBSTONE, 1993 [Wyatt repeatedly cheats on his basically common law life.]
∞∞Older/Classic Films∞∞
•CAMELOT, 1967 and the upcoming Sean Connery starrer FIRST KNIGHT, 1995 [Most of plot is built around King Arthur’s discovery of wife’s affair with his—and her—favorite knight.]
•FATAL ATTRACTION, 1987 [Infidelity gets its just rewards?]
•GONE WITH THE WIND, 1939 [Scarlett certainly courted infidelity by constantly thinking about Ashley while she was married.]
•A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN, 1967 [Gene Kelly directed this “comedy of Robert Morse trying to teach faithful husband 
Walter Matthau the ABC’s of adultery, with the aid of many guest stars….”—Leonard Martin.]
“Infidelity is everywhere,” says Finley, “so it’s no longer a major issue.”
But it helps sell popcorn.