Five Thanksgiving Tragedies and Scandals

Natalie Wood's drowning death. Tiger Woods' image-destroying crash. Robert Downey Jr.'s desert arrest...the long holiday weekend's nothing but a cursed one for Hollywood

By Joal Ryan Nov 24, 2011 7:55 AMTags
Natalie WoodGlobe Photos/Zuma Press

The shocking death of a star. A hero's fall from grace. A career-threatening arrest.

If you were the type to believe in curses, you'd think the long Thanksgiving weekend had it in for the rich and famous.

And judging by these stories, you'd be right:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Globe Photos/ZUMAPRESS.com

1. Natalie Wood's Drowning: Thirty years on, the events of Nov. 28, 1981, are back in debate. And given the disparate accounts of what went on between the 43-year-old Wood, husband Robert Wagner and costar Christopher Walken in the waters off Los Angeles on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving, maybe the debate will never be settled.  

2. Tiger Woods' Crash: Things began to go badly for the golfer a couple of days before Thanksgiving 2009, when the National  Enquirer reported Woods was having an affair with onetime David Boreanaz mistress Rachel Uchitel. Then, in the early morning hours of Black Friday, Woods smashed his SUV outside his Florida home. Wife Elin Nordegren was spotted wielding a golf club—the better to pry her injured husband from the wreckage, it was said. Whatever the case, the damage was done, mostly to Woods' squeaky-clean reputation.

Rick Diamond/WireImage

3. Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock's Unhappy Holiday: Thanksgiving was the last straw for the on-again, off-again couple. Married in July 2006, the Baywatch star and the rocker went south, but fast. In early November of that year, Anderson suffered a miscarriage. Then, on the Monday after turkey day, the two couldn't wait for the courthouse to reopen so they could both file for divorce, bringing an end to one of Hollywood's (and Anderson's) briefest marriages.

Ray Stubblebine/Hasbro/HO

4. Robert Downey Jr.'s Desert Debacle: Just months into an Ally McBeal-paced comeback, things came crashing down again when the then-troubled actor was arrested for drug possession on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in a Palm Springs hotel. It would take yet another bust, in April 2001, before Downey started on the road to redemption—and Iron Man.  

Getty Images

5. A Cowboy's Tragic End: Two days after Thanksgiving 1942, at Boston's swanky Coconut Grove, 492 people were lost in the deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. Among the victims was Buck Jones, a stuntman turned Western star, who, hours before the inferno, had visited a local children's hospital.