Ruby Wednesday

Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis—married for 56 years before Davis's passing in '05—had an open marriage?!

From ABOUT.COM:

Ossie: "It occurred to us, from observation and reasoning, that extramarital sex was not what really destroyed marriages, but rather the lies and deception that invariably accompanied it -- that was the culprit. So we decided to give ourselves permission to sleep with other partners if we wished -- as long as what we did was honest as well as private, and that neither of us exposed the family to scandal or disease. We had to be discreet and, if the word can be apt, honorable in our behavior, both to ourselves, to whomever else might be involved, and most of all, to the family. And for the most part, we were."

I only learned this because Ruby Dee and Alicia Keys did an episode of ICONOCLASTS and I ended up doing a search on Ms. Dee (who was a fox back in the day) and I found that revelation.

Hot? Sure. But at the risk of sounding a bit conservative here, I kinda don't get that sort of setup.

So, Ossie goes off and bangs ten women and has to go home and reveal that to Ruby? Or let's say Ruby goes off and starts sleeping with another guy exclusively and deeper feelings begin to develop. It just seems that jealousy has got to be inevitable. And jealousy can be corrosive.

Hard to argue with 56 years of marriage, though. Clearly, it worked for them. And they worked together a lot, so it probably kept them on their toes.

Speaking of curious couplings, what about DEXTER sibs Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter hooking up?
'Course, I thought that Michael C. Hall was married and/or gay. (At least, he seems to be playing a gay man on both SIX FEET UNDER and DEXTER—no matter how many women he sleeps with as Dexter.) But I guess he divorced his wife Amy Spanger a few years ago. Maybe he tried to pitch her an Ossie & Ruby scenario and she didn't go for it...

As for Hall & Carpenter (sounds like an 80s pop duo), their characters on DEXTER aren't even *blood* siblings. Same deal as The Brady Bunch, and there are ALL those stories about how those fucking kids were hooking up with each other left and right offscreen.

This concludes today's celebrity gossip.