Santa Monica
Lawrence Lipton couldn’t take it anymore. His wife, best-selling crime novelist Craig Rice, insisted he stay up with her until four or five every morning, while she talked, talked and talked. He couldn’t write his own books on two hours of sleep. “It made me ill,” he complained. She humiliated him in front of friends and servants, disrupting his attempts at conversation with a lordly, “Don’t pay any attention to him.” Despite their household staff, she insisted Lipton clean out the fireplaces. And as for having business conversations around her? Impossible. Lipton’s witness, Raymond J. Healy of Simon & Schuster told Judge Alfred E. Paonessa that Rice routinely told Lipton to “Shut up,” and seemed both personally and professionally jealous of her spouse.
Judge Paonessa granted the divorce decree, noting that under an agreement worked out by the parties, Miss Rice would retain ownership of the 15-room house at 351 23rd Street, Santa Monica, they would own their own copyrights, and maintain joint ownership of collarborative works. The couple were married at Ft. Atkinson, Wisconsin on March 31, 1940, and separated last October 4.
