Stepping High with Hollywood Husband Gene Markey

Gene Markey, Self-Portrait

“That’s the trouble with you American husbands—you’re so kind to your wives that they lose interest in you.”
 
Gene Markey, Stepping High
 
It is chronologically impossible that Gene Markey was referring to himself when he wrote about this flaw with American husbands in his 1929 novel Stepping High. In that year, he was just then becoming a popular man about town in Hollywood and had not yet begun his starstruck marital career that saw him wed (and divorce) three of filmdom’s most popular actresses:

Joan Bennett (1932 to 1937)

Hedy Lamarr (1939 to 1940)
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Myrna Loy (1946 to 1950)

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Joan Bennett, Gene Markey, and Daughters (1936)

Hedy Lamarr and Gene Markey (1940)

Myrna Loy and Gene Markey (1948)

In 1952, Markey forsook California for the greener pastures of Kentucky (literally and figuratively). There, he remained happily married to the doyenne of Calumet Farms—the former Mrs. William Wright—for the remaining three decades of his life.
 
In addition to writing novels and marrying well, Gene Markey was a gifted caricaturist. We currently are offering for sale an inscribed copy of Stepping High in which Markey has sketched a self-portrait. We also have a book of delightful literary caricatures by him, Literary Lights, A Book of Caricatures. It include portraits of F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, H.L. Mencken, Carl Van Vechten, and others.