Peggy Hopkins Joyce (May 26, 1893 – June 12, 1957) was an American actress, artist model and dancer. In addition to her performing career, Joyce was known for her flamboyant life, with numerous engagements, six marriages to wealthy men, subsequent divorces, a series of scandalous affairs, a collection of diamonds and furs, and her generally lavish lifestyle.

Biography

Marriages and affairs
Joyce was married six times and claimed to be engaged fifty times.

Joyce's first marriage was millionaire to Everett Archer, Jr. in 1910. Archer had the marriage annulled later that year after he discovered that Joyce was underage. Her second marriage was to lawyer Sherburne Hopkins, the son of a prominent and wealthy lawyer. They were married on September 1, 1913. In 1917, Joyce left him to pursue a career. While traveling with the Ziegfeld show in May 1919, she met wealthy Chicago lumberman J. Stanley Joyce. J. Stanley Joyce paid for Peggy's divorce from Hopkins. Their divorced was granted on January 21, 1920.

Two days later, on January 23, Peggy and J. Stanley Joyce were married. On their wedding night, Peggy locked herself in the bathroom of the couple's hotel room and refused to come out until Joyce wrote her a check for $500,000. Within the year, she left Stanley Joyce for Parisian playboy and multimillionaire newspaper owner Henri Letellier. She sued J. Stanley Joyce for divorce and asked for $10,000 a month in alimony and attorney fees of $100,000. J. Stanley Joyce counter sued, claiming that she had married him only to defraud him of money. He also accused Peggy of having multiple adulterous affairs, being a bigamist (Stanley Joyce claimed that Peggy was not divorced from her first husband before she married her second, thus making their union invalid), and for having driven a United States Army lieutenant to suicide. J. Stanley Joyce's lawyer claimed the man shot himself in a Turkish bath after going broke trying to keep Peggy happy.

During the couple's well publicized divorce trial in 1921, testimony revealed that J. Stanley had given Peggy Joyce a reported $1.4 million in jewelry, a $300,000 home in Miami, furs, and other properties during their marriage. Joyce was awarded $600,000 in the divorce settlement. She was also allowed to keep all the jewelry she had acquired during the marriage, and was given stock in J. Stanley Joyce's lumber company that allotted her an annuity of $1,500 paycheck monthly for life.

The media later reported that Joyce had eloped with Henri Letellier, but the two never married. She said she did not marry him because, "Frenchmen understand women too well. A girl should never marry a man who understands women." After her third divorce, Joyce declared that she would never marry again.

For the next few years, Joyce remained single but continued to have numerous affairs with such wealthy men as W. Averell Harriman, Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark, Hiram Bloomingdale (son of Lyman G. Bloomingdale), Sayajirao Gaekwad III, Charlie Chaplin (who based part of his film A Woman of Paris on stories Joyce told him about her previous marriage), and producer Irving Thalberg.

In 1922, Joyce's affair with the attache of the Chilean Legation, Guillermo "William" Errázuriz, drew media attention as he was the brother of the equally scandalous Blanca Errázuriz. The affair began while she was still in a relationship with Letellier. Errázuriz was married with a child, but Joyce claimed he wanted to marry her. On May 1, 1922, Errázuriz shot himself in Joyce's Paris hotel room and died the following day of his injury. Joyce claimed that he committed suicide after she refused to marry him. Errázuriz's family claimed that he killed himself due to financial problems.

Three days after Errázuriz's death, on May 4, Joyce was hosptialized after accidentally overdosing on sleeping pills. While she was recuperating, she gave an interview to a reporter claiming that she was "...through with men." Joyce went on to say that she was in love with William Errázuriz but admitted that she "...played with him. I dangled him on a string just as I did many others. Oh, why did I do it?" When asked why numerous men were seemingly fascinated by her, Joyce stated, "I don't know why men run after me. I cannot tell you the secret of my fascination. [...] I never meant to ruin their lives." Nine days after Errázuriz's death, another attache of the Chilean Legation, Lt. Rivas Muntt, attempted suicide by overdosing on Veronal. Muntt reportedly became despondent when Joyce spurned his advances and was found clutching a newspaper clipping of the interview in which Joyce declared her love for Errázuriz.

Despite her declaration never to marry again, Joyce married Swedish Count Gosta Morner on June 3, 1924. Joyce told the press that "All my other marriages meant nothing. This is the first time I have ever been truly in love." Count Morner told reporters that Joyce would give up her career in order to be his wife. By the end of July 1924, Joyce had decided to resume her career and left Count Morner. They divorced in February 1926. Joyce remained single for the next nineteen years but continued dating wealthy men. In the early 1930s, she began an affair with Walter Chrysler, who was married at the time. Chrysler reportedly gave her $2 million in jewelry (including a 134-karat diamond necklace which cost a reported $500,000) and two Isotta Fraschinis – a canary yellow roadster and a Tipo 8B – worth $45,000. Joyce later had a relationship with British astronomy professor Charles Vivian Jackson. Jackson died in a sleighing accident when the couple were in St. Moritz in 1937. Joyce would later say that Jackson was "the only man I ever loved."

On December 3, 1945, Joyce married for the fifth time to consulting engineer Anthony Easton. The marriage made headlines when Joyce refused to include the word "obey" in the marriage vows. Although there is no record of a divorce, Joyce and Easton's union ended sometime before 1953.

In 1953, Joyce married for the sixth and final time to Andrew C. Meyer. Meyer was described as a "retired official of the Bankers Trust Company". Meyer was actually a retired bank teller whom Joyce had met while he was working at a bank that she used. They remained married until Joyce's death in 1957.