5 Celebs Whose Nonsense Drove Their Kids Away

5 Thomas Edison Sued His Son

If you were bumbling around in 1903, you might have found yourself looking at the following advertisement. This amazing invention, the Magno-Electric Vitalizer, reportedly cured a variety of maladies using the power of electricity. It was apparently invented by Thomas Edison himself. A little more scrutiny would reveal that it was really invented by Thomas Alva Edison junior, but you might still assume the two guys were part of the same operation. 

Other ads were even more ambiguous, simply referring to some quack device or another as “the latest Edison discovery.” When Tom Junior did make it clear that he was a different person from his father, he claimed to be superior to him, founding such ventures as the “Thomas A. Edison, Jr. Improved Incandescent Lamp Company.” 

Father and son had never really got along, you see. Thomas Senior’s version of parenting involved pressing a hot spoon to his kids’ hands when they were unable to answer quiz questions, and when Tom Junior went off to school, he evidently kept better in touch which his stepmother than with his father. He liked his stepmom. Like-liked her, judging by his letters; she was only a few years older than him, which made his attraction moderately more acceptable.

Tom Senior didn’t like his son abusing the family name, and the Magno-Electric Vitalizer (“especially effective when applied to the genitals”) was the last straw. He filed an injunction to stop the younger Tom from calling himself Edison. Then, he got the boy to stop by just paying him off. When Tom Junior was ultimately found dead in a hotel room years later, he’d checked in under a false name. 

4 Stalin’s Daughter Turned Her Back Hard

In 1967, Josef Stalin had just one living heir, Svetlana. She now defected to the United States, which might be considered the ultimate betrayal of her father. She had a handful of grievances against him, apart from the general “he was Stalin” thing. First, he’d prevented her from studying art, which is always a dangerous denial to anyone in a dictator’s orbit. Second, he sent her boyfriend to a gulag, marrying her off instead to one of his own friends. 

At first, Svetlana seemed to settle well into the American life. She became a citizen and changed her name to Lana Peters. But then, in 1984, she moved back to the U.S.S.R. and became a Soviet citizen again, a move that many commentators described as “something literally out of 1984.” 

After two years of that, the madness left her, and she spent her remaining days in Wisconsin. 

3 Picasso’s Kids Got Their Revenge in the End

Pablo Picasso had four children by three different women, only one of whom was his wife. The third of these mates was the painter Françoise Gilot, whose relationship with Picasso began when she was 21 and he was 61. 

Her time with Picasso ended her art career rather than jump-starting it because he used his connections to get her blacklisted. When she wrote a book about their relationship, titled Life with Picasso, Pablo tried unsuccessfully to shut it down. Then he decided to lash out by cutting all ties with his two children by her, Claude and Paloma.

So, Claude and Paloma got disowned. But the Gilot family made enough money from the book that the kids were able to fund a legal case to make the two of them Picasso’s heirs after all. Claude made use of ownership over the estate in a manner that wasn’t entirely respectful. It was his idea to lease Picasso’s signature to the Citroen company, letting them emblazon it on their line of minivans. 

2 A Tale of Two Clowns

If you can picture a clown dressed like a hobo, you’re probably thinking of Weary Willie, the clown played by Emmett Kelly. He did the character for years, starting in the 1920s and going right till the end of the 1970s when he was working on a new clown movie. 

Kelly had a son, also named Emmett Kelly. Emmett Junior, following a few dull years fighting in the Pacific Theater of World War II, figured it was time for real glory and decided to become a clown like his father. A clown exactly like his father — he copied the Weary Willie character, without any paternal authorization. This was back when clown copyright law wasn’t nearly as advanced as it today, and Emmett Senior’s only recourse was to abandon his son. 

We aren’t sure who you feel like rooting for here, but we need to point out that Emmett Junior might have taken the clown thing a little too far. His wife disapproved of him clowning around, and the two divorced. Then their son Paul got into a train accident and lost a leg. Emmett came home to see him, but after stopping by for just a short time, he took off, saying, “Willie’s got itchy feet.” 

He had four other children as well, one of whom he named Emmett. Emmett the third wisely avoided the clown life and became an accountant. Then he changed his mind and became a clown after all. 

1 The Real Christopher Robin Turned From A.A. Milne

Christopher Robin from Winnie the Pooh was based on a real boy named Christopher Robin, son to A.A. Milne. This wasn’t great for the real kid. He went to school with peers who knew him from adorable stories about a little boy who liked to pray, and this led to so much bullying that he needed boxing lessons to resist all the beatings.

He grew up resenting his father for making that character out of him, and he went on to write a book of his own complaining about this. He eventually was happy to relinquish all claims to the lucrative Winnie the Pooh royalties. 

So, there was some friction between him and his father. There was even more between him and his mother. His mother refused on her deathbed to see Christopher Robin again. Her beef with him had nothing to do with the books but resulted from how he had married his first cousin. Oh, she was fine with the incest. Her problem was that she and her brother were estranged, so Christopher Robin marrying this brother’s daughter was a betrayal. 

Forgive these old-timey people from all lusting after their close relatives. In those days, you didn’t get to meet many other people. 

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