As it so happened, Stanwyck received the first of her four Academy Award nominations in 1938 for her movie Stella Dallas, marking her own rise to fame — and her recent ex-husband's downfall. Not ten years prior, Stanwyck had been a chorus girl just entering show business. She met and married Frank Fay, a famous vaudeville star, in 1928. They moved to Hollywood in 1929 so Fay could star in a movie, but Stanwyck's career benefitted more from the move than Fay's. Over the course of their six-year marriage, Fay proved himself to be a cruel alcoholic . They divorced in 1935; afterwards, Fay became more known for his notoriously racist beliefs and Nazi sympathies than for his influence on comedy. Fay died in 1961 in ignominy.