We often romanticize the past as the “good old days,” but a closer look reveals it was far from perfect—take the notorious scandal that erupted around Tom Jones roughly fifty years ago. Today, Jones is celebrated as both a singing legend and a charismatic talent‑show judge, but in his heyday during the 1960s and ’70s, he was equally famous for his extravagant lifestyle and voracious appetites. Jones himself later confessed to sleeping with 250 women in a single year, earning him an enduring reputation as a sex symbol; among his conquests was Supremes singer Mary Wilson.
All the while, his wife Linda—his partner for 59 years until her death from lung cancer in 2016—remained at home under an unspoken “don’t ask” agreement. Biographer Sean Smith notes, “From the very beginning, he was not exactly Mr. Faithful,” but Linda appears to have tolerated Jones’s infidelities until one affair in particular nearly destroyed two lives.
That romance began in 1973 when 19‑year‑old Marjorie Wallace—already the first American to win the Miss World crown—met Jones in his dressing room at London’s Palladium. Captivated by her beauty and charm, Jones showered Marjorie with attention: he even bought matching bracelets for her and his wife, whose birthdays fell in the same month. Their fling continued during a television shoot in Barbados in 1974, culminating in a now‑infamous beach kiss that outraged the Miss World organization. Wallace was already engaged to American race car driver Peter Revson, and when news of her involvement with Jones broke, the pageant stripped her of her title.
The scandal took a devastating toll on Marjorie. Heartbroken when Jones ended the affair—fearing Linda would soon learn the truth—she overdosed on sleeping pills and was hospitalized on kidney dialysis to purge the drugs from her system. Wallace’s agent later reflected that the collapse “hit her on top of the head and knocked her down,” though Marjorie maintained it was not a suicide attempt, but a moment of despair. Jones, performing at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas at the time, heard of her plight on the radio and sent a bouquet of flowers to her Indianapolis hospital room.
Today, Marjorie Wallace, now 71, has long since retreated from the spotlight. Though she once appeared in campaigns for American Express and other major brands, she now leads a quiet life far from the scandals that once defined her. And Tom Jones? He continues to captivate audiences, his past indiscretions remembered as part of the complex legacy of one of pop music’s most enduring icons.
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