Who's The Daddy??

The three month debate over who was the father of deceased actress Anna Nicole Smith's son - the sweet tempered Larry Birkhead or the nefarious Howard K. Smith - was finally ended with a DNA test proving Birkhead the father. However, before DNA testing such questions often would remain unresolved, leading to lifelong speculation and amusement for gossips. Love and procreation is something that even the strictest patriarchal systems cannot always control.
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The other day I was watching Katherine Hepburn's 1936 historical drama "Mary Queen of Scotts" about the 16th century Scottish queen Mary I who was beheaded in 1587 for alleged treason by the "virgin" Queen Elizabeth I. In this historically accurate story, Mary's husband Lord Darnley (top portrait) accuses her Italian secretary David Rizzio (second portrait) of fathering her child James, the next king of Scotland. Darnley and other nobles, fed up with this allegation, as well as Rizzio's alleged interference in Scottish affairs, stab Rizzio to death in front of Mary in 1566.
Despite the killing of the mother and alleged father, Mary's son James VI of Scotland would go on to become James I, King of England after the death of Elizabeth. (See his rather revealing portrait left; others also suggest a swarthy parentage.) However, the rumors about Rizzio fathering him continued though his life. Jonathan Baldo writes: "At a personal level, too, James was pursued by his past: for instance, rumors that he was the son of his mother's Italian secretary David Rizzio, not of Lord Darnley, were revived by Presbyterian ministers living in exile in England following his attempts to overthrow Presbyterianism in Scotland."
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This factoid also is missing in the relevant biographies on Wikipedia (that ultimate source for all things factual - NOT!). Look at the portraits and you decide who's the daddy.
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Another interesting case is that of Alan Hale Sr. (top photo) - a comic fellow so often sidekick to Errol Flynn and other 1930s and '40s stars. He allegedly adopted his son Alan Hale Jr (bottom photo), most famously of the old "Gilligan's Island" television show. Hale Jr. looks amazingly like Hale Sr. I first learned of all this when Turner Classic Movies was showing a series of Hale Sr's films and noted the adoption and the uncanny resemblance between the two.
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Wikipedia also ignores this fact, and the only reference I found on line was a New York Times article reading: "One look at Alan Hale Jr. and no one could ever assume he was adopted; Hale Jr. so closely resembled his father, veteran character actor Alan Hale Sr., that at times it appeared that the older fellow had returned to the land of the living." More photos of both of them here.
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This would assumedly be a case where Hale fathered the child either through a romantic dalliance or an early surrogate mother effort and his wife consented to adopt. Or Hale might have adopted the illegitimate child of one of his near relatives. In those days such celebrity adoptions were far more private than today because it was more necessary to hide the "shame" of the man and woman.
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In our less shameless days when women are more likely to do as they please when it comes to child-bearing, tabloids can make millions off celebrities private lives. And so can the celebrities! And then there are the people who go on the Jerry Springer show to hear the results of their DNA tests and make sure the world knows who's the daddy!