What Happens When People Don’t Take Rubella Seriously

In a discussion of PBS’ upcoming Frontline episode “The Vaccine War“, a commenter mentions that her anti-vaccine sister-in-law was stupid and selfish enough to bring her daughter — who had rubella — to a Christmas party without telling anyone present that the daughter had the extremely contagious disease. Oh, and the commenter was pregnant at the time. Luckily, she got tested to see if she still had any immunity left from the childhood rubella vaccine she’d got thirty years previous, and the tests showed that the immunity was still there, but barely.

How lucky was she? Nearly seventy years ago, before there was a rubella vaccine, Gene Tierney was also pregnant, and also exposed to someone with rubella:

In 1942 [Tierney’s husband] Oleg Cassini became a United States citizen and served in the U.S. Army. Between routine film assignments for Fox, Tierney spent much time with Cassini at his Fort Riley, Kan. Army post, and later in Washington D.C. when he was stationed there. In 1943 Tierney gave birth to their child, Daria, who was born prematurely, severely retarded, and was eventually institutionalized. Much later, in a nightmarish twist of fate, Tierney learned that a female Marine had ignored quarantine orders to meet her idol during hostessing duties at the Hollywood Canteen. That was how the star contracted German measles late in her pregnancy – an innocent kiss from an admiring fan who wanted an autograph.

“Everyone told me I shouldn’t go,” the starstruck woman told Tierney years later at a tennis match, not realizing what she was responsible for, “but I just had to go.you were my favorite.”

Sadly, little Daria paid the price, and so did her mother. Many believe this cruel irony brought about a troubled emotional life later on. It also served to inspire a story (never authorized or sanctioned by Tierney) dramatized in 1980 as an Agatha Christie whodunit called “The Mirror Crack’d” starring Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, Geraldine Chaplin and Pierce Brosnan.

Or, as Tierney herself later said:

Fate played a terrible trick on me just before the birth of my first child, Daria. It was war time, 1943, and I went to the Hollywood Canteen to meet the soldiers and sailors. A female Marine who was there told me she had skipped quarantine that night just to come and meet me. A year later, I met the same girl again on the tennis courts at a friend’s home in Hollywood. She reminded me of the night she had broken quarantine.

“I got the German measles,” she said. “Did you get them, too?”

I just said, “Yes, I got the measles.” I didn’t tell her that, in the meantime, I had given birth to a retarded child because of it.

The story would inspire an Agatha Christie novel, The Mirror Crack’d.