Academy Award Acting Nominees
Chronologically based on first nomination
List activity
1.5K views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
979 people
- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Richard Barthelmess was born into a theatrical family in which his mother was an actress. While attending Trinity College in Connecticut, he began appearing in stage productions. While on vacation in 1916, a friend of his mother, actress Alla Nazimova, offered him a part in War Brides (1916), and Richard never returned to college. He appeared in a number of films before signing a contract with D.W. Griffith in 1919. Griffith put Richard into Broken Blossoms (1919) with Lillian Gish which made him a star. He had an uncanny ability to become the characters he played. The next year, he was again teamed with Lillian in Way Down East (1920). This film would become the standard for many movies in the future. Best remembered is the river scene in which Richard jumps over the ice floes in search of Lillian as she heads towards the falls. He formed Inspiration Pictures to make Tol'able David (1921) and gave one of his best performances as a lad who saves the U.S. mail from the outlaws. He remained popular throughout the twenties and became one of the biggest stars at First National Pictures. He received Academy Award nominations for The Patent Leather Kid (1927) and The Noose (1928). Sound was not a medium that would embrace Richard. He did make a number of talkies in the first few years of sound, but his acting technique was not well suited for sound and the parts began to get smaller. With his career over by the mid-30s, but he came back with a fine performance in Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings (1939). Richard joined the Navy Reserve in 1942, and when the war ended he retired to Long Island and lived off his real estate investments.- This knowing, plump-framed, strong-willed actress went on to play the gamut of emotions, from downtrodden, drunken ex-stars to self-controlled dowager empresses, in both silent pictures and early talkies. Grandly supporting the huge stars of her day (including Rudolph Valentino and Will Rogers), she actually started out as a celebrated singer from the vaudeville and Broadway stages; films came much later. While she wasn't as extensively captured on celluloid as, say, a Jane Darwell and is less remembered these days, Louise Dresser nevertheless created a daunting gallery of character matrons in her time and earned the respect of Hollywood.
The Hoosier-born and -bred Dresser was born Lulu Josephine Kerlin in Evansville, Indiana, on October 5, 1878, and raised there as the daughter of William and Ida Kerlin, he being a train engineer. She sang as a child and grew up as part of various choirs and shows in town. The family moved to Columbus, Ohio, when she reached her teens (he was killed in a railroad accident not long after their move). With a burning desire to perform professionally, the pretty 16-year-old ran away from home, abandoned her schooling and set her heart on making a career for herself in entertainment. She actively pursued singing roles that could benefit her contralto voice in stock, burlesque and vaudeville. She eventually changed her stage name to Louise Kerlin. During this time she became the lovely singing protégé of Tin Pan Alley composer Paul Dresser (né Paul Dreiser). Known at the time for such songs as "On the Banks of the Wabash" and "Far Away", it was Dresser, the brother of novelist Theodore Dreiser, who changed Louise's marquee name to Louise Dresser, and it was Louise who introduced Paul's biggest song hit to American ears, "My Gal Sal". Her affiliation with Paul helped earn her the billing "The Girl from the Wabash."
While on the vaudeville circuit Louise met and married Jack Norworth, a performing monologist, best known in later years for providing the lyrics to such old-time classics as "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "Shine On, Harvest Moon." She made her Broadway debut in "About Town" in 1906, which starred her husband, who also provided the songs. By the time Louise settled into the Broadway scene, however, the couple had divorced (after eight years). Noted for her charm and elegance, Louise specialized in light operettas and musical comedy, and year after year increased her marquee value with such New York musical shows as "The Girls of Gottenberg" (1908), "The Candy Shop" (1909), "A Matinee Idol" (1910), and "From Broadway to Paris" (1912).
Louise met Broadway singing star Jack Gardner (1873-1950) along the way. They married in 1908, a year after her divorce from Norworth. The couple went on to headline together in vaudeville but, interestingly, never managed to appear together on the Great White Way. Into the next decade she graced the New York stage with such singing vehicles as George M. Cohan's "Hello, Broadway!" (1914), and in two of Jerome Kern's: "Have a Heart" (1917) and "Rock-a-Bye, Baby" (1918).
Louise and husband Gardner decided to make a daring pitch for film work by moving to California in 1920. She debuted at age 44 with the film The Glory of Clementina (1922); her actor/singer husband, who appeared in the pictures Hollywood (1923) and Bluff (1924), actually found more success as a Fox Films executive. Forsaking her musical career, she now served as a reliable character actress in silents, making indelible impressions as the title character in The Goose Woman (1925) and as Catherine the Great in the Rudolph Valentino classic The Eagle (1925).
Louise, Janet Gaynor and Gloria Swanson were nominated for the very first "Best Actress" Oscar award, Louise for her strong, touching portrayal of a Hungarian immigrant in A Ship Comes In (1928) opposite Joseph Schildkraut. It was Gaynor, however, who earned the distinction of holding up the first trophy (for her work in three roles) while Swanson and Dresser received "Citations of Merit". Other famous ladies of history Louise addressed in films would include Calamity Jane in Caught (1931) and Empress Elizabeth in The Scarlet Empress (1934).
In the early 1930s the actress made a rare return to the stage with the play "A Plain Man and His Wife" in Pasadena, CA. Quite settled by this time in films, she became a familiar presence opposite homespun comedian Will Rogers in such unassuming Rogers vehicles as Lightnin' (1930), State Fair (1933), Doctor Bull (1933), David Harum (1934) and The County Chairman (1935). Rogers' tragic death in a plane accident ended a very warm and lucrative association she had with the beloved humorist. The devastated Dresser made only one film after that, the Claudette Colbert / Fred MacMurray drama Maid of Salem (1937), which recalled the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s.
Louise and husband Gardner retired to their home in Glendale, CA, where she primarily tended to her favorite pastime (gardening), along with taking part in numerous charitable affairs, notably for the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital. Her husband died in 1950 and she followed suit a decade and a half later following surgery for an intestinal blockage on April 24, 1965, in Woodland Hills, CA. She was interred at Forest Lawn Cemetary in Glendale. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Janet Gaynor was born Laura Gainor on October 6, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child, she & her parents moved to San Francisco, California, where she graduated from high school in 1923. She then moved to Los Angeles where she enrolled in a secretarial school. She got a job at a shoe store for the princely sum of $18 per week. However, since L.A. was the land of stars and studios, she wanted to try her hand at acting. She managed to land unbilled bit parts in several feature films and comedy shorts. She bided her time, believing "Good things come to those who wait." She didn't have to wait too long, either. In 1926, at the age of 20, she turned in a superb performance as Anna Burger in The Johnstown Flood (1926). The Hollywood moguls knew they had a top star on their hands and cast her in several other leading roles that year, including The Shamrock Handicap (1926), The Blue Eagle (1926), The Midnight Kiss (1926) and The Return of Peter Grimm (1926). The next year she turned in acclaimed performances in two classic films, 7th Heaven (1927) and Sunrise (1927). Based on the strength of those two films plus Street Angel (1928), Janet received the very first Academy Award for best actress. This was the first and only time an actress won the Oscar for multiple roles. When "talkies" replaced silent films, Janet was one of the few who made a successful transition, not only because of her great acting ability but for her charming voice as well. Without a doubt, Janet had already lived a true rags-to-riches story. Throughout the mid-1930s she was the top drawing star at theaters. She turned in grand performances in several otherwise undistinguished films.
Then came A Star Is Born (1937). She was very convincing as Vicki Lester (aka Esther Blodgett), struggling actress trying for the big time. Told by the receptionist at Central casting "You know what your chances are? One in a hundred thousand," Esther/Vicki replies, "But maybe--I'm that one." For her outstanding performance she was nominated for another Oscar, but lost to Luise Rainer's performance in The Good Earth (1937), her second in as many tries. After appearing in The Young in Heart (1938), Janet didn't appear in another film until 1957's Bernardine (1957). Her last performance was in a Broadway version of Harold and Maude. Although the play was a flop, Janet's performance salvaged it to any degree - she still had what it took to entertain the public. On September 14, 1984, Janet passed away from pneumonia in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 77.- Actor
- Producer
- Art Department
His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company. Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last Laugh) in 1924 and Variety (1925) (aka Variety) in 1925. In 1928, he became the first male leading actor to receive the academy award for The Last Command (1928) directed by Josef von Sternberg. In 1929, Stenberg directed him in his world famous movie The Blue Angel (1930) (aka The Blue Angel) co-starring the young Marlene Dietrich (her first role). Later on, he concentrated on theater and dedicated his acting skills to the Nazi regime and also took part in the realization of Ohm Krüger (1941) in 1941, an expensive anti-British film production. When the Second World War ended, the US government cleaned his image, and he converted to Catholicism. He played in a few more German movies, but his career never recaptured its brilliance.- Actress
- Producer
- Costume Designer
Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois. She was destined to be perhaps one of the biggest stars of the silent movie era. Her personality and antics in private definitely made her a favorite with America's movie-going public. Gloria certainly didn't intend on going into show business. After her formal education in the Chicago school system and elsewhere, she began work in a department store as a salesclerk. In 1915, at the age of 18, she decided to go to a Chicago movie studio with an aunt to see how motion pictures were made. She was plucked out of the crowd, because of her beauty, to be included as a bit player in the film The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket (1915). In her next film, she was an extra also, when she appeared in At the End of a Perfect Day (1915). After another uncredited role, Gloria got a more substantial role in Sweedie Goes to College (1915). In 1916, she first appeared with future husband Wallace Beery. Once married, the two pulled up stakes in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles to the film colony of Hollywood. Once out west, Gloria continued her torrid pace in films. She seemed to be in hit after hit in such films as The Pullman Bride (1917), Shifting Sands (1918), and Don't Change Your Husband (1919). By the time of the latter, Gloria had divorced Beery and was remarried, but it was not to be her last marriage, as she collected a total of six husbands. By the middle 1920s, she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. It has been said that Gloria made and spent over $8 million in the '20s alone. That, along with the six marriages she had, kept the fans spellbound with her escapades for over 60 years. They just couldn't get enough of her. Gloria was 30 when the sound revolution hit, and there was speculation as to whether she could adapt. She did. In 1928, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role of Sadie Thompson in the film of the same name but lost to Janet Gaynor for 3 different films. The following year, she again was nominated for the same award in The Trespasser (1929). This time, she lost out to Norma Shearer in The Divorcee (1930). By the 1930s, Gloria pared back her work with only four films during that time. She had taken a hiatus from film work after 1934's Music in the Air (1934) and would not be seen again until Father Takes a Wife (1941). That was to be it until 1950, when she starred in Sunset Boulevard (1950) as Norma Desmond opposite William Holden. She played a movie actress who was all but washed up. The movie was a box office smash and earned her a third Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, but she lost to Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday (1950). The film is considered one of the best in the history of film and, on June 16, 1998, was named one of the top 100 films of all time by the American Film Institute, placing 12th. After a few more films in the 1950s, Gloria more or less retired. Throughout the 1960s, she appeared mostly on television. Her last fling with the silver screen was Airport 1975 (1974), wherein she played herself. Gloria died on April 4, 1983, in New York City at the age of 84. There was never anyone like her, before or since.- George Bancroft was raised in Philadelphia and attended high school at Tomes Institute (Philadelphia). He won an impressive appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and graduated as a commissioned officer. He served in the Navy for the prescribed period of required service but no more. He decided to turn to show business, first as a theater manager. He worked in the old and fading minstrel show variety format into the 1920s but then decided to try his hand at acting. By 1923, he was good enough for Broadway and spent about a year there doing two plays. But he was already good enough for some early camera work for by 1921, so he had made his first appearance in the silent movie medium. Being a big man with dark features, he was a natural for heavies. And it seemed that early Westerns were an easy fit as well after his first four films. Through 1924 and into 1925, he did four, culminating with pay dirt in his appealing performance as rogue Jack Slade in the James Cruze Western The Pony Express (1925). With him was another up-and-coming character actor, Wallace Beery. Bancroft's acting made Paramount Pictures take a look at him as star material. His roles as tough guy took on more flesh into the later 1920s, especially in association with director Josef von Sternberg and his well-honed gangster films that started with Underworld (1927). Their work culminated with Sternberg's Thunderbolt (1929) for which Bancroft received an Oscar nomination. He was tops at the box office.
Bancroft's various on-screen personas as bigger-than-life strong man was not far from his off-screen character as Hollywood notability got to him. It was recalled that he became more difficult to deal with as his ego grew. At one point, he refused to obey a director's order that he fall down after being shot by the villain. Bancroft declared, "One bullet can't kill Bancroft!" Although he stayed busy through the 1930s, he was older and stouter -- the stuff of featured characters. And Bancroft was also getting a lot of competition from younger character actors. In the early '30s, his roles continued to typecast him as lead heavies, but increasingly, he was cast as second tier -- if with more variety -- in later roles. He was paper editor MacWade in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); a doctor in A Doctor's Diary (1937); a few sea captains along the way; and most memorably Marshal Curly Wilcox in the John Ford Western (his first with sound) Stagecoach (1939). Here he is particularly engaging tough lawman but with a big heart. Into the 1940s, he only did a handful of films. But he again had a rogue's spotlight with another name director -- Cecil B. DeMille -- in one of his always epic yarns. This time it was a Texas Ranger chasing a murderer over the Canadian border in North West Mounted Police (1940) with a stellar cast including Gary Cooper, everybody's favorite blond Madeleine Carroll, and Paulette Goddard as fleeing criminal, Jacques Corbeau's (Bancroft) daughter. By 1942, Bancroft had decided to move on, retiring with the intention of becoming a Southern California rancher. He quietly assumed this new role for a long run of 14 years before his passing. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Warner Baxter claimed to have an early pre-disposition toward show business: "I discovered a boy a block away who would eat worms and swallow flies for a penny. For one-third of the profits, I exhibited him in a tent." When he was age 9, his widowed mother moved to San Francisco where, following the earthquake of 1906, his family lived in a tent for two weeks "in mortal terror of the fire." By 1910 he was in vaudeville and from there went on to Broadway plays and movies. A matinée idol in the silents, he came to prominence as the Cisco Kid with In Old Arizona (1928), for which he won an Oscar. He went on to star with Myrna Loy in Penthouse (1933) and to what many consider his best role, that of the doctor who treated Abraham Lincoln's assassin, in The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936). That year his $284,000 income topped the industry. In 1943, after slipping into a string of B-pictures, he began his Dr. Ordway "Crime Doctor" series with Crime Doctor (1943). He had suffered a nervous breakdown, and these pictures were easy on him (studio sets for one month, two films a year). Following a lobotomy to relieve pains of arthritis, he died of pneumonia.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Beginning as a chorus girl at age 14, Ruth Chatterton became a Broadway star with "Daddy Long Legs" in 1914. She appeared in such shows as "Mary Rose" and "Come Out of the Kitchen" before moving to Hollywood in 1925. As her film career faded in the late 1930s, she returned to the stage in revivals, and radio and TV performances, including "Hamlet." In the 1950s, she began a successful writing career. She had no children.- Actress
- Soundtrack
A mining engineer's daughter, blond, blue-eyed Betty Compson began in show business playing the violin in a Salt Lake City vaudeville establishment for $15 a week. Following that, she went on tour, accompanied by her mother, with an act called 'The Vagabond Violinist'. Aged eighteen, she appeared on the Alexander Pantages Theatre Circuit, again doing her violin solo vaudeville routine, and was spotted there by comedy producer Al Christie. Christie quickly changed her stage name from Eleanor to Betty. For the next few years, she turned out a steady stream of one-reel and two-reel slapstick comedies, frequently paired with Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.
In 1919, Betty was signed by writer-director George Loane Tucker to co-star opposite Lon Chaney as Rose in The Miracle Man (1919). The film was a huge critical and financial success and established Betty Compson as a major star at Paramount (under contract from 1921 to 1925). One of the more highly paid performers of the silent screen, her weekly earnings exceeded $5000 a week at the peak of her career. She came to own a fleet of luxury limousines and was able to move from a bungalow in the hills overlooking Hollywood to an expensive mansion on Hollywood Boulevard. From 1921, Betty also owned her own production company. She went on to make several films in England between 1923 and 1924 for the director Graham Cutts.
During the late 1920's, Betty appeared in a variety of dramatic and comedic roles. She received good reviews acting opposite George Bancroft as a waterfront prostitute in The Docks of New York (1928), and was even nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of a carnival girl in The Barker (1928). She gave a touching performance in The Great Gabbo (1929), directed by her then husband James Cruze, as the assistant of a demented ventriloquist (Erich von Stroheim), with whom she is unhappily in love. That same year, she appeared in RKO's first sound film, Street Girl (1929), and was briefly under contract to that studio, cast in so-called 'women's pictures' such as The Lady Refuses (1931) and Three Who Loved (1931).
The stature of her roles began to diminish from the mid 1930s, though she continued to act in character parts until 1948.
Betty's personal fortunes also declined. This came about primarily as a result of her marital contract to the alcoholic Cruze, whom she had divorced in 1929. For several years, Cruze had failed to pay his income tax and Betty (linked financially to Cruze) ended up being sued by the federal government to the tune of $150,000. This forced her to sell her Hollywood villa, her cars and her antiques.
In later years, Betty Compson developed her own cosmetics label and ran a business in California producing personalized ashtrays for the hospitality industry.- Jeanne Eagels, one of the most intriguing stars of late silent films and the early talkies, was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890 in Kansas City, Missouri, to Edward and Julia Sullivan Eagles. Young Jean was part of an impoverished family of eight, with three brothers and two sisters. She likely stopped going to school when she was 11 years old.
As a girl, she decided to become an actress after appearing in a Shakespearen play. Of that performance, she said, "I played the grave-digger in 'Hamlet,' first, at the age of seven. They gave me the chance to play Shakespeare because nobody else of the tender age of seven would do so. They wouldn't say the rather amazing words...the other kiddies. I took it all quite seriously and said ALL the words without a quiver. Once I had begun I could not be stopped. I was ill when I was not on the stage. It seemed to me I couldn't breathe in any other atmosphere."
She followed up the experience up by playing bit parts in local theatrical productions. When she was 12 years old, she became a member of the Dubinsky Brothers' traveling stock company, appearing at first as a dancer, but eventually working her way into speaking roles. Eagels soon was playing leading roles in the stock company's repertory, including "Camille," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Later, a myth arose that Eagels' began her career as a circus performer. The 1957 biographical film "The Jeanne Eagels Story" erroneously depicts Eagels' beginning as a hootchie-kootchie dancer in a carnival. The Dubinsky Brothers did use a tent to put on their shows, but they did not present carnival acts but performed popular comedies, musicals, and dramas. The tent was only used during the spring and summer months, while during the colder months, the company performed in theaters and halls in the Midwest.
Jeanne Eagels married the scion of the Dubinsky family, Morris, the oldest of the brothers. She was likely in her teens, and probably had a baby by Morris. Stories about Eagels' past diverge, and in one account, the child was adopted by family friends, while in another, Eagels' baby boy died in infancy, triggering a nervous breakdown for the bereft mother. Eagels and Dubinky separated, likely due to his infidelity. Jeanne eventually left the Dubinksy company and joined another touring stock company, which eventually brought her to New York City.
Eagels decided to make herself over in New York as she fought her way up in the fiercely competitive theatrical world. A brunette, Eagels dyed her hair blonde and said that she was of Spanish and Irish lineage, and that her surname was originally "Aguilar," which loosely translates into English as "eagle." She changed the spelling of her name from "Eagles" to "Eagels," reputedly as she thought it looked better on a marquee. Eliminating her past, she presented herself as an ingÃffÃ'©nue rather than as a divorced woman and mother of a dead infant. She also adopted an English accent as David Belasco, the legendary theatrical impresario, had commented that she spoke like an "earl's daughter."
She began her climb up the greasy pole of Broadway stardom by appearing as a chorus girl. She even served a stint as a Ziegfield girl, but Eagels was determined to establish herself as a dramatic roles, wining bit parts in the plays "Jumping Jupiter" and "The Mind the Paint Girl."
Eagels took a trip to Paris, where she likely studied acting with Beverly Sitgreaves, an expatriate American actress who had appeared with Sarah Bernhardt, Eagels' idol. After Jeanne Eagels' death, there arose a myth that she was a "raw," untrained talent who just happened to have the spark of genius on stage. This is demonstrably false as she had a thorough grounding in technique in her six-year apprenticeship in regional stock companies. She also studied acting with Sitgreaves and with acting coaches in New York. The myth likely is rooted in the biography of Eagels' stage co-star Leslie Howard that was written by his children. Howard was of the opinion that Eagels was untrained, but that likely was rooted in English snobbery vis-ÃffÃ'Â -vis America actors as he had the same opinion of the great Bette Davis. What Howard likely meant that the emotionally erratic Eagels was undisciplined rather than untrained. George Arliss, considered one of the great stage actors at the time he appeared on Broadway with Eagels, would hardly have chosen her to appear in three of his productions if she were not trained and up to giving a fine performance. Arliss was full of praise for Eagels.
In Paris, Eagels attracted the attention of Julian Eltinge, the famous Broadway female impersonator, though they were not introduced. Ironically, when he returned to New York, Eltinge found out that Eagels was to be his co-star in what turned out to be a long tour of the play "The Crinoline Girl." The two became good friends.
Eagels won the role of a prostitute who becomes a faith-healer in the touring company of the play "Outcast" by modeling herself after the play's star, Elsie Ferguson, for her audition. She won the part, and also won great reviews during the tour's swing through the South. When the touring company returned to New York for an off-Broadway engagement, some critics were there to see if Eagels actually did live up to the road reviews of her "Outcast" performance. She did, and the critics were suitably impressed.
The Thanhouser Film Co. cast Eagles in the film of "Outcast" in 1916, which was entitled The World and the Woman (1916) upon its release. Eagels was working during the daytime in films and at night on the stage. Suffering from fatigue and insomnia, she sought treatment and likely became hooked on drugs during this period. With the aid of physician-prescribed dope, Jeanne Eagels continued her hectic dual-career of making movies during the day while acting on stage at night. The routine continued until 1920. Suffering from chronic sinusitis and other maladies, Eagels descended the slippery slope of self-medicating her ills, an unfortunate situation exacerbated by her fondness for drink.
Eagels received great reviews when she starred with George Arliss in the Broadway hit "The Professor's Love Story" in 1917. She followed up their joint triumph with two more co-starring ventures with Arliss, "Disraeli" and the even-more-popular play "Hamilton." Of his co-star, Arliss said that each of the three distinctly different parts she acted were "played with unerring judgment and artistry."
In 1918, she appeared in Belasco's production of "Daddies," an original play about the plight of war orphans starring George Abbott. She quit the hit show either due to exhaustion or because, as rumor had it, she was fed up with Belasco's sexual harassment, though she praised him as a producer.
"Often in the theater there is a feeling of commercialism in every detail; it may not touch one directly, but it is there, and the consciousness that the financial success of the play is perhaps of first importance is decidedly unpleasant. Now, Mr. Belasco puts acting, like every other element of a production, upon an artistic basis. He makes you feel that a thing is important artistically or not at all. Money seems never to be a consideration, yet the making of it follows as a result of making the production as nearly perfect as possible.... That point of view on the producer's part means a great deal to the actor; it leaves him free to do so much, and is an incentive to work toward a faithful portrayal of character. To me everything about Mr. Belasco's theater points toward that one ideal of his -- perfection."
She next appeared in the comedy "A Young Man's Fancy" (1919), followed up by "The Wonderful Thing" (1920). By the time she appeared in the latter, a modest success that played for 120 performances, she had become a true Broadway diva, having to wait for the applause to die down after her entrance before she could deliver her lines. She had her own distinctive ideas on how to give a fresh impression to the audience for each performance:
"Audiences mean as much to an actress as the acoustics of a concert hall mean to a musician. The musician must vary his playing according to his acoustics--according to the sort of room in which his concert is given.... A sort of sixth sense enables me to discern the character of an audience within a few minutes after I have begun to play, and it is only the people for whom I am making this lovable girl live at that one performance that matter. Former audiences are swept from my thought as though they had never been. As far as the audience of the moment is concerned others have never been. What I have done, or have not done, for them doesn't matter to the folk who have come to see the play to-night. I am so very conscious of this that I am able to play to them as though I were creating the part for the first time... I do wrong in speaking of 'playing to an audience,' however. A true artist never 'plays to the audience.' Rather he or she keeps his or her own vision true, and the creation evolves itself."
Her next Broadway appearance, "In the Night Watch" (1921), was another modest success, but she soon was to appear in the play that would make her lasting reputation. The opportunity came her way when another actress turned down the role of the prostitute Sadie Thompson in the theatrical adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's short story "Rain."
On the road in Philidelphia, the play received discouraging reviews, necessitating a rewrite of the second act. By the time the rewritten "Rain" debuted on Broadway on November 7, 1922, at Maxine Elliott's Theatre, all the kinks had been worked out, and the play was a smash, running for 256 performances. When the company returned to Broadway after the road show, re-opening at the Gaiety Theatre on September 1, 1924, "Rain" starring Jeanne Eagels ran for another 648 performances, transferring to the New Park Theatre on December 15, 1924. "Rain" elevated Jeanne Eagels into the pantheon of American theater greats.
John D. Williams, the director of "Rain" said, "In my score of years in the theater Miss Eagels was one of the two or three highest types of interpretive acting intelligences I have met. To work with her on a play was once more to feel one's self in the theater when it was in its finest estate; when a play was not a 'show,' nor even a performance, but a work, which because it had something to say that might clarify life, was a living thing and simply demanded to be heard. It was then that somebody, known or unknown, wrote something that deserved fanatically true fulfillment--and somebody else of magic touch acted it.... Miss Eagels had that touch of magic in character interpretation- the quick exchange of ideas as to the sense of the scene. And then would come the superbly tragic entrance, for example, of Sadie Thompson in the last act of 'Rain,' with its flawless blend of bitter disillusionment, irony, revenge, terror."
Eagels' great performance was acknowledged as responsible for the great success of the play, and although Gloria Swanson had some success playing Sadie in the silent movie version of the play in 1928, Joan Crawford did less well in the role in the 1931 talkie version. Both Swanson and particularly Crawford were upstaged by their leading men, Lionel Barrymore and Walter Huston, respectively. Rita Hayworth's version in 1953, opposite José Ferrer, is barely remembered. Sadie Thompson belonged to Jeanne Eagels, and the touring company of "Rain" toured for four years.
In 1917, Eagels had said, "I am timid and afraid of men and far too busy to become well acquainted with them. My work fills my life, and I should not care to fall in love or marry before I am very, very old -- about thirty-five -- because a woman gives too much of herself when she loves, and that would interfere with her career."
By the time Eagels married her second husband, the stockbroker Edward H. Coy, in 1925 at the age of 35, she had developed a reputation as a temperamental actress who was a hard drinker. Coy had achieved Ivy League gridiron immortality as a 6-foot, 195-pound fullback at Yale, where he was named an All-American in 1908 and 1909 but had turned to the sauce for solace now that the cheers had faded. The incompatibility between the two did nothing to ameliorate her problems with her mood swings or with drink.
After "Rain," she took time off, either turning down offers such as the role of Roxie Hart in "Chicago" (1926) or quitting plays she did sign up for during rehearsals. Finally, she made her Broadway return in the George Cukor-directed light comedy "Her Cardboard Lover" (1926) opposite Leslie Howard. Broadway critics and audiences had grown accustomed to Eagels in more substantial fare, and on opening night, it was Leslie Howard whom the audience cheered, calling for Howard to take curtain calls. Controversially, Eagels took Howard's curtain calls, thanking the audience "on behalf of my Cardboard Lover." The critics, too, wound up praising Howard rather than Eagels.
Eagels fondness for medicating herself and for drink caused problems during the run of the show. Her on-stage behavior could be egregious, as when she stepped out of character and, thirty for the sauce, asked Howard's character for a drink of "water." This caused the stage manager more than once to bring down the curtain during a performance, and Howard left the stage in a huff at one point.
About bad acting, Eagels blamed it on "...[N]ot being a good listener. So few people are. For instance, when you and I are talking here and I say 'no' very deeply and quietly, your reply will be 'yes' with something of a rising inflection, a lighter modulation. You have listened to me and have made a correct tonal reply. On the stage, most of the actors and actresses know their cue words and take their cues, but they haven't listened to the speech preceding their own. The result is a correct enough answer as to word, but not as to tone. There is not tonal intelligence in the reply. Good listeners...so rare."
John D. Williams, her director in "Rain," attributed her greatness on the stage to her great ability to listen while on stage.
"First off, she knew to perfection, and adhered to as to a religion, the art of listening in acting. At every performance, whether the first, or the hundredth, the speeches of the character addressing her were not merely heard but listened to. Hence there was always thought and belief and conviction behind every speech and scene of her own-- the essence of theater illusion."
The drink and drugs apparently were eroding that greatness. However, despite her on-stage antics, "Her Cardboard Lover" was another modest success, playing for 152 performances. After shooting the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Man, Woman and Sin (1927) with John Gilbert, she toured with the play in the large cities.
Eagels' behavior during the filming of Man, Woman and Sin (1927) was atrocious. Gilbert, whom she reportedly had an affair with, said Eagels was the most temperamental actress he had ever worked with. She would appear late at the studio, and once, she disappeared for several days. The Hollywood trade press credited Eagels disappearance to a drink binge, and at one point, she took off on a two-week vacation to Santa Barbara without informing her director, Monta Bell. Bell asked studio management to terminate Eagels' contract, which they did. Fortunately, there was enough footage so Bell could salvage the film without re-shooting.
John Gilbert said of Eagels, "She seemed to hate the movies for a popularity they could not give her....[The] blind, unreasoning adulation of the movie fans was a type of popularity she spurned. Fundamentally, Jeanne was much superior to us. Movie actors are crazy to be worshiped. Jeanne Eagels wanted to be understood and appreciated."
When the film was released, Eagels' performance received mixed reviews, but the picture was a failure primarily due to the poor reviews garnered by Gilbert. Critics rejected the great lover playing a naive mama's boy in this film. Gilbert's career was salvaged shortly thereafter by the release of his second film with Great Garbo, Love (1927), which was a smash hit at the box office.
When Eagels began touring the East Coast in "Her Cardboard Lover," the Boston engagement was cut in half to one week as Eagels reportedly was ill. After the play moved to Chicago with a revivified Eagels, she divorced Coy in 1928, citing physically abuse and accusing him of breaking her jaw. Eagels claimed that Coy had threatened to wreck her budding movie career by ruining her face. Coy, a heavy boozer like his soon-to-be ex-wife, pleaded no contest and the divorce was granted.
The Mid-Western tour of "Her Cardboard Lover" moved on to Milwaukee, but Eagels was a no-show at both the Milwaukee and the subsequent St. Louis performances. She claimed that she was suffering from ptomaine poisoning, but eye-witness accounts placed her in Chicago on a long boozing binge when she was supposed to have been in Milwaukee. Her indefensible and unprofessional behavior brought her an 18-month suspension from Actor's Equity, which banned her from performing on stage with any other Equity actor for the length of the suspension. The ban essentially ended her stage career in New York and the rest of the country, although it could not stop her from appearing by herself on stage in non-Equity venues. Eagels hit the vaudeville circuit, performing scenes from "Rain." She also appeared in movies as producers were desperate for trained stage people with the advent of sound, and she eventually made more money from the film industry and vaudeville than she ever had from the "legitimate" stage.
Ironically, it was Monta Bell, now working at Paramount's Astoria Studios in New York, who hired Jeanne Eagels for her film comeback. In 1929, Bell announced that even though Equity didn't want Eagels, he wanted her, for she had been the consummate professional during the making of Man, Woman and Sin (1927). The man who had urged the MGM brass to fire her now told the press that he had actually urged MGM to sign Eagels to long-term contract for more pictures.
The first movie Eagels made for Paramount was the Monta Bell-produced The Letter (1929), which reunited Eagels with W. Somerset Maugham. Katharine Cornell had had a Broadway hit with Maugham's play as the murderous adulteress, and Eagels delivered an electrifying, legendary performance in the role on film. After Eagels received rave reviews for her The Letter (1929), Paramount took Bell's advice and signed her to a contract for two more pictures, Jealousy (1929) and The Laughing Lady (1929).
She began shooting "Jealousy" (1929) with the English actor Anthony Bushnell, whom she had hand-picked to be her leading man, but during filming it was apparent that Bushnell's voice was not registering well on the sound equipment. Bushnell was replaced by the up-and-coming star Fredric March, who later said Eagels was "great" to work with, but that the movie they made together was a "stinker." There were rumors that Eagels had suffered a nervous breakdown while filming "Jealousy", but Paramount denied there had been any trouble with their new diva. However, Eagels asked to be let out of her contract for "The Laughing Lady" on the grounds that she was either ill or because she didn't like the script, and the studio obliged, replacing her with Ruth Chatterton.
About her management of her personal affairs, Eagels said, "I cannot bear to transact any of my own business or make any of my own professional arrangements. I have an aversion to it I cannot overcome. I can't read the papers, either. Mention of my personal life, even tho I expect it, acts terribly on my nerves. I suppose I'm an odd person."
It was reported that now that the Actors Equity ban was due to expire in the fall of 1929, Eagels was preparing to return to Broadway. In September, Eagles underwent successful surgery to treat ulcers on her eyes, a condition was caused by her sinusitis. Two weeks after surgery, on the night of October 3, 1929, as Eagels was preparing for a night out on the town, she fell ill and was taken to a private 5th Avenue hospital. In the hospital waiting room, she suffered a convulsion and died.
Three autopsies were conducted over the following three months and reached three different conclusions as to the cause of her death, which was variously attributed as an overdose of alcohol, the tranquilizer chloral hydrate, and heroin in the successive autopsy reports. All three substances likely were in her system when she died, and it was suggested that the unconscious Eagels had received a sedative from the first doctor to treat her, and that subsequently a second doctor, not knowing she had already been sedated, had unknowingly given the unconscious actress a second shot, thus causing the overdose that killed her.
When her estate went through probate, it was worth an estimated $52,000 (approximately $562,000 in 2005 dollars) after her debts and funeral costs were deducted. Dying intestate, the estate went to her mother. A wake was held at Campbell's funeral home in New York City, the same establishment that had handled Rudolph Valentino's funeral. Reportedly, her movie "Jealousy" was playing across the street from the funeral home as she lay in her casket, finally at peace. Her body was sent to Kansas City, where a Catholic mass and requiem was held, and she was laid to rest with her father and a brother.
Eagels was posthumously nominated for a 1929 Best Actress Academy Award for her role in "The Letter," the first actor to be so honored. She lost out to superstar Mary Pickford, one of the founders of the Academy, who took the Oscar home to Pickfair for her performance in "Coquette," her first talkie.
Jeanne Eagels' life was limned in the 1957 film _Jeanne Eagels_, which starred Kim Novak. This film is fictionalized biography that whitewashed the truth about Eagels' life. In recent years, there have been rumors that Eagels enjoyed same-sex relationships with other women, but the rumors remain unsubstantiated. In her lifetime, she was romantically linked to many famous men, including the conductor Arthur Fiedler, the gambler "Nick the Greek" Dandalos, and the theater critic Ward Morehouse. She was pursued by producer David Belasco, theater owner Lee Shubert, and the Prince of Wales, the future Duke of Windsor.
About actors, Jeanne Eagels was quoted as saying, "We are glorious, unearthly people, set above all others because of our genius, our capacity to sway others, to make them laugh and cry, or make them live a romance we but play." In the Academy Award-winning All About Eve (1950), writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz has the critic Addison DeWitt tell the great fictional diva Margo Channing (played by Leslie Howard's other great "untrained" co-star, Bette Davis), "Margo, as you know, I have lived in the theater as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world, no other life -- and once in a great while I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray. You were one. Jeanne Eagels another."
The actor playwright Noël Coward said, "Of all the actresses I have ever seen, there was never one quite like Jeanne Eagels," while actress-playwright-Academy Award-nominated-screenwriter Ruth Gordon, a friend of Eagels, said of her, "Jeanne Eagels was the most beautiful person I ever saw and if you ever saw her, she was the most beautiful person YOU ever saw."
Kathleen Kennedy, her co-star in "Rain," said, "I sincerely doubt if Jeanne Eagels really knew, in spite of her pretensions, that she was a great actress. She was. Many times backstage I'd be waiting for my entrance cue and suddenly Jeanne would start to build a scene, and [we] would look up from our books at once. Some damn thing- some power, something- would take hold of your heart, you senses, as you listened to her, and you'd thrill to the sound of her."
John D. Williams, the director of "Rain," called her an acting genius. "Acting genius--that is, the power of enhancing a written character to a plane that neither author nor director can lay claim to -- Miss Eagels had at her beck and call, whether in tragedy or in comedy." - Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Corinne Griffith was a popular star of the silent movies. She started her film career at Vitagraph in 1916 and later moved to First National, where she became one of that studio's biggest stars. At the height of her popularity she was known as the "Orchid Lady of the Screen." Black Oxen (1923) was one of her most popular films. In 1925 she made Déclassé (1925), which featured a young extra named Clark Gable.
Corinne received an Academy Award nomination for her work in The Divine Lady (1928), but sound did not embrace her in the same way that the silent films had. Music was a popular device used in many early sound movies, but she quickly proved that she was not cut out to be a singer, and the fact that her acting style remained rooted in the wooden pre-sound days didn't help matters. Her last Hollywood film was released in 1930. After appearing in an English film in 1932, she retired. She appeared in one final film, Paradise Alley (1962), a low-budget Hugo Haas potboiler.- Actress
- Script and Continuity Department
- Writer
Bessie Love was born in Texas. Her cowboy father moved the family to Hollywood, where he became a chiropractor. As the family needed money, Bessie's mother sent her to Biograph Studios, hoping she would become an actress. D.W. Griffith saw she was pretty and had some acting talent, and put her in several of his films, also giving her a small part in Intolerance (1916). Bessie became popular with audiences and worked with Douglas Fairbanks in Reggie Mixes In (1916) and William S. Hart in The Aryan (1916). She then moved to Vitagraph and starred in a number of comedy-dramas. In the 1920s she began to act in more mature roles, such as Those Who Dance (1924), and also began working on the stage. She performed the first screen "Charleston" dance in The King on Main Street (1925), and gave one of her best performances in Dress Parade (1927). When sound movies came into vogue, she made a number of them and received an Academy Award nomination for The Broadway Melody (1929). By 1931, however, her career was over. She moved to England in 1935 and entertained the troops during World War II. By the 1950s she started playing small roles in movies such as No Highway in the Sky (1951). She played in a handful of low-budget films from the 1950s through the 1970s. In the 1980s she appeared in the big-budget Ragtime (1981) which starred James Cagney, and later that year in Reds (1981) which starred Warren Beatty.- Actor
- Soundtrack
The Academy Award-nominated film actor Chester Morris, who will forever be associated with the character Boston Blackie, was born John Chester Brooks Morris on February 16 1901 in New York City, the son of actor William Morris and comedienne Etta Hawkins.
Chester Morris made his Broadway debut as a teenager in 1918 in the play "The Copperhead," in support of the great Lionel Barrymore, who coincidentally would play Boston Blackie in a silent picture (The Face in the Fog (1922)) a generation before Morris would make that role his own. A year earlier, Chester Morris had made his movie debut in Van Dyke Brooke's An Amateur Orphan (1917), but he didn't really become a movie actor until the sound era. Instead, Morris made his acting bones on the boards, appearing on Broadway in the plays "Thunder" and "The Mountain Man" in 1919. He returned to the Great White Way in 1922 in the comedy "The Exciters" following it up with the comedy-drama "Extra" in 1923. Now established, Chester Morris began billing himself as "the youngest leading man in the country."
He appeared without credit in 'Cecil B. DeMille's The Road to Yesterday (1925), though his dark, good-looks and chiseled jaw made him a natural for movie stardom, it wasn't until the transition of the movies from silent pictures to the talkies that he became a movie actor. He was one of the first actors to be nominated for an Academy Award when in 1930 (the second year of the as-yet non-nicknamed Oscars) he was recognized with a nod as Best Actor for Alibi (1929), his first talking picture. But it was his appearance in The Big House (1930), the film for which he is best known (other than his portrayal of Boston Blackie in the eponymous detective series of the 1940s) that he broke through to stardom.
From 1930 through the middle of the decade, he was a star with good roles in first-rate pictures, usually assaying a tough guy. However, his star dimmed and by the end of the decade he was appearing in B-pictures, but beginning in 1941, the Boston Blackie series at Columbia Pictures revived his career. In all, he appeared in 14 pictures as the detective. He later segued to TV work in the 1950s and '60s, appearing in the occasional film such as his last, The Great White Hope (1970), which meant he had been a working movie actor for seven decades.
Although he was afflicted with cancer, it is unclear whether he took his own life as he was apparently in good spirits and left no note September 11, 1970.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Paul Muni was born Sept. 22, 1895, in Lemberg, Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Salli and Phillip Weisenfreund, who were both professionals. His family was Jewish, and spoke Yiddish. Paul was educated in New York and Cleveland public schools. He was described as 5 feet 10 inches, with black hair and eyes, 165 pounds. He joined the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York (1908) for 4 years, and then moved to other Yiddish theaters until 1926, when he "went into an American play" called "We Americans", his first English-language role. In 1927-28, he appeared in the plays "Four Walls", "This One Man", "Counsellor-at-Law", and others. He began with Fox in 1928. He would later alternate between Broadway and Hollywood for his roles, becoming one of the more distinguished actors in either venue. Failing eyesight and otherwise poor health forced him into retirement after his appearance in The Last Angry Man (1959).- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Elsie Charlotte (Hennessy) and John Charles Smith. She was of English and Irish descent. Pickford began in the theater at age seven. Then known as "Baby Gladys Smith", she toured with her family in a number of theater companies. At some point, at her devout maternal grandmother's insistence, when young Gladys was seriously ill with diphtheria, she received a Catholic baptism and her middle name was changed to "Marie".
In 1907, she adopted a family name Pickford and joined the David Belasco troupe, appearing in the long-running The Warrens of Virginia". She began in films in 1909 with the 'American Mutoscope & Biograph [us]', working with director D.W. Griffith.
For a short time in 1911, to earn more money, she joined the IMP Film Co. under Carl Laemmle. She returned to Biograph in 1912, then, in 1913 joined the Famous Players Film Company under Adolph Zukor. She then joined First National Exhibitor's Circuit in 1918. In 1919, she co-founded United Artists with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and then-future husband, Douglas Fairbanks.- Actor
- Writer
By the time that he was 20, Lewis Stone had turned prematurely grey. He enlisted to fight in the Spanish American War and when he returned, he returned to be a writer. This turned to acting and he began to appear in films during the middle teens. His career was again interrupted by war as he served in the cavalry during World War I. After the war, he returned to films and quickly graduated to lead roles. With his distinguished look and grey hair, he was able to play the roles of well mannered romantic men. In 1921, Lewis starred in Don't Neglect Your Wife (1921). In the next year, he starred with Alice Terry, who played the heroine, and Ramon Novarro in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and Scaramouche (1923). In 1924, Metro merged into the new MGM where Lewis remained for the rest of his career. He was busy over the next few years and garnered an Academy Award nomination for The Patriot (1928). In 1928, he appeared in the first of a series of pictures with Greta Garbo. In A Woman of Affairs (1928) he played the older doctor, a friend of the family. But two years later in Romance (1930), he played her lover.
Lewis made the transition from silent to sound with The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929), which starred Norma Shearer. Sound did not cause Lewis any problems and he continued to be busy with his roles as the distinguished lead. The Big House (1930) was highly successful for MGM and he appeared in other popular movies such as The Phantom of Paris (1931) with John Gilbert and Red-Headed Woman (1932) with Jean Harlow. He appeared with Garbo in Inspiration (1931), Mata Hari (1931), Grand Hotel (1932) and Queen Christina (1933). In the late 30s he took on a role for which he was long remembered - the role of Judge James Hardy who had a son named Andy. Judge Hardy was the father audiences wanted in the late 30s early 40s. He was kind, intellectual, fair and as patient as he had to be with Andy, played by Mickey Rooney. This series occupied most of his screen time until it ended and he did slow down during the late 40s. In the 50s he continued to appear in a number of pictures including remakes of the two he had made 30 years before with Alice Terry. He suffered a heart attack and died in 1953 after appearing in over 200 films.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
One of the oldest actors on the screen in the 1920s and 1930s, George Arliss starred on the London stage from an early age. He came to the United States and starred in several films, but it was his role as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli (1929) that brought him his greatest success.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
In 1902, 16-year-old Wallace Beery joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant to the elephant trainer. He left two years later after a leopard clawed his arm. Beery next went to New York, where he found work in musical variety shows. He became a leading man in musicals and appeared on Broadway and in traveling stock companies. In 1913 he headed for Hollywood, where he would get his start as the hulking Swedish maid in the Sweedie comedy series for Essanay. In 1915 he would work with young ingénue Gloria Swanson in Sweedie Goes to College (1915). A year later they would marry and be wildly unhappy together. The marriage dissolved when Beery could not control his drinking and Gloria got tired of his abuse. Beery finished with the Sweedie series and worked as the heavy in a number of films. Starting with Patria (1917), he would play the beastly Hun in a number of films. In the 1920s he would be seen in a number of adventures, including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Sea Hawk (1924) and The Pony Express (1925). He would also play the part of Poole in So Big (1924), which was based on the best-selling book of the same name by Edna Ferber. Paramount began to move Beery back into comedies with Behind the Front (1926). When sound came, Beery was one of the victims of the wholesale studio purge. He had a voice that would record well, but his speech was slow and his tone was a deep, folksy, down home-type. While not the handsome hero image, MGM executive Irving Thalberg saw something in Beery and hired him for the studio. Thalberg cast Beery in The Big House (1930), which was a big hit and got Beery an Academy Award nomination. However, Beery would become almost a household word with the release of the sentimental Min and Bill (1930), which would be one of 1930's top money makers. The next year Beery would win the Oscar for Best Actor in The Champ (1931). He would be forever remembered as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934) (who says never work with kids?). Beery became one of the top ten stars in Hollywood, as he was cast as the tough, dim-witted, easy-going type (which, in real life, he was anything but). In Flesh (1932) he would be the dim-witted wrestler who did not figure that his wife was unfaithful. In Dinner at Eight (1933) he played a businessman trying to get into society while having trouble with his wife, link=nm0001318]. After Marie Dressler died in 1934, he would not find another partner in the same vein as his early talkies until he teamed with Marjorie Main in the 1940s. He would appear opposite her in such films as Wyoming (1940) and Barnacle Bill (1941). By that time his career was slowing as he was getting up in age. He continued to work, appearing in only one or two pictures a year, until he died from a heart attack in 1949.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Nancy Carroll was born Ann Veronica Lahiff on November 19, 1903 in New York City. Nancy was the youngest of seven children. At the age of sixteen she dropped out of high school to work as a stenographer. Then she began performing in local talent competitions. She was a gifted dancer and appeared in several Broadway musicals. In 1925 she married writer Jack Kirkland and had a daughter named Patricia. Nancy made her film debut in the 1927 comedy Ladies Must Dress and was offered a contract with Paramount. She starred in a string of successful talkies including The Shopworn Angel, Laughter, and Close Harmony. With her red hair and big smile she quickly became one of Hollywood's most popular actresses. Her marriage to Jack ended in 1930. That same year she was nominated for Academy Award for her role in Devil's Holiday. After a brief affair with Joseph P. Kennedy she married Francis Bolton Mallory, a Life magazine editor in 1931. By this time she was receiving more fan mail than any other star! Unfortunately she had developed a reputation for being difficult and often complained about the parts she was given.
Paramount released her from her contract in 1933. Nancy continued to make movies but she was no longer an A-list star. She costarred with George Murphy in the dramas Jealousy and After The Dance. In 1935 she divorced her husband after four years of marriage. Unhappy with the way her career was going she decided to quit making movies. Her final film was the 1938 comedy There Goes My Heart. She returned to the stage starring in the Broadway show For Heaven's Sake Mother. During the 1950s she made guest appearances on numerous television shows. She also costarred with her daughter, Patricia Kirkland, in the series The Egg And I. Nancy married international businessman C.H. "Jappe" Groen in 1953. The couple split their time between Mexico and Indonesia. At the age of fifty-nine Nancy was cast in the play Never Too Late. It was a success and she toured with the show for two years. On the evening August 6, 1965 she didn't show up for her performance. Tragically she was found dead in her New York apartment. Nancy had died of an aneurysm at the age of sixty-one. She was buried with her parents at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Maurice Chevalier's first working job was as an acrobat, until a serious accident ended that career. He turned his talents to singing and acting, and made several short films in France. During World War I he enlisted in the French army. He was wounded in battle, captured and placed in a POW camp by the Germans. During his captivity he learned English from fellow prisoners. After the war he returned to the film business, and when "talkies" came into existence, Chevalier traveled to the US to break into Hollywood. In 1929 he was paired with operatic singer/actress Jeanette MacDonald to make The Love Parade (1929). Although Chevalier was attracted to the beautiful MacDonald and made several passes at her, she rejected him firmly, as she had designs on actor Gene Raymond, who she eventually married. He did not take rejection lightly, being a somewhat vain man who considered himself quite a catch, and derided MacDonald as a "prude". She, in turn, called him "the quickest derrière pincher in Hollywood". They made three more pictures together, the most successful being Love Me Tonight (1932). In the late 1930s he returned to Europe, making several films in France and England. World War II interrupted his career and he was dogged by accusations of collaboration with the Nazi authorities occupying France, but he was later vindicated. In the 1950s he returned to Hollywood, older and gray-headed. He made Gigi (1958), from which he took his signature songs, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" and "I Remember it Well". He also received a special Oscar that year. In the 1960s he made a few more films, and in 1970 he sang the title song for Walt Disney's The Aristocats (1970). This marked his last contribution to the film industry.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
British leading man of primarily American films, one of the great stars of the Golden Age. Raised in Ealing, the son of a successful silk merchant, he attended boarding school in Sussex, where he discovered amateur theatre. He intended to attend Cambridge and become an engineer, but his father's death cost him the financial support necessary. He joined the London Scottish Regionals and at the outbreak of World War I was sent to France. Seriously wounded at the battle of Messines--he was gassed--he was invalided out of service scarcely two months after shipping out for France. Upon his recovery he tried to enter the consular service, but a chance encounter got him a small role in a London play. He dropped other plans and concentrated on the theatre, and was rewarded with a succession of increasingly prominent parts. He made extra money appearing in a few minor films, and in 1920 set out for New York in hopes of finding greater fortune there than in war-depressed England. After two years of impoverishment he was cast in a Broadway hit, "La Tendresse". Director Henry King spotted him in the show and cast him as Lillian Gish's leading man in The White Sister (1923). His success in the film led to a contract with Samuel Goldwyn, and his career as a Hollywood leading man was underway. He became a vastly popular star of silent films, in romances as well as adventure films. The coming of sound made his extraordinarily beautiful speaking voice even more important to the film industry. He played sophisticated, thoughtful characters of integrity with enormous aplomb, and swashbuckled expertly when called to do so in films like The Prisoner of Zenda (1937). A decade later he received an Academy Award for his splendid portrayal of a tormented actor in A Double Life (1947). Much of his later career was devoted to "The Halls of Ivy", a radio show that later was transferred to television The Halls of Ivy (1954). He continued to work until nearly the end of his life, which came in 1958 after a brief lung illness. He was survived by his second wife, actress Benita Hume, and their daughter Juliet Benita Colman.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and go to work in a department store. The store used her as a model in its newspaper ads. She had no film aspirations until she appeared in short advertising film at that same department store while she was still a teenager. Erik A. Petschler, a comedy director, saw the film and gave her a small part in his Luffar-Petter (1922). Encouraged by her own performance, she applied for and won a scholarship to a Swedish drama school. While there she appeared in at least one film, En lyckoriddare (1921). Both were small parts, but it was a start. Finally famed Swedish director Mauritz Stiller pulled her from the drama school for the lead role in The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924). At 18 Greta was on a roll.
Following The Joyless Street (1925) both Greta and Stiller were offered contracts with MGM, and her first film for the studio was the American-made Torrent (1926), a silent film in which she didn't have to speak a word of English. After a few more films, including The Temptress (1926), Love (1927) and A Woman of Affairs (1928), Greta starred in Anna Christie (1930) (her first "talkie"), which not only gave her a powerful screen presence but also garnered her an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress (she didn't win). Later that year she filmed Romance (1930), which was somewhat of a letdown, but she bounced back in 1931, landing another lead role in Mata Hari (1931), which turned out to be a major hit.
Greta continued to give intense performances in whatever was handed her. The next year she was cast in what turned out to be yet another hit, Grand Hotel (1932). However, it was in MGM's Anna Karenina (1935) that she gave what some consider the performance of her life. She was absolutely breathtaking in the role as a woman torn between two lovers and her son. Shortly afterwards, she starred in the historical drama Queen Christina (1933) playing the title character to great acclaim. She earned an Oscar nomination for her role in the romantic drama Camille (1936), again playing the title character. Her career suffered a setback the following year in Conquest (1937), which was a box office disaster. She later made a comeback when she starred in Ninotchka (1939), which showcased her comedic side. It wasn't until two years later she made what was to be her last film, Two-Faced Woman (1941), another comedy. But the film drew controversy and was condemned by the Catholic Church and other groups and was a box office failure, which left Garbo shaken.
After World War II Greta, by her own admission, felt that the world had changed perhaps forever and she retired, never again to face the camera. She would work for the rest of her life to perpetuate the Garbo mystique. Her films, she felt, had their proper place in history and would gain in value. She abandoned Hollywood and moved to New York City. She would jet-set with some of the world's best-known personalities such as Aristotle Onassis and others. She spent time gardening and raising flowers and vegetables. In 1954 Greta was given a special Oscar for past unforgettable performances. She even penned her biography in 1990.
On April 15, 1990, Greta died of natural causes in New York and with her went the "Garbo Mystique". She was 84.- Actress
- Soundtrack
She won a beauty contest at age fourteen. In 1920 her mother, Edith Shearer, took Norma and her sister Athole Shearer (Mrs. Howard Hawks) to New York. Ziegfeld rejected her for his "Follies," but she got work as an extra in several movies. She spent much money on eye doctor's services trying to correct her cross-eyed stare caused by a muscle weakness. Irving Thalberg had seen her early acting efforts and, when he joined Louis B. Mayer in 1923, gave her a five year contract. He thought she should retire after their marriage, but she wanted bigger parts. In 1927, she insisted on firing the director Viktor Tourjansky because he was unsure of her cross-eyed stare. Her first talkie was in The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929); four movies later, she won an Oscar in The Divorcee (1930). She intentionally cut down film exposure during the 1930s, relying on major roles in Thalberg's prestige projects: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) and Romeo and Juliet (1936) (her fifth Oscar nomination). Thalberg died of a second heart attack in September, 1936, at age 37. Norma wanted to retire, but MGM more-or-less forced her into a six-picture contract. David O. Selznick offered her the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), but public objection to her cross-eyed stare killed the deal. She starred in The Women (1939), turned down the starring role in Mrs. Miniver (1942), and retired in 1942. Later that year she married Sun Valley ski instructor Martin Arrouge, eleven years younger than she (he waived community property rights). From then on, she shunned the limelight; she was in very poor health the last decade of her life.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Soundtrack
One of the great voices of the Metropolitan Opera, Lawrence Mervil Tibbet was born in Bakersfield, California, in 1896. Born at the end of the "wild west" era, he was only six when his father, who was a Kern County deputy sheriff, was killed by bandits. After training with, among others, Metropolitan Opera bass (and later film actor) Basil Ruysdael, he joined the Met, adding another "t" to his name in his initial contract. He made his company debut in the small role of Lovitsky in Mussorgsky's "Boris Godonov" in 1923. Two years later, in 1925, he caused a sensation as "Ford" in Verdi's "Falstaff" and his future with the company was assured. At home in French, Italian, German, and American opera, he created the leads in numerous Met premiers, most notably in Deems Taylor's "The King's Henchman," Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra," and Louis Gruenberg's "The Emperor Jones." Blessed, in his younger days, with boyish good looks, in addition to his powerful voice, he was one of the first great opera stars to enjoy success in Hollywood films, most notably 1929's "The Rogue Song," which brought him an Oscar nomination, and 1931's "Cuban Love Song," the latter opposite Lupe Velez and Jimmy Durante. He was also a highly-regarded recitalist and appeared successfully on radio. His recordings for Victor sold in the millions. In 1936, along with violinist Jascha Heifetz, he founded the American Guild of Musical Artists, serving for 17 years as its active president.
Unfortunately, beginning in around 1940, the stress of taking on too many heavy roles too early brought on a vocal crisis which only worsened in the next decade. He continued to take on new roles at the Metropolitan (Michele in Puccini's "Il Tabarro," Balstrode in Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes," Ivan in Mussorgsky's "Khovantchina"), but these were parts that stressed his considerable dramatic abilities, rather than his diminishing vocal ones. This vocal crisis also triggered a drinking problem (some have said vice versa) which also got progressively worse with time. Perhaps wisely, Tibbett left the Met at the end of the 1949-50 season.
The 1950s saw him appearing on stage in both musical and dramatic roles, most notably succeeding former Met colleague Ezio Pinza in the Broadway musical hit "Fanny," as well as hosting "Golden Voices" on NBC radio. But heavy drinking, which also brought on a well-publicized traffic arrest, left his once good looks bloated and puffy. An increasingly unhappy life ended in early 1960 when he tripped on a Persian runner in his home, badly gashing his head on the corner of his TV set and driving bone fragments into his brain. He died on July 17 at the age of 64. Tibbett's unhappy end is best forgotten. His contributions to the world of music will live forever.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Famed actor, composer, artist, author and director. His talents extended to the authoring of the novel "Mr. Cartonwine: A Moral Tale" as well as his autobiography. In 1944, he joined ASCAP, and composed "Russian Dances", "Partita", "Ballet Viennois", "The Woodman and the Elves", "Behind the Horizon", "Fugue Fantasia", "In Memorium", "Hallowe'en", "Preludium & Fugue", "Elegie for Oboe, Orch.", "Farewell Symphony (1-act opera)", "Elegie (piano pieces)", "Rondo for Piano" and "Scherzo Grotesque".