Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Susan Hayward











































Susan Hayward (June 30, 1917 – March 14, 1975) was an American actress.
After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone With the Wind (1939). Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting roles over the next few years. By the late 1940s the quality of her film roles had improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first of five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performance as an alcoholic in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947). Her career continued successfully through the 1950s and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958).
By this time, Hayward was married and living in Georgia and her film appearances became infrequent, although she continued acting in film and television until 1972. She died in 1975 following a long battle with brain cancer.

Early life and career

Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner in Brooklyn, New York to Walter Marrenner and Ellen Pearson. Her paternal grandmother was an actress, Kate Harrigan, from County Cork, Ireland. Her maternal grandparents were from Sweden. She began her career as a photographer's model, going to Hollywood in 1937, aiming to secure the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.
Although she did not win the role, Hayward found employment playing bit parts until she was cast in Beau Geste (1939) opposite Gary Cooper. During the war years, she played leading lady to John Wayne twice, in Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and The Fighting Seabees (1944). She also starred in the film version of The Hairy Ape (1944). Later in 1955, she was cast by Howard Hughes to play Bortai in the historical epic The Conqueror, again opposite John Wayne.

in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
After the war, she established herself as one of Hollywood's most popular leading ladies in films such as Tap Roots (1948), My Foolish Heart (1949), David and Bathsheba (1951), and With a Song in My Heart (1952).
In 1947, she received the first of five Academy Award nominations for her role as an alcoholic nightclub singer in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman.
During the 1950s she won acclaim for her dramatic performances as President Andrew Jackson's melancholic wife in The President's Lady (1953); the alcoholic actress Lillian Roth in I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), based on Roth's best-selling autobiography of the same name, for which she received a Cannes award; and the real-life California murderer Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958). Hayward's portrayal of Graham won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
In 1961, Hayward starred as a working girl who becomes the wife of the state's next governor (Dean Martin) and ultimately takes over that office herself in Ada (film). She replaced Judy Garland as Helen Lawson in the 1967 film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls.
She received good reviews for her performance in a Las Vegas production of Mame, but left the production. She was replaced by Celeste Holm.
She continued to act into the early 1970s, when she was diagnosed with brain cancer. Her final film role was as Dr. Maggie Cole in the 1972 made-for-TV drama Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole. (The film was intended to be a pilot episode for a weekly television series, but because of Hayward's cancer diagnosis and failing health the series was never produced.) Her last public appearance was at the 1973 Academy Awards telecast to present the Best Actress award, despite the fact that she was very ill. With Charlton Heston supporting her, she was able to present the award.

Personal life

Hayward was married to actor Jess Barker for 10 years, and they had two children, fraternal twin sons on February 19, 1945. The marriage was described in Hollywood gossip columns as turbulent. They divorced in 1954. During the contentious divorce proceedings, Hayward felt it necessary to stay in the United States and not join the Hong Kong location shooting for the film Soldier of Fortune. She shot her scenes with co-star Clark Gable indoors in Hollywood. A few brief, distant scenes of Gable and a Hayward double walking near landmarks in Hong Kong were combined with the indoor shots.
In 1957, Hayward married Eaton Chalkley, a Georgia rancher and businessman who had formerly worked as a federal agent. Though he was an unusual husband for a Hollywood movie star, the marriage was a happy one. She lived with him in Carrollton, Georgia, becoming a popular figure in a state that in the 1950s was off the beaten path for most celebrities. In December 1964, she and her husband were baptized Catholic at SS Peter and Paul's Roman Catholic Church on Larimar Avenue, in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh, by one Father McGuire. She had met McGuire while in China and promised him that if she ever converted, he would be the one to baptize her. Chalkley died in 1966. Hayward went into mourning and did little acting for several years, and took up residence in Florida because she preferred not to live in her Georgia home without her late husband.
Hayward died at age 57 on March 14, 1975, of pneumonia-related complications of brain cancer, having survived considerably longer than doctors had predicted. There is speculation that she may have been affected by radioactive fallout from atmospheric atomic bomb tests while making The Conqueror with John Wayne. Several production members, as well as Wayne himself, Agnes Moorehead and Pedro Armendariz, later succumbed to cancer and cancer-related illnesses. She was survived by her two sons from the marriage with Barker. Hayward was cremated and buried beside Chalkley at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in Carrollton.
Hayward has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6251 Hollywood Boulevard.


Filmography

Film and television credits
Year↓ Title↓ Role↓ Notes
1937 Hollywood Hotel Starlet at table uncredited
1938 The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse Patient scenes deleted
1938 The Sisters Telephone operator uncredited
1938 Girls on Probation Gloria Adams
1938 Comet Over Broadway Amateur Actress uncredited
1938 Campus Cinderella Co-Ed Short subject
1939 Beau Geste Isobel Rivers
1939 Our Leading Citizen Judith Schofield
1939 $1000 a Touchdown Betty McGlen
1941 Adam Had Four Sons Hester Stoddard
1941 Sis Hopkins Carol Hopkins
1941 Among the Living Millie Pickens
1942 Reap the Wild Wind Cousin Drusilla Alston
1942 The Forest Rangers Tana 'Butch' Mason
1942 I Married a Witch Estelle Masterson
1942 Star Spangled Rhythm Herself - Genevieve in Priorities Skit
1942 A Letter from Bataan Mrs. Mary Lewis
1943 Young and Willing Kate Benson
1943 Hit Parade of 1943 Jill Wright
1943 Jack London Charmian Kittredge
1944 The Fighting Seabees Constance Chesley
1944 The Hairy Ape Mildred Douglas
1944 And Now Tomorrow Janice Blair
1944 Skirmish on the Home Front Molly Miller Short subject
1946 Deadline at Dawn June Goth
1946 Canyon Passage Lucy Overmire
1947 Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman Angelica 'Angie'/'Angel' Evans Conway Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
12947 They Won't Believe Me Verna Carlson
1947 The Lost Moment Tina Bordereau
1948 Tap Roots Morna Dabney
1948 The Saxon Charm Janet Busch
1949 Tulsa Cherokee Lansing
1949 House of Strangers Irene Bennett
1949 My Foolish Heart Eloise Winters Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1951 Screen Snapshots: Hopalong in Hoppy Land Herself Short subject
1951 I'd Climb the Highest Mountain Mary Elizabeth Eden Thompson
1951 Rawhide Vinnie Holt
1951 I Can Get It for You Wholesale Harriet Boyd
1951 David and Bathsheba Bathsheba
1952 With a Song in My Heart Jane Froman
1952 The Snows of Kilimanjaro Helen
1952 The Lusty Men Louise Merritt
1953 The President's Lady Rachel Donaldson
1953 White Witch Doctor Ellen Burton
1954 Demetrius and the Gladiators Messalina
1954 Garden of Evil Leah Fuller
1955 Untamed Katie O'Neill (Kildare) (Van Riebeck)
1955 Soldier of Fortune Mrs. Jane Hoyt
1955 I'll Cry Tomorrow Lillian Roth
1956 The Conqueror Bortai
1957 Top Secret Affair Dorothy 'Dottie' Peale
1958 I Want to Live! Barbara Graham
1959 Thunder in the Sun Gabrielle Dauphin
1959 Woman Obsessed Mary Sharron
1961 The Marriage-Go-Round Content Delville
1961 Ada Ada Gillis
1961 Back Street Rae Smith
1962 I Thank a Fool Christine Allison
1963 Stolen Hours Laura Pember
1964 Where Love Has Gone Valerie Hayden Miller
1967 The Honey Pot Mrs. Sheridan
1967 Valley of the Dolls Helen Lawson
1967 Think Twentieth Herself
1972 The Revengers Elizabeth Reilly
1972 Heat of Anger Jessie Fitzgerald TV movie
1972 Say Goodbye Maggie Cole Dr. Maggie Cole TV movie

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