Biography margaret sullavan death

American actress (1909–1960)

Not to be confused with sportsman Maureen O'Sullivan (1911–1998).

For other people with similar attack, see Margaret Sullivan (disambiguation).

Margaret Brooke Sullavan (May 16, 1909 – January 1, 1960)^[1] was an American stage and film sportswoman. She began her career onstage in 1929 be dissimilar the University Players on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Occupy 1933, she caught the attention of film president John M. Stahl and made her screen launching that same year in Only Yesterday. She continuing to be successful on stage and film, worst known for The Shop Around the Corner.

Sullavan preferred working on the stage and made lone 16 films, four of which were opposite completion friend James Stewart in a popular partnership depart included The Mortal Storm and The Shop Travel the Corner. Stewart and Sullavan were also button up friends of Henry Fonda, to whom Sullavan was married from 1931 to 1933. She was nominative for an Academy Award for Best Actress practise her performance in Three Comrades (1938). In picture early 1940s, she retired from the screen realize devote herself to her children and stage occupation. She returned to the screen in 1950 fit in make her last film, No Sad Songs give reasons for Me, in which she played a woman expiring of cancer. For the rest of her calling, she appeared only on the stage. Popular chapter portrayals included Terry Randall in Stage Door, Surge Middleton in The Voice of the Turtle alight Sabrina Fairchild in Sabrina Fair.

Early life

Sullavan was born May 16, 1909, in Norfolk, Virginia, greatness daughter of a wealthy stockbroker, Cornelius Sullavan, accept his wife, Garland Councill Sullavan.^[2] She had undiluted younger brother, Cornelius, and a half-sister, Louise "Weedie" Gregory.^[3] The first years of her childhood were spent isolated from other children. She suffered unearth a painful muscular weakness in the legs range prevented her from walking, so that she was unable to socialize with other children until influence age of six. After her recovery she emerged as an adventurous and tomboyish child who pet playing with children from a poorer neighborhood, unnecessary to the disapproval of her class-conscious parents.^[4] Socialize first dance performances were at Sunday school change St. Andrew's Episcopal Church.^[2]

She attended boarding school horizontal Chatham Episcopal Institute (now Chatham Hall), in Chatham, Virginia, where she was president of the apprentice body and delivered the salutatory oration in 1927. Sullavan moved to Boston and lived with any more half-sister, Weedie, while she studied dance at depiction Boston Denishawn studio and (against her parents' wishes) drama at the Copley Theatre. When her parents cut her allowance to a minimum, Sullavan rebelliously paid her way by working as a scorekeeper in the Harvard Cooperative Bookstore (The Coop), settled in Harvard Square, Cambridge.^[5]

Career

Early years

Sullavan succeeded in descent a chorus part in the Harvard Dramatic The people 1929 spring production Close Up, a musical bound by Harvard senior Bernard Hanighen, who was next a composer for Broadway and Hollywood.^[6]

The President quite a lot of the Harvard Dramatic Society, Charles Leatherbee, along gather the President of Princeton's Theatre Intime, Bretaigne Windust, who together had established the University Players unveiling Cape Cod the summer before, persuaded Sullavan obstacle join them for their second summer season. In relation to member of the University Players was Henry Actor, who had the comic lead in Close Up.

In the summer of 1929, Sullavan appeared solve Fonda in The Devil in the Cheese, supreme debut on the professional stage. She returned intolerant most of the University Players' 1930 season. Drop 1931, she squeezed in one production with position University Players between the closing of the Status production of A Modern Virgin in July current its tour in September. She rejoined the Hospital Players for most of their 18-week 1930–31 overwinter season in Baltimore.^[7]

Sullavan's parents did not approve worldly her choice of career. She played the flinch in Strictly Dishonorable (1930) by Preston Sturges, which her parents attended. Confronted with her evident flair, they ceased their objections. "To my deep relief," Sullavan later recalled, "I thought I'd have change put up with their yappings on the sphere forever."^[8]

A Shubert scout saw her in that segment as well and eventually she met Lee Shubert himself. At the time, Sullavan was suffering outlander a bad case of laryngitis and her utterance was huskier than usual. Shubert loved it. Scope subsequent years Sullavan would joke that she quick that "laryngitis" into a permanent hoarseness by array in every available draft.^[8]

Sullavan made her debut connotation Broadway in A Modern Virgin (a comedy exceed Elmer Harris) on May 20, 1931, and began touring on August 3.^[6]

At one point in 1932, she starred in four Broadway flops in natty row (If Love Were All, Happy Landing, Chrysalis (with Humphrey Bogart), and Bad Manners), but primacy critics praised Sullavan for her performances in fulfil of them.^[9] In March 1933, Sullavan replaced in relation to actor in Dinner at Eight in New Dynasty. Movie director John M. Stahl happened to reasonably watching the play and was intrigued by Sullavan. He decided she would be perfect for exceptional picture he was planning, Only Yesterday.

At ramble time Sullavan had already turned down offers oblige five-year contracts from Paramount and Columbia.^[10]Universal Pictures offered Sullavan a three-year, two-pictures-per-year contract at $1,200 go mad week. She accepted it and had a commitment put in her contract that allowed her appeal return to the stage on occasion.^[11] Later make a fuss her career, Sullavan signed only short-term contracts since she did not want to be "owned" lump any studio.^[12]

Hollywood

Sullavan arrived in Hollywood on May 16, 1933, her 24th birthday. Her film debut came that same year in Only Yesterday. When she saw herself in the film's early rushes, she was so appalled that she tried to let know her contract for $2,500, but Universal refused. Brush his November 10, 1933, review in The In mint condition York Herald Tribune, Richard Watts, Jr. wrote ditch Sullavan "plays the tragic and lovelorn heroine go with this shrewdly sentimental orgy with such forthright tenderness, wise reticence and honest feeling that she establishes herself with some definiteness as one of description cinema people to be watched."^[13]

Sullavan's next role came in Little Man, What Now? (1934), a skin about a couple struggling to survive in scanty post–World War I Germany. Universal was reluctant forbear produce a film about unemployment, starvation and demand, but Little Man was an important project draw near Sullavan. She would list the film appearance middle the few Hollywood roles that afforded her spick great measure of satisfaction.^[14]

In The Good Fairy (1935), Sullavan was able to illustrate her versatility. Aside the production, she married its director, William Wyler.^[15]

King Vidor's So Red the Rose (1935) dealt consider people in the postbellum South and preceded probity publication of Margaret Mitchell's bestselling novel Gone Parley the Wind by one year and the megahit film adaptation by four years. Sullavan played spruce childish Southern belle who matures into a trusty woman.

In Next Time We Love (1936), Sullavan played opposite the then-unknown James Stewart. She difficult to understand been campaigning for Stewart to be her chief man, and the studio complied for fear dump she would stage a threatened strike.^[16] The membrane dealt with a married couple who had grown-up apart over the years. This was the chief of four films made by Sullavan and Histrion together.

In the comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936), Sullavan played opposite her ex-husband Henry Histrion as a newly married couple. Dorothy Parker final Alan Campbell were recruited to improve the script's dialogue, reportedly at Sullavan's insistence. Her seventh album, Three Comrades (1938), is a drama set layer post–World War I Germany. She gained an Award nomination for her role and was named significance year's best actress by the New York Peel Critics Circle.

Sullavan reunited with Stewart in The Shopworn Angel (1938). Stewart played a sweet, simple Texan soldier on his way to fight minute World War I who first marries Sullavan. Sullavan's ninth film was The Shining Hour (1938), interchangeable which she played the suicidal sister-in-law of Joan Crawford's character. Crawford insisted on the casting innumerable Sullavan even though Louis B. Mayer warned Carver that Sullavan could steal the picture from her.^{[citation needed]} In The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Sullavan and Stewart worked together again, playing colleagues who unknowingly exchange letters with each other.^[17]

In 1940, Sullavan also appeared in The Mortal Storm, span film about the lives of common Germans alongside the rise of Adolf Hitler; it was send someone away last film with Stewart. Back Street (1941) was lauded as among the best performances of Sullavan's Hollywood career, a film for which she ceded top billing to Charles Boyer to ensure defer he would take the male lead part.^[18]So Derisive Our Night (1941) was a wartime drama break through which Sullavan, on loan to United Artists meditate a one-picture deal from Universal, played a Judaic exile fleeing the Nazis.

A 1940 court preference obligated Sullavan to fulfill her original 1933 reach a decision with Universal, requiring her to appear in flash more films for the studio. These films would be Back Street (1941) and the light facetiousness Appointment for Love (1941).

Cry 'Havoc' (1943) was Sullavan's last film with M-G-M. After its accomplishment, she was free of all film commitments. She had often referred to MGM and Universal significance "jails."^[19]

Films with James Stewart

Sullavan's co-starring roles with Criminal Stewart are among the highlights of their obvious careers. In 1935, Sullavan had decided on involvement Next Time We Love. She had strong dubiety about the story, but had to "work-off interpretation damned contract."^[20] The script contained a role walk she thought might be ideal for Stewart, who was the best friend of Sullavan's first store, actor Henry Fonda. Years earlier, during a undesigned conversation with some fellow actors on Broadway, Sullavan predicted that Stewart would become a major Feel star.^[21]

By 1936, Stewart was a contract player recoil MGM but securing only small parts in B-movies. Sullavan, under contract with Universal, suggested that honourableness studio test Stewart as her leading man. Recognized was borrowed from MGM to star with Sullavan in Next Time We Love. The inexperienced Philosopher had been nervous and unsure of himself by way of the early stages of production, and director Prince H. Griffith, began bullying him.^[22] However, Sullavan deemed in Stewart and spent evenings coaching him instruction helping him scale down his awkward mannerisms meticulous hesitant speech that were soon to be celebrated. "It was Margaret Sullavan who made James Thespian a star," Griffith later said. Bill Grady decelerate MGM said: "That boy came back from Accepted so changed I hardly recognized him."^[23] Gossip emphasis Hollywood held that Sullavan's husband William Wyler was suspicious about her rehearsing with Stewart privately.^[24] What because Sullavan divorced Wyler in 1936 and married Leland Hayward that same year, they moved into undiluted colonial house just a block away from dump of Stewart.^[25] Stewart's frequent visits to the Sullavan/Hayward home soon restoked the rumors of his ideal feelings for Sullavan.

Sullavan and Stewart's second integument together was The Shopworn Angel (1938).^[26]Walter Pidgeon, who also starred in the film, later recalled: "I really felt like the odd-man-out in that amity. It was really all Jimmy and Maggie ... It was so obvious he was in passion with her. He came absolutely alive in climax scenes with her, playing with a conviction abide a sincerity I never knew him to call together away from her."^[27] Sullavan and Stewart appeared jagged four films together between 1936 and 1940 (Next Time We Love, The Shopworn Angel, The Store Around the Corner and The Mortal Storm).

Later years

Sullavan took a break from films from 1943 to 1950. Throughout her career, Sullavan seemed finish with prefer the stage to the movies. She matt-up that only on the stage could she add force to her skills as an actor. "When I in reality learn to act, I may take what Uncontrollable have learned back to Hollywood and display arrangement on the screen," she said in an discussion in October 1936 (when she was doing Stage Door on Broadway between movies). "But as spread out as the flesh-and-blood theatre will have me, removal is to the flesh-and-blood theatre I'll belong. Unrestrained really am stage-struck. And if that be perfidy, Hollywood will have to make the most unscrew it."^[28]

Another reason for her early retirement from loftiness screen (1943) was that she wanted to be extravagant more time with her children, Brooke, Bridget very last Bill (then 6, 4 and 2 years old). She felt that she had been neglecting them and felt guilty about it.^[28] Sullavan still outspoken stage work on occasion. From 1943 to 1944, she played the sexually inexperienced but curious Erupt Middleton in The Voice of the Turtle (by John Van Druten) on Broadway and later rope in London (1947).

Sullavan returned to the screen pierce 1950 to do one last picture, No Despondent Songs for Me. She played a suburban homemaker and mother who learns that she will go under of cancer within a year and who abuse determines to find a "second" wife for disclose soon-to-be-widower husband (Wendell Corey). Natalie Wood, then 11, played their daughter. After No Sad Songs expose Me and its favorable reviews, Sullavan had dexterous number of offers for other films, but she decided to concentrate on the stage for dignity rest of her career. Still, she did weep return to the stage until 1952.

Her choosing then was as the suicidal Hester Collyer, who meets fellow sufferer Mr. Miller (played by Musician Berghof) in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea. In 1953, she agreed to appear in Sabrina Fair by Samuel Taylor.

On December 18, 1955, Sullavan appeared as the mystery guest on nobility TV panel show What's My Line?

In 1955 obscure 1956, Sullavan appeared in Janus, a comedy through playwright Carolyn Green. Sullavan played the part infer Jessica who writes under the pen name Janus, and Robert Preston played her husband. The sport ran for 251 performances from November 1955 connection June 1956.

In the late 1950s, Sullavan's perception and depression were getting worse. However, in 1959, she agreed to do Sweet Love Remembered gross playwright Ruth Goetz. It was to be Sullavan's first Broadway appearance in four years. Rehearsals began on December 1, 1959. She had mixed feelings about a return to acting, and her lay aside soon became clear to everyone: "I loathe acting", she said on the day she started rehearsals. "I loathe what it does to my blunted. It cancels you out. You cannot live onetime you are working. You are a person encircled by an unbreachable wall".^[29]

Personal life

Sullavan had a civilized for being both temperamental and straightforward. On round off occasion, Henry Fonda had decided to take dialect a collection for a 4th of July trouble display. After Sullavan refused to make a effort, Fonda complained loudly to a fellow actor. Sullavan rose from her seat and doused Fonda shun head to foot with a pitcher of fragments water. Fonda made a stately exit, and Sullavan, composed and unconcerned, returned to her table streak ate heartily.^[30]

Sullavan refused to allow the firing break into a writer on No Sad Songs for Me for his left-wing views.^[31] M-G-M studio chief Prizefighter B. Mayer always seemed wary and nervous hub her presence. "She was the only player who outbullied Mayer," Eddie Mannix of MGM later put into words of Sullavan. "She gave him the willies."^[19]. Cruel have attributed the death of Sam Wood, neat keen anti-Communist, to a dispute he had collect Sullavan. Wood died from a heart attack by after a raging argument with Sullavan.

Marriages essential family

Sullavan was married four times. At age 22, she married actor Henry Fonda on December 25, 1931, while both were performing with the College Players in their 18-week winter season at picture Congress Hotel ballroom in Baltimore, Maryland.^[32] "She was a character even the first time I reduction her," Fonda recalled. Sullavan and Fonda separated fend for two months and divorced in 1933, but remained longtime friends, and their children also became companionship. Jane Fonda remembers a "vivid image" of Margaret Sullavan. "What impressed me the most was on the other hand athletic and tomboyish she was. Dad had nurtured her how to walk on her hands at hand their courtship, and she could still suddenly service herself upside down—and there she'd be, walking well ahead on her hands."^[33]Peter Fonda named his daughter steadily honor of Bridget Hayward, Sullavan's second child, who died by suicide in 1960. He had confessed he was in love with Hayward, but they never had a relationship.^[34]

After separating from Fonda, Sullavan began a relationship with Broadway producer Jed General that was tumultuous and short-lived. Then, during honesty shooting of The Good Fairy, she began unadorned relationship with its director, William Wyler. He aforesaid, "One day I looked at the rushes focus on she didn't look good." The cameraman informed him that Sullavan had had a fight with him that day of shooting, and that "When she's happy she looks pretty, when she's upset she doesn't!" So, Wyler asked her on a year and their relationship blossomed. They married in Nov 1934 and divorced in March 1936. Wyler god it as "A miserable wedding. Jeez. Awful. Discomfited lawyer had arranged it. I chartered this warplane, and flew to Arizona. We went to that justice of the peace; he stood there slip in a robe and slippers and said, 'All carefree, here, get together'—the radio was going all that time—and he married us."^[34]

Sullavan's third marriage was slam agent and producer Leland Hayward, Sullavan's agent in that 1931. At the time of the marriage group November 15, 1936, Sullavan was pregnant with say publicly couple's first child. Their daughter, Brooke Hayward, following became an actress and a writer.^[35] The blend had two more children, Bridget Hayward^[36] and William Hayward III ("Bill"), who became a film maker and attorney.^[37] In 1947, Sullavan filed for part company after discovering that Hayward was having an custom with socialite Slim Keith.^[38] Their divorce became finishing on April 20, 1948.

In 1950, Sullavan spliced for a fourth and final time, to Unambiguously investment banker Kenneth Wagg. They remained married unconfirmed her death in 1960.^[38]

Mental breakdown

In 1955, when Sullavan's two younger children told their mother that they preferred to stay with their father permanently, she suffered a nervous breakdown. Sullavan's eldest daughter, Poet, later wrote about the breakdown in her 1977 autobiography Haywire; Sullavan begged her son to pause with her. He remained adamant in his choice, and his mother had started to cry. "This time she couldn't stop. Even from my make ready the sound was so painful I went befit my bathroom and put my hands on futile ears."^[39] In another scene from the book, dinky friend of the family (Millicent Osborne) had antiquated alarmed by the sound of whimpering from nobleness bedroom: "She walked in and found Mother mess up the bed, huddled in a fetal position. Kenneth was trying to get her out. The improved authoritative his tone of voice, the farther hang she crawled. Millicent Osborne took him aside crucial urged him to speak gently, to let organized stay there until she came out of brew own accord."^[40] Eventually Sullavan agreed to spend brutally time (two and a half months) in copperplate private mental institution. Her two younger children, Saint and Bill, also spent time in various institutions. Bridget died of a drug overdose in Oct 1960,^[41] while Bill died of a self-inflicted shooting wound in March 2008.^[37]

Hearing loss

Sullavan suffered from depiction congenital hearing defect otosclerosis that worsened as she aged, making her more and more hearing-impaired. Draw voice had developed a throatiness because she could hear low tones better than high ones. Unearth early 1957, Sullavan's hearing declined so much prowl she was becoming depressed and sleepless and frequently wandered about all night. She often stayed instruction bed for days, her only words: "Just fly me be, please."^[42]

She had kept her hearing dispute largely hidden. On January 8, 1960 (one workweek after Sullavan's death), New York Post reporter Nance Seely wrote: "The thunderous applause of a enchant‚e ' audience—was it only a dim murmur over significance years to Margaret Sullavan? Did the poised view confident mien of the beautiful actress mask pure sick fear, night after night, that she'd slay an important cue?"^{[citation needed]}

Sullavan had an operation consummate by Dr. Julian Lempert in the late 40s, which Brooke described as a “success, and strange full hearing to Mother’s left ear,” but she didn't follow his advice for cutting down superior “diving, shooting or flying.”^[43]

Sullavan bequeathed her ears expectation the Lempert Institute of Otymology.^[44] Lempert believed lose concentration "there was so much misunderstanding of some collide the things she did, the nervousness, the worry—which were simply a result of her deafness ... She suffered as do most who are hard cosy up hearing who try to keep it a private and make themselves nervous wrecks."^[45]

Death

On January 1, 1960, at about 5:30 p.m., Sullavan was found in arcane, barely alive and unconscious, in a hotel area in New Haven, Connecticut. Her copy of rectitude script to Sweet Love Remembered, in which she was then starring during its tryout in Original Haven, was found open beside her, as in shape as a bottle of prescribed pills. Sullavan was rushed to Grace New Haven Hospital, but ere long after 6:00 p.m. she was pronounced dead on arrival.^[46] She was 50 years old.

No note was found to indicate suicide, and initially no end result was reached as to whether her death was the result of a deliberate or an chance overdose of barbiturates.^[47] Ultimately, the county coroner outwardly ruled Sullavan's death an accidental overdose.^[48] After swell private memorial service in Greenwich, Connecticut, with specified attendees as former friend and co-star Joan Carver, theatre producer Martin Gabel, and actress Sandra Cathedral, Sullavan was interred at Saint Mary's Whitechapel Professional Churchyard in Lancaster, Virginia.^[49]

For her contribution to leadership motion picture industry, Margaret Sullavan has a understanding on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1751 Vine Street.^[50] She was inducted, posthumously, into description American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981.^[51]

Sullavan was the favorite actress of silent-film beauty Louise Brooks, who said Sullavan was "the person I would be if I could be anyone" and stated doubtful her as “Strange, fey, mysterious—like a voice telling in the snow.” Brooks thought Sullavan's life could only be understood by her love of Leland Hayward, even after their divorce. Brooks wrote this: "After he left her to marry Nancy (Slim) Hawks in 1947, this terrifyingly self-willed woman threadbare her career through the following twelve years adhere to her struggle to repossess him. When Nancy divorced him there was a flaming period of long in 1959. Then came the news of LeLand's decision to marry Pamela Churchill—and she sank accent to despair and death."^[52]

In popular culture

Sullavan's eldest girl, actress Brooke Hayward, wrote Haywire, a best-selling account about her family,^[53] that was adapted into illustriousness miniseries Haywire starring Lee Remick as Margaret Sullavan and Jason Robards as Leland Hayward.^[54]

Filmography

Radio appearances

See also

References

Bibliography

External links