Susan Hayward

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Susan Hayward

from the film Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947)
Birth name Edythe Marrenner
Born June 30, 1917
Brooklyn, New York
Died March 14, 1975, aged 57
Hollywood, California
Academy Awards
Best Actress
1958 I Want to Live!

Susan Hayward (June 30, 1917 – March 14, 1975) was an Academy Award-winning American actress.

Contents

Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner in Brooklyn, New York to Walter Marrenner and Ellen Pearson. Her maternal grandparents were from Sweden.[1] She began her career as a photographer's model. She went to Hollywood in 1937, aiming to secure the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Her screen name was chosen by her management because it was "as close to Rita Hayworth as we can get away with."

Although she was not given the role, Hayward found employment playing bit parts until she was cast in Beau Geste (1939) opposite Gary Cooper. She was also one of the many actresses who auditioned for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. During the war years, she played leading lady to John Wayne twice in Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and The Fighting Seabees (1944). Post-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 her five Academy Award nominations for her role of the alcoholic and fast-rising night-club 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; and the real-life California killer Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958). Hayward's unglamorous and gritty portrayal of Graham won her an Oscar as Best Actress.

Hayward in Deadline at Dawn (1946)
Hayward in Deadline at Dawn (1946)

She received good reviews for her performance in a Las Vegas production of Mame, but left the production because she felt unprepared for the demands the role made on her voice. She blamed herself for not having wanted to spend the money on voice lessons that might have allowed her to keep the role. Loretta Swit played "Agnes Gooch" in the same production.

After Hayward was forced to withdraw from the production, she was replaced by the talented, but prickly, Oscar-winning actress and singer Celeste Holm. Hayward warned Holm that if she mistreated the "great" company she was now joining, then she (Hayward) would "kick your a** back to Toledo" (though Holm was not a Toledo native).

She continued to act throughout the 1960s and 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 actually planned as a pilot for a possible weekly television series, but due to Hayward's cancer diagnosis and failing health, the TV series was never produced.) Her last public appearance was at the 1974 Oscar telecast to present the "Best Actress" award, despite the fact she was very ill. With Charlton Heston supporting her, and having been given massive doses of dopamine, she managed to get through it. Hayward later stated, "that's the last time I do that".

Hayward died at age 57 on March 14, 1975, of pneumonia-related complications of her brain cancer, having survived considerably longer than doctors had originally predicted. She was cremated and buried next to her second and final husband, Eaton Chalkley, with whom she had converted to Roman Catholicism, in Carrollton, Georgia. She was survived by her two sons. Chalkley was by all accounts the love of Hayward's life, and they had lived together happily in Carrollton for years before his death in 1966.

In December 1964, she was baptized a Catholic at SS Peter & Paul's Roman Catholic Church on Larimar Avenue, in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh, by Father McGuire. She had met Father McGuire while in China and promised him that if she ever converted, he would be the one to baptize her.

Some theorize that Hayward’s cancer was a result of having been exposed to nuclear fallout during the filming of The Conqueror (1956) near St. George, Utah. (Deaths of other cast members have been cited in the same context.) During the 13 weeks of filming in the summer of 1955, the cast and crew were probably dusted with the fallout from the Zucchini test (May 15, 1955) and possibly the Tesla test (March 1, 1955). By this time, St. George had already received most of the fallout that would later make it the most famous of the "downwinder" cities (see DOE/NV 374).

However, the number of cases of cancer detected (91) and the number of deaths from cancer (46) in the cast and crew (220) are in line with the average lifetime risk of cancer in whites (around 40%) and the average lifetime risk of dying of cancer for whites (around 20%), as published by the National Cancer Institute SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975-2001.

Hayward has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6251 Hollywood Blvd.

Awards
Preceded by
Joanne Woodward
for The Three Faces of Eve		 Academy Award for Best Actress
1958
for I Want to Live!		 Succeeded by
Simone Signoret
for Room at the Top
Preceded by
Joanne Woodward
for The Three Faces of Eve		 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1959
for I Want To Live!		 Succeeded by
Elizabeth Taylor
for Suddenly, Last Summer

  1. ^ For directors, cast lists and running times, see the filmography in McClelland, Susan Hayward

  • Doug McClelland, Susan Hayward, The Divine Bitch, New York: Pinnacle Books, 1973. McClelland is one of the foremost scholars of the American sound film. He disclaims this book as a "biography," preferring to refer to it as a "critography".

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