Susan Hayward

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Susan Hayward
Image:SusanHaywardinSmashUp.jpg from the film Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947)
Born	June 30, 1917 Brooklyn, New York
Died	March 14, 1975 Hollywood, California

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

1 Biography
2 Academy Awards and Nominations
3 Filmography
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

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."

[edit] Career

Although she was not given 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). 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 autobiography 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.

She also appeared in a Las Vegas production of Mame for which she initially received good reviews for her performance, but for which role she was vocally unprepared, and 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", from where Holm did not even come.

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 never came to be.) Her last public appearance was at the 1974 Oscar telecast to present the award for "Best Actress", 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".

[edit] Personal life

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 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.

Some suspect that Hayward’s cancer was a result of having been exposed to fallout during the filming of The Conqueror (1956) near St. George, Utah. 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.

[edit] Academy Awards and Nominations

1958 - Won Best Actress in a Leading Role - I Want to Live!
1956 - Nominated Best Actress in a Leading Role - I'll Cry Tomorrow
1953 - Nominated Best Actress in a Leading Role - With a Song in My Heart
1950 - Nominated Best Actress in a Leading Role - My Foolish Heart
1948 - Nominated Best Actress in a Leading Role - Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman

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

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