Norma Shearer
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Norma Shearer in a gown by Adrian |
Edith Norma Shearer (
August 10,
1902 (some sources indicate
1900) -
June 12,
1983) was an
Academy Award-winning
Canadian-born
actress in
Hollywood.
Born in
Montreal, Quebec, she was the daughter of a
Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman and actress Edith Shearer. One of the
Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood, she began her career as a fashion model and film extra in 1920, and was already a popular star by 1927 when she converted to
Judaism and married
MGM's chief of production (and second in command)
Irving Thalberg, with whom she had two children.
Shearer was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Actress on six occasions, winning for her role in
The Divorcee in 1930. This was one of a series of roles in sophisticated yet racy
pre-Code dramas, and Norma was at her best. She was nominated the same year for her role in
Their Own Desire, in 1931 for her role in
A Free Soul, in 1934 for
The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in 1936 for
Romeo and Juliet, and in 1938 for
Marie Antoinette which was reputedly her favorite role.
Marion Davies would later recall that Shearer came to a party at
San Simeon in her costume, which required removing the door so she could enter, and four chairs so she could sit at the table.
Shearer was extremely beautiful, [
1] although care was taken in photographing her because she had a
lazy eye. Her long, streamlined form, and often mischievous looking grin made her extremely popular. Her earlier successful roles were generally those of "modern" women, which was
Pre-Code short-hand for sexually uninhibited. As she achieved superstardom, she was relatively restrained in both comedy and tragedy, then settled mostly for "Great Woman" roles. Her screen persona remains indistinct, but particularly after Thalberg's death in 1936 she had a series of surpringly effective performances in smaller and more offbeat vehicles.
Fellow actress
Joan Crawford saw the then-Mrs. Thalberg as a hated rival, albeit one she could not defeat, because, as Crawford put it: "She's sleeping with the boss." Shearer and Crawford acted only once together, as bitter rivals in
The Women. Their real-life disdain for one another didn't hurt their scenes together.
After Thalberg's death, Shearer embarked on romances with actors
George Raft and
Mickey Rooney, among many others, although she was notoriously private about her affairs. Rooney said many years later that Shearer "was hotter than a half f****d fox in a forest fire". [
2] [
3]
She retired from acting in 1942 after the public indifference of her last few films, and married Martin Arrouge, a ski instructor twenty years her junior. Confounding the skeptics, they were still happily married at the time of her death (from
pneumonia and
Alzheimer's disease) either 80 (or 82) years old, although in her declining years she reportedly called Martin "Irving".
She has a Star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6636
Hollywood Boulevard, and is entombed in the Great Mausoleum at
Forest Lawn Memorial Park in
Glendale, California, in a crypt engraved
Norma Shearer Arrouge (next to fellow film star
Jean Harlow).
The Flapper (
1920)
Way Down East (
1920)
The Restless Sex (
1920)
Torchy's Millions (
1920) (short subject)
The Stealers (
1920)
The Sign on the Door (
1921)
The Leather Pusher (
1922) (undermined role)
The End of the World (
1922)
The Man Who Paid (
1922)
Channing of the Northwest (
1922)
The Bootleggers (
1922)
A Clouded Name (
1923)
Man and Wife (
1923)
The Devil's Partner (
1923)
Pleasure Mad (
1923)
The Wanters (
1923)
Lucretia Lombard (
1923)
The Trail of the Law (
1924)
The Wolf Man (
1924)
Blue Water (
1924)
Broadway After Dark (
1924)
Broken Barriers (
1924)
Empty Hands (
1924)
Married Flirts (
1924) (Cameo)
He Who Gets Slapped (
1924)
The Snob (
1924)
1925 Studio Tour (
1925) (short subject)
Excuse Me (
1925)
Lady of the Night (
1925)
Waking Up the Town (
1925)
Pretty Ladies (
1925)
A Slave of Fashion (
1925)
The Tower of Lies (
1925)
His Secretary (
1925)
The Devil's Circus (
1926)
Screen Snapshots (
1926) (short subject)
The Waning Sex (
1926)
Upstage (
1926)
The Demi-Bride (
1927)
After Midnight (
1927)
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (
1927)
The Latest from Paris (
1928)
The Actress (
1928)
Voices Across the Sea (
1928) (short subject)
A Lady of Chance (
1928)
The Trial of Mary Dugan (
1929)
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (
1929)
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (
1929)
Their Own Desire (
1929)
The Divorcee (
1930)
Let Us Be Gay (
1930)
Jackie Cooper's Birthday Party (
1931) (short subject)
Strangers May Kiss (
1931)
The Slippery Pearls (
1931) (short subject)
A Free Soul (
1931)
Private Lives (
1931)
The Christmas Party (
1931) (short subject)
Smilin' Through (
1932)
Strange Interlude (
1932)
Riptide (
1934)
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (
1934)
Romeo and Juliet (
1936)
Marie Antoinette (
1938)
Hollywood Goes to Town (
1938) (short subject)
Idiot's Delight (
1939)
The Women (
1939)
Escape (
1940)
We Were Dancing (
1942)
Her Cardboard Lover (
1942)
Note: In an era when checking births was not easy, Film studios and actors frequently altered their birth year to make them younger. Some sources, such as Shearer biographer Lawrence J. Quirk, state 1900 as Shearer's year of birth. Quirk is the nephew of
Photoplayeditor James Quirk, who aided the actress in her early career, and knew Shearer personally from 1919 until his death in 1932 (Source:
Norma: The Story of Norma Shearer, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1988).
*
Norma Shearer at Classic Actresses* [
4] Norma Shearer at Golden Silents
