Profile of Susan Hayward on Famous Like Me

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

Born Edythe Marrenner in Brooklyn, New York of Irish and Scandinavian extraction, she began her career as a photographer's model. She was a school friend of the actor and fellow Brooklynite, Jeff Chandler. She went to Hollywood in 1937, aiming to become the unknown who won the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.

Although she didn't get that role, Hayward landed a few bit parts until she eventually landed the female lead in Beau Geste (1939) opposite Gary Cooper which made her a superstar. During the war years, she played leading lady to John Wayne twice in Reap the Wild Wind and The Fighting Seabees. Post-war, she established herself as one of Hollywood's most popular leading ladies in films such as Tap Roots, My Foolish Heart, David and Bathsheba, and With a Song in My Heart.

In 1947 Hayward received the first of her five Academy Award nominations for Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman. Other major films included I'll Cry Tomorrow and I Want to Live!, for which she won the Oscar as Best Actress.

She appeared in a Las Vegas production of Mame for which she initially received good reviews for her charming 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 singer/actress Celeste Holm who had something of a reputation for being "difficult", so Hayward warned her that if she (Holm) mistreated the "great" company she (Holm) was now joining, then she (Hayward) would "kick her ass back to Toledo", from whence Holm did not even come.

Hayward is also remembered for appearing (even though she was dying) at the 1974 Oscar telecast to present the award for Best Actress. With Charlton Heston gallantly supporting her, and having been given massive doses of dopamine, she managed to get through it, but sadly admitted: "That's the last time I do that". She met Katharine Hepburn for the first time at the telecast (the only one ever attended by Hepburn, and only then because she was to present an award to a friend, not because she was nominated for anything, which she wasn't that year anyway) and Hepburn served as a kind of booster urging Hayward to fight, although she (Hayward) was in her last year of life.

Hepburn would also end up caring for such fellow actors as Vivien Leigh, who blew smoke in Hepburn's face when Hepburn urged her not to smoke, and whom Hepburn accompanied to electro-shock therapy treatments in London, England not long before Leigh's death, and, of course, her long-time friend and lover, Spencer Tracy, with whom she appeared in the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner shortly before his death, but whose funeral she could not attend.

The pneumonia-related complications of the brain cancer, which took her life at the age of 57, is a theory thought by some to be from her work in The Conqueror, filmed about 100 miles downwind of certain active Utah nuclear-weapon test sites, and in sets dressed with truckloads of dirt from the area, due to the fact that the film's director (Dick Powell) and many others of the cast and crew on the set of the film (including John Wayne, Agnes Moorehead, Lee Van Cleef, Pedro Armendáriz, Thomas Gomez, Dick Powell and John Hoyt) died of cancer as well. It is claimed the story is apocryphal, but it has gained traction due to the large number of cast and crew who came to suffer from the disease.

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.

Filmography

• Hollywood Hotel (1937)
• The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) (scenes deleted)
• Campus Cinderella (1938) (short subject)
• The Sisters (1938)
• Girls on Probation (1938)
• Comet Over Broadway (1938)
• Beau Geste (1939)
• Our Leading Citizen (1939)
• $1000 a Touchdown (1939)
• Adam Had Four Sons (1941)
• Sis Hopkins (1941)
• Among the Living (1941)
• Reap the Wild Wind (1942)
• A Letter from Bataan (1942) (short subject)
• The Forest Rangers (1942)
• I Married a Witch (1942)
• Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)
• Young and Willing (1943)
• Hit Parade of 1943 (1943)
• Jack London (1943)
• The Fighting Seabees (1944)
• Skirmish on the Home Front (1944) (short subject)
• The Hairy Ape (1944)
• And Now Tomorrow (1944)
• Deadline at Dawn (1946)
• Canyon Passage (1946)
• Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947)
• They Won't Believe Me (1947)
• The Lost Moment (1947)
• Tap Roots (1948)
• The Saxon Charm (1948)
• Tulsa (1949)
• House of Strangers (1949)
• My Foolish Heart (1949)
• I'd Climb the Highest Mountain
• Soldier of Fortune (1955)

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