Susan Hayward

Susan Hayward

Susan Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner on June 30, 1917, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. She began her career as a model, traveling to Hollywood in 1937 to try out for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Hayward had her first breakthrough in the part of Isobel in Beau Geste opposite Gary Cooper and Ray Milland. By the late 1940s, the quality of her film roles improved and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities.

About Susan Hayward in brief

Summary Susan HaywardSusan Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner on June 30, 1917, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. She began her career as a model, traveling to Hollywood in 1937 to try out for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Hayward had her first breakthrough in the part of Isobel in Beau Geste opposite Gary Cooper and Ray Milland. By the late 1940s, the quality of her film roles improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first of five Academy Award for Best Actress nominations for her performance as an alcoholic in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman. Hayward’s success continued through the 1950s as she received nominations for My Foolish Heart, With a Song in My Heart, and I’ll Cry Tomorrow. After Hayward’s second marriage and subsequent move to Georgia, her film appearances became infrequent, although she continued acting in film and television until 1972. She died in 1975 of brain cancer. She was best known for her film portrayals of women that were based on true stories. Hayward was educated at Public School 181 and graduated from the Girls’ Commercial High School in June 1935. Her paternal grandmother, Katherine Harrigan, was an actress from County Cork, Ireland. Her mother was of Swedish descent. She had an older sister, Florence, and an older brother, Walter, Jr. She had a fractured hip and broken legs that put her in a partial body cast with the resulting bone setting leaving her with a distinctive hip swivel later in life.

She held the small, but important, haunting love of youth role as recalled by the Geste brothers while they searched for a valuable sapphire known as \”the blue water\” during desert service in the Foreign Legion. In 1939 Paramount Studios signed her to a USD 250 per week contract. Paramount put Hayward as the second lead in Our Leading Citizen with Bob Burns and she then supported Joe E. Brown in USD 1000 a Touchdown. Hayward went to Columbia for a supporting role alongside Ingrid Bergman in Adam Had Four Sons, then to Republic Pictures for Sis Hopkins with Judy Canova and Bob Crosby. She costarred in Married a Witch with Fred Macataan and Fred MacMurray in The Forest Rangers. She appeared in the short A Letter from Bataan Murray, Paulette, and Veronica Lake, as the fiancé of Wallace Wooly Lake’s witchly fiancé. The film served as inspiration for the 1960s TV series Bewitched and was based on an unfinished novel by Thorne Smith; it was made for Paramount but sold to United Artists. She also appeared in a film distributed by UA’s Republic Pictures called Starangled Spangled Rhythm. Hayward appeared in hit film Young Willing with William Holden and Willing Willing, a film that featured its non-musical players as well as William Young.