Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O’Neill, and William Shakespeare. She was the first person to be nominated five times for an Academy Award for acting, winning Best Actress for her performance in The Divorcee.
About Norma Shearer in brief
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated ingénues. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O’Neill, and William Shakespeare. She was the first person to be nominated five times for an Academy Award for acting, winning Best Actress for her performance in The Divorcee. Reviewing Shearer’s work, Mick LaSalle called her \”the exemplar of sophisticated 1930s womanhood… exploring love and sex with an honesty that would be considered frank by modern standards\”. As a result, Shearer is celebrated as a feminist pioneer, \”the first American film actress to make it chic and acceptable to be single and not a virgin on screen\”. She was of Scottish, English, and Irish descent. Her childhood was spent in Montreal, where she was educated at Montreal High School for Girls and Westmount High School. Her life was one of privilege, due to the success of her father’s construction business. However, the marriage between her parents was unhappy. Her mother Edith Fisher Shearer left her husband and moved into a cheap boarding house with her two daughters. Her brother, who believed his niece should try her luck in the picture business, bought three train tickets for New York City. In January 1920, the three Shearer women arrived in New York, each of them dressed up for the occasion.
The introduction to Florenz Ziegfeld proved equally disastrous. He turned Shearer down flat, reportedly calling her a ‘dog’, and criticized her crossed eyes and stubby legs. She continued doing the rounds with her undimmed determination: She showed up at Universal Pictures looking for eight pretty girls to serve as extras. The fifth and sixth were unattractive, but so on the seventh would do, and so on, until seven had been selected—and he was still some ten feet ahead of us. He passed up the first three and picked up the fourth and sixth and said, ‘You win, Sis. Sis, I’d love to win, but I’d resorted to ruse, which I’d ruse to. Recognizing the awkward ruse I’d used, he laughed openly and walked over to me and said ‘You’re the winner, sis, you win!’ Shearer: I coughed loudly and when the man looked in the direction of the man, he said, ‘You’re the winner!’ Shearer remembered, “I had my hair in little curls, and I felt very ambitious and proud.”“I’m so proud of you!” she said to her sister Athole, who had suffered her first serious mental breakdown.’’ ‘I love you so much, Athole and I took turns sleeping with mother in the bed, but sleep was impossible anyway—the elevated trains rattled right past our window every few minutes’
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