About Me
From the Twenties through the early Forties, Norma Shearer, the most unlikely of all screen beauties, reigned supreme as the first lady of the screen, the genuine motion picture aristocrat. As a silent performer, she was never as beautiful as Barbara La Marr, Esther Ralston or Dolores Costello, nor did she rank alongside Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish or ZaSu Pitts as one of the great silent talents. She did, however, possess a quality that none of her contemporaries did. Call it "Shearer Determination". Norma willed herself into the mold of a movie goddess, and made audiences admire the fit. The only other North American actress to match Shearer's dedication to illusion was her MGM arch rival Lucille Le Sueur, a.k.a. Joan Crawford. Perhaps it was that all-consuming ambition to succeed - a quality which made them more alike than different - that necessitated their fierce rivalry.Edith Norma Shearer was born on August 10, 1902 in Montreal, Québec, Canada. As a child she would ski, swim, ice skate, and play musical instruments such as the piano. At the age of was nine she happened to see the Dolly Sisters perform and decided then and there that she wanted to be an actress. When she was fourteen she won a local beauty contest and felt this would be the thing to give her a start and send her on her way to stardom. In 1920, her mother – being star-struck herself and always encouraging Norma and her sister Athole – took the girls to New York to try out for the Ziegfeld Follies. The Ziegfeld office rejected her, still she managed to find work as an extra in several films, the first being The sign on the door (1920) and The Flapper (1920). By the time she made it to California, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) was already on its way to become the greatest studio in history. Irving Thalberg had seen Norma’s early efforts and, when he joined Louis B. Mayer in 1923, offered her a five year contract. Norma made a number of small films for MGM, none of which received top treatment from the studio. The one thing they did do was to help enhance Norma's image and improve her acting. Finally, her big break came in the film The student Prince in old Heidelberg (1927) with the role of Kathi. Motion pictures were changing and Norma had no problem making the transition from silent to "talkie" pictures. Her first sound movie was The trial of Mary Dugan (1929). Four movies later she would win an Oscar for The Divorcée (1930). By then Norma had married studio head Irving Thalberg. Many thought her marrying the boss could give her an unfair advantage in getting roles. Not so. She continued in "B" roles and finally the film industry thought she had paid her dues. Thalberg thought she should retire after their marriage, but she wanted bigger parts, intentionally cutting down film exposure during the thirties, relying on major roles in Thalberg's prestige projects: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Romeo and Juliet (1936) (her fifth Oscar nomination). Thalberg had very poor health and died of pneumonia in September 1936, aged thirty-seven. She had two children by him. Norma wanted to retire but MGM more or less forced her into a six-picture contract. David O. Selznick offered her the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the wind, but public objection killed the deal. She starred in The Women (1939), turned down the starring role in Mrs. Miniver, and retired with the film Her cardboard lover (1942). Later that year she married French-born Martin Jacques Arrouge whom she had met whilst vacationing in Sun Valley, Idaho. Born in 1914, he had been a champion skier, and was then an instructor at the famed resort. From then on she shunned the limelight. She did however maintain her ties with MGM and did a lot of traveling. There is no doubt that had she stayed in films she could have gotten better and juicier roles, still she decided to leave while still ahead of the game. Norma Shearer was in very poor health the last decade of her life and died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California on June 12, 1983...
