She went from the determined and aggressive woman who vie with the protagonists of the films to get the love of the leading man on duty to an interpreter with a huge dramatic vein.
She changed from the determined and aggressive woman who competed with the protagonists of the films to win the love of the leading man on duty to a woman of enormously dramatic streak who faced her tragic fate with determination. Susan Hayward, known in Hollywood where the “galaxy” breathed its last as “the arsonist redhead”, was born Edythe Marrenner Pearson on June 30, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, her rise to fame was slow and at times painful .
She was discovered by George Cukor while working as a fashion model. In 1937 she settled in Hollywood looking for the part of Scarlett O’Hara in ‘Gone with the Wind’. Her stage name was chosen by her rep because it was “similar” to Rita Hayworth’s and the sound gave her a certain association. Despite not being cast as Scarlett O’Hara, Hayward found work for seven years playing small roles, until she was cast alongside Gary Cooper in the film ‘Beau Geste’, a film that catapulted her to success.
During World War II, she played two female leads opposite John Wayne in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean Sea’ (1942) and ‘The Fighting Seabees’ (1944). After the war ended, she established herself as one of Hollywood’s leading actresses, appearing in films such as: ‘Tulsa, Fighting City’, ‘Brother Hate’, ‘David and Bathsheba’, ‘With a Song in my heart’ or ‘The Snow of Kilimanjaro’.
In 1947, she received her first Oscar nomination for her role as an alcoholic nightclub singer in the film “A Woman Destroyed.” The film changes viewers’ perception of her, going from the redhead trying to argue with the protagonist’s love with the protagonists, to a “fajadora”, known as “the best sparring in Hollywood” or “the first masochist”. on screen”. », for her characters as a sufferer. This are the years has been praised for her dramatic performances as President Andrew Jackson’s melancholy wife in the film ‘The Marked Lady’ (1953), alcoholic actress Lillian Roth, in ‘ Tomorrow I Will Cry’ (1955), based on the autobiography of the actress and the real-life story Barbara Graham, a famous hitman sentenced to death in the film ‘I want to live!’ (1958), character for which she won the Oscar for Actress She also received multiple awards for her Las Vegas performance of the play ‘Mame’, but left the production because she felt unprepared to meet the requirements of the role because her voice wasn’t good enough to sing, he always deeply regretted not taking a singing course that enabled him to continue with the part.
Susan Hayward continued to act in the 1960s and 1970s (“The Third Man Was a Woman”, “Stolen Hours”, “Valley of the Dolls”, “Women in Venice”), and it was at the beginning of this last decade, when she was diagnosed with brain cancer.
Her last role was that of Doctor Maggie Cole in the television drama ‘Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole’ (the film was planned as a pilot for a television series, but due to the cancer diagnosis the actress received, the film was canceled). projects). Her last public appearance was in 1974 when she competed as the host of the Best Actress award at the Oscars. At the ceremony, already very ill, she was helped by Charlton Heston. Hayward would later claim “it’s the last time I do it.”
Susan Hayward died on March 14, 1975 at age 57 from complications of pneumonia related to her brain cancer, exceeding the life expectancy doctors had predicted for her. She was buried near her second and last husband, Eaton Chalkley, with whom she had converted to Catholicism, in Carrollton, Georgia. His two sons survived him. Chalkley was the love of her life in every way, and they had lived happily together in Carrollton until Eaton’s death in 1966. In December 1964, she was baptized a Catholic in Pittsburgh by a priest she had met in China by making him promise that if she converted to the Catholic religion, he would have to baptize her.
There are many conjectures that the cancer Hayward developed was the result of exposure to nuclear waste during the filming of the ill-fated movie “The Conqueror of Mongolia,” shot near St. George in the Utah desert. During 13 weeks of filming in the summer of ’55, the cast and crew were exposed to and contaminated with residual radioactive dust from two nuclear tests in March and May 1955.
Source: La Verdad
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