Gloria Grahame

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gloria Grahame (November 28, 1923 - October 5, 1981) was an Academy Award-winning American film actress.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Death 5 Filmography 6 External links

[edit] Early life

Grahame was born Gloria Hallward in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Jean McDougal, who used the stage name Jean Grahame, was a stage actress and acting teacher who taught Gloria acting during her childhood and adolescence. She was signed to a contact with MGM Studios after Louis B. Mayer saw her performing on Broadway.

[edit] Career

Changing her name to Gloria Grahame, she made her film debut in Blonde Fever (1944) and scored her most widely praised role as the neurotic small town girl Violet, who is saved from a disgraceful and disheartening future by George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life (1946). MGM was not able to develop her potential as a star and her contract was sold to RKO Studios in 1947.

Grahame was often featured in film noir pictures as a tarnished beauty with an irresistible sexual allure. During this time, she made films for several Hollywood studios. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Crossfire (1947). Grahame starred with Humphrey Bogart in the 1950 film In a Lonely Place, a performance which garnered her considerable praise. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952).

Grahame is possibly best remembered for her role as the mob moll in The Big Heat (1953). In what was considered a horrifying scene at the time, she is disfigured by boiling coffee thrown in her face by Lee Marvin's character.

Grahame was often regarded as a difficult actress to work with, and her career began to wane after her quixotic, but successful casting in the musical movie Oklahoma! (1955). Grahame was seen as difficult to cast with the demise of film noir, a woman too beautiful to be strictly evil, yet too naughty to be an innocent ingenue. She began a slow return to the theater, but returned to films occasionally to play supporting roles, mostly in minor releases.

Grahame has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to Motion Pictures, at 6522 Hollywood Boulevard.

[edit] Personal life

Grahame had a string of stormy romances and failed marriages during her time in Hollywood. These difficulties began to affect her career after marital and child custody problems began to influence Grahame on the set of "Oklahoma!". In 1960, even Hollywood was scandalized after her marriage to Tony Ray, Grahame's former stepson and son of her ex-husband Nicholas Ray (In A Lonely Place, Rebel Without a Cause) whom she had divorced eight years previously. Finding film roles difficult to obtain in Hollywood, she returned to the theater and continued to work as a stage actress.

[edit] Death

In 1981, Grahame collapsed during a rehearsal for a British stage play, and returned to New York City, where she died soon after from breast cancer at the age of 57. She is interred in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.

She was survived by her children from various marriages, and a sister.

[edit] Filmography

• Blonde Fever (1944)
• Without Love (1945)
• It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
• It Happened in Brooklyn (1947)
• Crossfire (1947)
• Song of the Thin Man (1947)
• Merton of the Movies (1947)
• A Woman's Secret (1949)
• Roughshod (1949)
• In a Lonely Place (1950)
• The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
• Macao (1952)
• Sudden Fear (1952)
• The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
• The Glass Wall (1953)
• Man on a Tightrope (1953)
• The Big Heat (1953)
• Prisoners of the Casbah (1953)
• Human Desire (1954)
• Naked Alibi (1954)
• The Good Die Young (1954)
• The Cobweb (1955)
• Not as a Stranger (1955)
• Oklahoma! (1955)
• The Man Who Never Was (1956)
• Ride Out for Revenge (1957)
• Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
• Ride Beyond Vengeance (1966)
• Blood and Lace (1971)
• The Todd Killings (1971)
• Chandler (1971)
• The Loners (1972)
• Tarot (film) (1973)
• Mama's Dirty Girls (1974)
• Mansion of the Doomed (1976)
• A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (1979)
• Head Over Heels (1979)
• Melvin and Howard (1980)
• The Nesting (1982)

Preceded by: Kim Hunter for A Streetcar Named Desire

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress 1952 for The Bad and the Beautiful

Succeeded by: Donna Reed for From Here to Eternity

[edit] External links

• Gloria Grahame at the Internet Movie Database
• Find-A-Grave profile for Gloria Grahame