Janet Gaynor

Janet Gaynor
from the film A Star Is Born (1937)
Born	Laura Augusta Gainor October 6, 1906(1906-10-06) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	September 14, 1984 (aged 77) Palm Springs, California, United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1924–1981
Spouse(s)	Jesse Lydell Peck (1929-1933) Adrian (1939-1959) Paul Gregory (1964-1984)

Janet Gaynor (October 6, 1906 – September 14, 1984) was an American actress.

One of the most popular actresses of the silent film era, in 1928 Gaynor became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: Seventh Heaven (1927), Sunrise (1927) and Street Angel (1928). This was the only occasion on which an actress has won for multple roles. This rule would be changed three years later by AMPAS. Her career continued with the advent of sound film, and she achieved a notable success in the original version of A Star Is Born (1937).

She worked only sporadically after the late 1930s. Severely injured in a 1982 vehicle collision, the incident contributed to her death two years later.

Early life

Born Laura Augusta Gainor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, her family moved west to San Francisco during her childhood. When she graduated from high school in 1923, Gaynor decided to pursue an acting career. She moved to Los Angeles, where she supported herself working in a shoe store, receiving $18 per week.

She managed to land unbilled small parts in several feature films and comedy shorts for two years. Finally, in 1926, at the age of 20, she was cast in the lead role in The Johnstown Flood (1926), the same year she was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars (with Joan Crawford, Dolores del Rio and others). Her outstanding performance won her the attention of producers, who cast her in a series of films.

Rising career

Within a year, Gaynor was one of Hollywood's leading ladies. Her performances in Seventh Heaven (the first of twelve movies she would make with actor Charles Farrell) and both Sunrise, directed by F. W. Murnau and Street Angel (in 1927, also with Charles Farrell) earned her the first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1928. It was the only time in Oscar history that the award was given for multiple roles: it was given on the basis of the actor's total work over the year, and not just for one particular performance. Gaynor was not only the first, but until 1986 (when Marlee Matlin won her Oscar), she was also the youngest actress to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. At the time of their respective wins, Gaynor was 22 years old and Matlin was 21 years old.

Gaynor was one of only a handful of leading ladies who made a successful transition to sound films. For a number of years, Gaynor was the Fox studios foremost actress and was given the choice of prime roles, starring in such films as Delicious (1931), Merely Mary Ann (also 1931) and Adorable (1933). However, when Darryl F. Zanuck merged his fledgling studio, 20th Century Pictures, with Fox Film Corporation to form Twentieth Century Fox, her status became precarious and even tertiary to that of actresses Loretta Young and Shirley Temple. She managed to terminate her contract with the studio and achieved acclaim in films produced by David O. Selznick in the mid-1930s.

In 1937, she was again nominated for an Academy Award, this time for her role in A Star Is Born. After appearing in The Young in Heart, she left film industry for nearly twenty years, returning one last time in 1957 as Pat Boone's mother in Bernardine.

Later life and death

Gaynor was married to producer Paul Gregory from December 24, 1964 to her death on September 14, 1984. Previous marriages were to MGM costume designer Adrian from August 14, 1939 to his death on September 13, 1959, and to Jesse Lydell Peck from September 11, 1929 to April 7 1933. Gaynor had one son with Adrian, Robin Gaynor Adrian, born in 1940.

Gaynor was close friends with actress Mary Martin, with whom she frequently travelled. A Brazilian press report noted that Gaynor and Martin briefly lived with their respective husbands in the state of Goiás in the 1950s and 1960s.^[1]

She died in 1984, at the age of 77, due largely to the aftermath of a traffic accident in San Francisco two years earlier;^[2] specifically, her death resulted from complications following several operations. In the accident, a driver named Robert Cato ran a red light at the corner of California Street and Franklin and crashed into her Luxor taxicab. The crash killed Mary Martin's manager Ben Washer and injured the other passengers, including Gaynor's husband Paul Gregory, as well as her close, long-time friend, Mary Martin. Gaynor was in serious condition with eleven broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, pelvic fractures, an injured bladder and a damaged kidney.^[2][3]

She was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California next to her second husband Adrian, but her stone reads "Janet Gaynor Gregory" in tribute to her third husband, producer and director Paul Gregory.

Filmography

Features

Short Subjects

References

Further reading

• Menefee, David W. The First Female Stars: Women of the Silent Era. Connecticut: Praeger, 2004. ISBN 0-275-98259-9.
• Martin, Mary. My Heart Belongs. New York: Quill, 1984.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Janet Gaynor

• Janet Gaynor at the Internet Movie Database
• Janet Gaynor at Find A Grave
• Photographs of Janet Gaynor