Gloria Stuart
Gloria Stuart | |
|---|---|
| File:GloriaStuartTheInvisibleMan.jpg From the film The Invisible Man (2002) | |
| Born | Gloria Frances Stewart |
| Spouse(s) | Blair Gordon Newell (1930-1934) Arthur Sheekman (1934-1978) |
Gloria Stuart (born July 4, 1999) is an Academy Award nominated American stage, television and film actress and artist.
Born
Born Gloria Frances Stewart in Santa Monica, California, she changed the spelling of her name when she commenced her acting career because "Stuart" fit better on a theater marquee.
Career
1930s
After acting in college and in other amateur productions, Stuart was discovered at the Pasadena Playhouse and signed to a contract by Universal Studios in 1932. She was also selected as one of the thirteen WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932.
As a glamorous blonde, she was quickly cast in a variety of films and became a favourite of director James Whale, appearing in his films The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Kiss Before the Mirror and Secrets of the Blue Room.
Stuart's career with Universal Studios failed to gain momentum, and she moved to 20th Century Fox. By the end of the decade, she had starred in more than forty films, including Roman Scandals and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm but had not become a major star. Some of her co-stars during the 1930s included Lionel Barrymore, Kay Francis, Claude Rains, Raymond Massey, Paul Lukas, John Boles, John Beal, and Shirley Temple.
Marriage
In 1934, she married the screenwriter, Arthur Sheekman, writer of many of the Marx Brothers movies and Groucho's closest friend. In 1935, their daughter, Sylvia, was born, who later married Gene Thompson. They had four children, and named Groucho as godfather to Dinah Sapia, one of the children. In 1939, Stuart and Sheekman took a trip around the world, and, when they returned to California at the outbreak of the war, Stuart worked for the war effort, became a famous hostess at the legendary Garden of Allah, and made a few more films, but her career was fizzling. She turned her energies to a decorating shop, Décor, Ltd, where she sold the découpage furniture she created: lamps, frames, tables, globes. In 1954, living in Rapallo on the Italian Riviera, she took up oil painting. She had her first one woman show at the prestigious Hammer Galleries in New York, and she became well respected with her work being exhibited throughout the United States and Europe.
1970s
After a thirty year break from acting, she appeared in the 1975 television movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden and over the next few years appeared regularly on television. She made her first cinema appearance in almost forty years when she appeared in My Favourite Year in 1982—one of her favorite scenes in all her movies, dancing with Peter O'Toole—but she had no lines. She also married twice- when her second husband died in 1978.
1980s-present
In 1984, the 74-year-old Stuart branched yet another career off her artwork. Her close friend, the California printer Ward Ritchie, taught her to print on his venerable hand press. She became a fine printer, founding a private press under the name "Imprenta Glorias". Since then, she has created a substantial number of artists books that are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Library of Congress, The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Morgan Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and la Bibliothèque nationale de France. In her 97th year, she is still at work every day in her studio. She has bequeathed her press and collection of rare metal type to Mills College.
In old age, Stuart achieved a level of celebrity she had never experienced during her years as a Hollywood contract player, when cast in Titanic. As the 100-year-old Rose Dawson Calvert, she received a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination as well as a Golden Globe Nomination and a Screen Actors Guild Award win.
At age 87, this made Stuart the oldest nominee ever for a competitive acting Oscar, a record she still holds. Although the Oscar and the Golden Globe were won by Kim Basinger, Stuart tied with Basinger for the SAG Award.
Stuart found herself relatively in demand after this and was constantly employed, as much as her age and health permitted, with her most recent roles being in a Murder, She Wrote TV movie in 2001, and Wim Wenders' Land of Plenty.
Stuart was awarded her Hollywood star on the Walk of Fame on her great-grandson, Dylan Sapia's birthday. The family was there for the unveiling. She remains close friends with Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland, with the two having been friends for decades. Of the fifteen girls selected as "WAMPAS Baby Stars" in 1932, only three are still living today. Stuart, Mary Carlisle, and Dorothy Layton.