Helen Hayes

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Helen Hayes

Helen Hayes , actually Helen Hayes Brown , (born October 10, 1900 in Washington, DC , † March 17, 1993 in Nyack , New York ) was an American film and stage actress who had a long and successful career in American show business . At the Academy Awards in 1932 , Hayes received the Academy Award for Best Actress for her appearance in The Sin of Madelon Claudet . Their performance in Airport brought her to the Oscars in 1971 the Oscar for best supporting actress one. She has also won several Tony Awards for her theater work, an Emmy Award and a Grammy . This makes her one of the few people who has won all four of the major US entertainment industry awards.

Life

Helen Hayes was the daughter of a well-known stage actress and made her own debut in theater at the age of five. When she was nine, she made her Broadway debut in the play Old Hutch . She was a busy actress in the naive profession and became one of the most popular stars through her appearance on Dear Brutus , alongside actresses such as Katharine Cornell , Maude Adams , Laurette Taylor and Ruth Chatterton . In the mid-1920s, she already carried the honorary title of First Lady of the American Theater . In 1928 she married the playwright and screenwriter Charles MacArthur , the closest friend of Ben Hecht and Dorothy Parker . In early 1931 she accompanied her husband to Hollywood , where MacArthur had signed a contract with MGM . At the urging of the studio, she finally took on the lead role in the film The Lullabye , which was released as The Sin of Madelon Claudet . The story follows the pattern of Madame X and tells the fate of a single mother who sacrifices herself as a prostitute for her child and dies in the end. Hayes became a star practically overnight and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 1932 Academy Awards .

Helen Hayes (1921)

Her next two roles were also tragic. In Samuel Goldwyn's Arrowsmith , the film adaptation of the novel by Sinclair Lewis , Helen Hayes starred opposite Ronald Colman and Myrna Loy, directed by John Ford . Immediately afterwards, she was loaned to Paramount at her own request to film In Another Country alongside Gary Cooper . Her subsequent films were mostly elaborately produced melodramas that showed Hayes alongside the studio's biggest male stars. The white sister from 1933 showed her at the side of Clark Gable in a story about a woman who, out of mourning for her allegedly fallen lover, becomes a nun and suffers great agonies of conscience after he reappears. The film was Hayes' greatest financial success during the period, grossing nearly $ 2 million. In the same year she took over in David O. Selznicks Nachtflug , based on the novel of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , one of the leading roles in a star cast alongside Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore .

Hayes was at the height of her popularity at the time, so that in the 1933 film Sexbombe even a little tip was made against her ladylike image: Lola Burns, the reigning sex symbol of Monarch Studios , played by Jean Harlow , falls in love with a - alleged - noblewoman who whispers sweet nothings in her ear. Oh, she says delightedly, that's a lot nicer than anything Helen Hayes is told in her films . Increasingly dissatisfied with her life as a film actress and star, Hayes decided to return to Broadway after Vanessa's failure , Her Love Story , based on a story by Hugh Walpole . She took on the leading role in Victoria Regina and thus celebrated her greatest stage triumph: The play was on the repertoire without interruption until 1938 and then took her on tours throughout the country.

In 1959, in honor of her 50th anniversary as an actress, a theater was named after her - an award that few actors receive. Helen Hayes worked very early on in the new medium of television, which offered her work and new tasks well into the 1980s. She only returned to film in the early 1950s, this time in character roles. Most of these were not demanding, with the exception of the Tsar's mother in Anastasia from 1955 and her portrait of a stowaway on board a plane in danger of crashing in Airport , for which she received the Oscar for best supporting actress. She beat Katharine Hepburn as the artist who had the longest time between two Oscar wins. In the 1970s she played leading roles in three Walt Disney movies, including Herbie Big in Ride from 1975. In 1983, the Little Theater on Broadway was renamed the Helen Hayes Theater . The theater is located on West 44th Street in Manhattan . Her last appearance in front of the camera was in 1985 as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in the television adaptation of Murder with Mirrors , which showed her alongside Bette Davis . The actor James MacArthur (1937-2010) was her adopted son.

Awards

In addition to her two Academy Awards, Helen Hayes also won three Tony Awards , the equivalent of an Oscar on Broadway; 1947, 1958 and 1980 an honorary Tony for her life's work. She also won Emmy Awards in 1953 and 1978 for television work. And finally, in 1976, she got a Grammy for a record recording. She was the first artist who could unite these awards. In 1986, US President Ronald Reagan presented Hayes with the Medal of Freedom , the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Helen Hayes  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Hayes, Helen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brown, Helen Hayes (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC , United States
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1993
Place of death Nyack , New York , United States