Margaret Sullavan

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Birth name Margaret Brooke Sullavan
Nationality USA
Birth 16 may 1909 at Norfolk (USA)
Death 1 january 1960 (at 50 years) at New Haven (USA)

Margaret Brooke Sullavan (May 16, 1909 – January 1, 1960) was an American stage and film actress.

Sullavan began her career onstage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday. Sullavan preferred working on the stage and made only 16 movies, four of which were opposite James Stewart in a popular partnership. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Three Comrades (1938). She retired from the screen in the early forties, but returned in 1950 to make her last movie, No Sad Songs for Me (1950), in which she played a woman who was dying of cancer. For the rest of her career she would only appear on the stage.

Sullavan experienced increasing hearing problems, depression, and mental frailty in the 1950s. She died of an overdose of barbiturates, which was ruled accidental, on January 1, 1960 at the age of 50.

Biography

Sullavan had a reputation of being both temperamental and straightforward. On one occasion Henry Fonda (then her ex-husband) had decided to take up a collection for a fireworks display on July 4. When Sullavan refused to make a contribution, Fonda complained loudly to a fellow actor. Then Sullavan rose from her seat and doused Fonda from head to foot with a pitcher of ice water. Fonda made a stately exit, and Sullavan, composed and unconcerned, returned to her table and ate heartily. Another of her blowups almost literally killed Sam Wood, one of the founders of the Motion Picture Alliance. Wood was a keen anti-Communist. He dropped dead from a heart attack shortly after a raging argument with Sullavan, who had refused to fire a writer on a proposed film on account of his left-wing views. Louis B. Mayer always seemed wary and nervous in her presence. "She was the only player who outbullied Mayer", Eddie Mannix of MGM later said of Sullavan. "She gave him the willies".

Marriages and family
Sullavan was married four times. She married Henry Fonda on December 25, 1931 in Baltimore, while both were performing with the University Players in its 18-week winter season there. She was exactly four years Fonda's junior: they shared the birth date of May 16. The marriage lasted only two months.

Sullavan was then involved with Broadway producer Jed Harris for some time. In late 1934, she married William Wyler, the director of her next movie, The Good Fairy (1935). Her second marriage lasted just over a year and they divorced in March 1936.

Sullavan's third husband was agent and producer Leland Hayward. Hayward had been Sullavan's agent since 1931 and their relationship had been deepening all through 1936; they had already become lovers, and Brooke, their "love child", had been conceived that October. They both wanted the baby and married on November 15, 1936. Sullavan would have a baby every other year - Brooke in 1937, Bridget in 1939 (who died of a drug overdose in October 1960) and Bill in 1941 (who committed suicide in 2008). Their marriage lasted about 11 years and ended when Sullavan discovered that Hayward was cheating on her with Slim Keith. At Sullavan's insistence, she and Hayward divorced in 1947.

Three years after divorcing Hayward, she married Kenneth Wagg, an English investment banker, to whom she was married at the time of her death.

Hearing loss
Sullavan suffered from the congenital hearing defect otosclerosis that worsened as she aged, making her more and more hard of hearing. Her voice had developed a throatiness because she could hear low tones better than high ones. From early 1957 Sullavan's hearing was worsening; she was becoming depressed and sleepless and often wandered about all night. She would often go to bed and stay there for days, her only words: "Just let me be, please". Sullavan had kept her hearing problem largely hidden. On January 8, 1960 (one week after Sullavan's death), The New York Post reporter Nancy Seely wrote: "The thunderous applause of a delighted audience—was it only a dim murmur over the years to Margaret Sullavan? Did the poised and confident mien of the beautiful actress mask a sick fear, night after night, that she'd miss an important cue?" In addition to her hearing defect, Sullavan's children, Brooke, and in particular Bridget and Bill, often proved rebellious and contrary. As a result of the divorce from Hayward, the family fell apart. Sullavan felt that Hayward was trying to alienate their children from her. When the children went to California to visit their father they were so spoiled with expensive gifts that, when they returned to their mother in Connecticut, they were deeply discontented with what they saw as a staid lifestyle.

By 1955, when Sullavan's two younger children told their mother that they preferred to stay with their father permanently, she suffered a nervous breakdown. Sullavan's older daughter, Brooke, wrote about the breakdown in her 1977 autobiography Haywire: Sullavan had humiliated herself by begging her son to stay with her. He remained adamant and his mother had started to cry. "This time she couldn't stop. Even from my room the sound was so painful I went into my bathroom and put my hands on my ears". In another scene from the book, a friend of the family (Millicent Osborne) had been alarmed by the sound of whimpering from the bedroom: "She walked in and found mother under the bed, huddled up in a fetal position. Kenneth was trying to get her out. The more authoritative his tone of voice, the farther under she crawled. Millicent Osborne took him aside and urged him to speak gently, to let her stay there until she came out of her own accord". Eventually Sullavan agreed to spend some time (two and a half months) in a private mental institution. Her two younger children also spent time in various institutions.