Norma Shearer

Biography

Edith Norma Shearer (August 11, 1902 – June 12, 1983) was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated women. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O'Neill, and William Shakespeare, and was the first five-time Academy Award acting nominee, was nominated six times in all, and won one for Best Actress for The Divorcee (1930). Reviewing Shearer's work, Mick LaSalle called her a feminist pioneer, or "the exemplar of sophisticated modern womanhood and ... the first American film actress to make it chic and acceptable to be single and not a virgin on screen".

== Early life == Shearer was of Scottish, English and Irish descent. Her childhood was spent in Montreal, where she was educated at Montreal High School for Girls and Westmount High School. Her life was one of privilege, due to the success of her father's construction business. However, the marriage between her parents was unhappy. Andrew Shearer was prone to manic depression and "moved like a shadow or a ghost around the house." Her mother was Edith Mary (née Fisher) Shearer. Young Norma was interested in music, but after seeing a vaudeville show for her ninth birthday, she announced her intention to become an actress. Edith offered support, but as Shearer entered adolescence, she became secretly fearful that her daughter's physical flaws would jeopardize her chances. Norma Shearer "had no illusions about the image I saw in the mirror". She acknowledged her "dumpy figure, with shoulders too broad, legs too sturdy, hands too blunt", and was acutely aware of her small eyes that appeared crossed due to a cast in her left eye. By her own admission, she was "ferociously ambitious" even when she was young. The childhood and adolescence that Shearer once described as "a pleasant dream" ended in 1918 when her father's company collapsed, and her older sister Athole suffered her first serious mental breakdown. Forced to move into a small, dreary house in a "modest" Montreal suburb, Shearer found her determined attitude strengthened by the sudden plunge into poverty: "At an early age, I formed a philosophy about failure. Perhaps an endeavor, like my father's business, could fail, but that didn't mean Father had failed." Edith Shearer thought otherwise. Within weeks, she had left her husband and moved into a cheap boarding house with her two daughters. A few months later, encouraged by her brother, who believed his niece should try her luck in "the picture business", then operating largely on the East Coast of the United States, Edith sold her daughter's piano and the family dog. In her pocket was a letter of introduction for Norma, acquired from a local theatre owner, to Florenz Ziegfeld, who was preparing a new season of his famous Ziegfeld Follies.

== Career ==

=== Early days ===

In January 1920, the three Shearer women arrived in New York, each of them dressed up for the occasion. "I had my hair in little curls", Shearer remembered, "and I felt very ambitious and proud." Her heart sank, however, when she saw their rented apartment: "There was one double bed, a cot with no mattress and a stove with one gas jet. The communal bathroom was at the end of a long, dimly lit hallway. Athole and I took turns sleeping with mother in the bed, but sleep was impossible anyway—the elevated trains rattled right past our window every few minutes." The introduction to Ziegfeld proved equally disastrous. He turned Shearer down flat, reportedly calling her a "dog", and criticized her crossed eyes and stubby legs. She continued doing the rounds with her determination undimmed: "I learned that Universal Pictures was looking for eight pretty girls to serve as extras. Athole and I showed up and found 50 girls ahead of us. An assistant casting director walked up and down looking us over. He passed up the first three and picked the fourth. The fifth and sixth were unattractive, but the seventh would do, and so on, down the line until seven had been selected—and he was still some ten feet ahead of us. I did some quick thinking. I coughed loudly, and when the man looked in the direction of the cough, I stood on my tiptoes and smiled right at him. Recognizing the awkward ruse to which I'd resorted, he laughed openly and walked over to me and said, 'You win, Sis. You're Number Eight.'"

Other extra parts followed, including one in Way Down East, directed by D. W. Griffith. Taking advantage of a break in filming and standing shrewdly near a powerful arc light, Shearer introduced herself to Griffith and began to confide her hopes for stardom. "The Master looked down at me, studied my upturned face in the glare of the arc, and shook his eagle head. Eyes no good, he said. A cast in one and far too blue; blue eyes always looked blank in close-up. You'll never make it, he declared, and turned solemnly away." Still undeterred, Shearer risked some of her savings on a consultation with Dr. William Bates, about her strabismus. He wrote out a series of muscle-strengthening exercises that after many years' daily practice would successfully conceal Shearer's cast for long periods of time on the screen. She spent hours in front of the mirror, exercising her eyes and striking poses that concealed or improved the physical flaws noted by Ziegfeld or Griffith. At night, she sat in the galleries of Broadway theatres, studying the entrances of Ina Claire, Lynn Fontanne, and Katharine Cornell. In desperate need of money, Shearer resorted to some modeling work, which proved successful. On her modeling career, she commented: "I could smile at a cake of laundry soap as if it were dinner at the Ritz. I posed with a strand of imitation pearls. I posed in dust-cap and house dress with a famous mop, for dental paste and for soft drink, holding my mouth in a whistling pose until it all but froze that way." She became the new model for Kelly-Springfield Tires and was bestowed with the title "Miss Lotta Miles" and depicted seated inside the rim of a tire, smiling down at traffic from a large floodlit billboard. Finally, a year after her arrival in New York, she received a break in film: fourth billing in a B-movie titled The Stealers (1920). In January 1923, Shearer received an offer from Louis B. Mayer Pictures, a studio in Northeast Los Angeles that was run by a small-time producer, Louis B. Mayer. Irving Thalberg had moved to Louis B. Mayer Pictures as vice president on February 15, 1923, but had already sent a telegram to Shearer's agent, inviting her to come to the studio. After three years of hardship, she found herself signing a contract. It called for $250 a week for six months, with options for renewal and a test for a leading role in a major film called The Wanters.

=== Hollywood === Shearer left New York around February 17. Accompanied by her mother, she felt "dangerously sure of herself" as her train neared Los Angeles. When she was not welcomed, even an hour after her arrival, she realized that there would be no star treatment from her new studio. Dispirited, she allowed Edith to hail a taxi. The next morning, Shearer went to the Mayer Company on Mission Road to meet with Thalberg. Shearer was momentarily unsettled by their confused introduction, but soon found herself "impressed by his air of dispassionate strength, his calm self-possession and the almost black, impenetrable eyes set in a pale olive face".

Shearer was less impressed, however, with her first screen test: "The custom then was to use flat lighting, to throw a great deal of light from all directions, in order to kill all shadows that might be caused by wrinkles or blemishes. But the strong lights placed on either side of my face made my blue eyes look almost white, and by nearly eliminating my nose, made me seem cross-eyed. The result was hideous." The day after the test had been screened for Mayer and Thalberg, cameraman Ernest Palmer found Shearer frantic and trembling in the hallway. Speaking with her, he was struck by her "fierce, almost raging disappointment", and after viewing the test himself, agreed that she had been "poorly handled". Under Palmer's own supervision, a second test was made and judged a success by the studio executives. The lead in The Wanters seemed hers, until the film's director, John M. Stahl, objected, finding her "unphotogenic". Again, Shearer was disappointed and relegated to a minor role.