by Ray Hagen
Back in Hollywood, her short but sweet role as Ann Blyth’s biological mother in Our Very Own (1950) was a heart-wrenching vignette in a dull little movie.
This was followed by The Return of Jesse James (1950), a Lippert potboiler, and a clear indication of her waning status. Ann is the “lowdown ornery” daughter of Henry Hull. Dealing cards to no one in particular in a saloon, she meets up with Jesse James lookalike John Ireland and they fall in love. Or do they? She tries to turn Ireland on to some big dough, sneering after a petty hold-up, “Chicken feed. Small change for beer. I’m playing for champagne.” Well, it almost works. Trying to betray the mortally wounded Ireland for his reward, she is instead shot down. Ann’s uniquely choreographed death is the movie’s only bright spot.
Mention A Life of Her Own (1950), a Lana Turner vehicle, and many film fans will only cite Ann’s performance. Such is the impact that she made, and continues to make, with her astonishing 13½-minute Oscar-worthy contribution.
On her first day in New York aspiring model Turner sees the dark side of the modeling world through the eyes of has-been Dvorak. Ann is urgently seeking to get “back in harness,” but she knows better; years of drink and debauchery have taken their toll. Lana can only sit by speechless as Dvorak unravels before our very eyes, every raw nerve exposed as she desperately clings to what she once had. “My last chance … nothing left … nothing to show … nothing to show for any of it …” It’s a stunning turn, made even more disturbing because of her haggard, no-holds-barred appearance—no glamour here. Lana is haunted by her suicide during the remaining 96 minutes, and so is the viewer.
Lana Turner can only stand by and watch as a riveting Dvorak steals A Life of Her Own (MGM, 1950) away from her.
She played real-life WWII spy Claire “Highpockets” Phillips in I Was An American Spy (1951). Posing as a nightclub singer in Manila (introducing the now-standard “Because of You”), she is caught and tortured by the Japanese. The colorful leading role gave Ann one of her best chances to show her emotional depth, as she commits herself to helping the Allies when her husband is killed by the Japanese.
In The Secret of Convict Lake (1951), playing a woman older than her years, spiteful, repressed, love-starved Ann is one of eight women up in the California mountains, waiting for their menfolk to return from a silver strike. Fugitives invade the camp, and Ann gets recklessly involved with Zachary Scott, even betraying the other women for him. She was excellent expressing her pent-up bitterness, her fear of old age and her attraction to bad-to-the-bone Scott. In an awesomely intense scene, she violently smashes a mirror with Scott’s cologne bottle.
It was a great, neurotic way to end a movie career.
In what was now typical, Ann promptly married again; she couldn’t even wait for her final decree to come back from the Dega union. Explaining that she had supplemented her California divorce with a Nevada one, she married architect Nicholas A. Wade on November 1, 1951, in Las Vegas.
The career suddenly stopped short in 1952, after a bit of television work. Her husband’s business sent him around the world and Ann followed. They underwent divorce proceedings in 1956 but reconciled, moving to Honolulu in 1959, while maintaining a house in Malibu.
She stayed in retirement. They traveled extensively, became “avid bibliophiles,” collecting rare first editions, and lived well. Nothing is really known about these later years because the couple kept a low profile, choosing to lead a very private life. They would remain married for 26 years, until Wade passed away in 1977. Ann followed on December 10, 1979, of cancer. Her ashes were scattered off the beaches of Waikiki.
Contrary to reports, instigated by a 1980 National Enquirer article, Ann did not live in poverty during her final years. Writer Christina Rice went to Hawaii to talk to a close friend of Dvorak’s, who told Rice that the actress did not become the hopeless alcoholic the Enquirer article made her out to be. Ann was never a resident of “The Jungle,” a slum where she was supposed to be living at the time of her death; her real home was several blocks away. This poverty rumor has become the thing people most often bring up in discussions of Dvorak. It simply wasn’t true.
Dvorak could have had it all. She was a hot young actress, considered by Warners more valuable in the early ’30s than Bette Davis. The buzz was so strong about Ann that reportedly an excited Ruth Chatterton peeked onto the set of Molly Louvain just to get a gander at her.
Ann did manage to carve a nice niche for herself—a talent like that can never be truly defeated. And she was a fighter. Before Davis, Sheridan, Lupino and de Havilland, she set the stage for the many future female rebellions at Warner Bros.
We’ll never know if Ann ever regretted her stalled career. She had the guts and ability but the sustained drive just didn’t seem to be there; she was always too willing to drop everything. What she apparently wanted in the long run was, not stardom, but a stable home and husband. She finally got it and a life of her own.
As Baby Anna Lehr: 1916: Ramona (Clune). 1917: The Man Hater (Triangle). 1920: The Five Dollar Plate (three reels, Harbaugh/Oliver). As Ann Dvorak: 1929: The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (MGM), Song of the Rose (MGM short), Gus Edwards International Colortone Revue (MGM short), Mexicana (MGM short), The Doll Shop (MGM short), The Song Shop (MGM short), Shooting Gallery (MGM short), The General (MGM short), So This Is College (MGM), It’s a Great Life (MGM), 1930: Manhattan Serenade (MGM short), They Learned About Women (MGM), Pirates (MGM short), Flower Garden (MGM short), Clock Shop (MGM short), The Woman Racket (MGM), Chasing Rainbows (MGM), Lord Byron of Broadway (MGM), Free and Easy (MGM), Children of Pleasure (MGM), Our Blushing Brides (MGM), Way Out West (MGM), Good News (MGM), Love in the Rough (MGM). 1931: The Snappy Caballero (MGM short), Crazy House (MGM short), Free and Easy (MGM, Spanish version), Devil’s Cabaret (MGM short), Dance, Fools, Dance (MGM), Just a Gigolo (MGM), Politics (MGM), This Modern Age (MGM), Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise (MGM), The Guardsman (MGM), A Tailor Made Man (MGM), Son of India (MGM), La Sevillana (MGM). 1932: Sky Devils (UA), Scarface (UA), The Crowd Roars (WB), The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (WB), Love is a Racket (WB), Stranger in Town (WB), Crooner (WB), Three on a Match (WB). 1933: College Coach (WB), The Way to Love (Paramount). 1934: Massacre (WB), Heat Lightning (WB), Housewife (WB), Friends of Mr. Sweeney (WB), Side Streets (WB), A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio (WB short), Midnight Alibi (WB), I Sell Anything (WB), Gentlemen Are Born (WB), Murder in the Clouds (WB). 1935: Sweet Music (WB), G-Men (WB), Dr. Socrates (WB), Thanks a Million (TCF), Bright Lights (WB). 1936: We Who Are About to Die (RKO). 1937: Racing Lady (RKO), The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (WB), Manhattan Merry-Go-Round (Republic), She’s No Lady (Paramount), Midnight Court (WB). 1938: Gangs of New York (Republic), Merrily We Live (MGM). 1939: Stronger Than Desire (MGM), Blind Alley (Columbia), Cafe Hostess (Columbia). 1940: Girls of the Road (Columbia). 1942: This Was Paris (WB/British). 1943: Squadron Leader X (RKO/British). 1944: Escape to Danger (RKO/British), There’s a Future in It (Strand). 1945: Flame of Barbary Coast (Republic), Masquerade in Mexico (Paramount). 1946: Abilene Town (UA), The Bachelor’s Daughters (UA). 1947: Out of the Blue (E-L), The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (UA), The Long Night (RKO). 1948: The Walls of Jericho (TCF). 1950: Our Very Own (RKO), The Return of Jesse James (Lippert), Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone (MGM), A Life of Her Own (MGM). 1951: I Was an American Spy (AA), The Secret of Convict Lake (TCF).
Gloria Grahame: Those Lips, Those Eyes
by RAY HAGEN
The photographic files on Gloria Grahame reveal an astonishing assortment of faces. Although she was considered one of the sexiest creatures ever to amble across a screen, Gloria was oddly dissatisfied with her small features, and her enthusiasm for variously oversized mouths resulted in her becoming artistic to the point of virtuosity with a lipstick brush. During those pre-collagen days, she also tried altering her appearance by stuffing wads of Kleenex under her upper lip, and a series of wholly unnecessary cosmetic surgeries left her scarred and mutilated at a time when she should have b
een looking her best.
Her feral, feline sort of sex appeal ideally suited her to “bad girl” roles (she had more than her share) and proved an interesting contrast in more sincere parts. Producers tried at first to cover up her odd semi-lisp, a funny catch noticeable on certain consonants, but later encouraged it when they found that, coupled with her intriguingly girlish voice, it sounded sexy. But there was nothing girlish behind her eyes when she looked at a man. No coy flirtation here, this babe clearly meant business.
Gloria had more to offer than a set of unique physical qualities. She was a genuinely accomplished actress, and a versatile one. But she allowed herself to become typed as a bored, petulant, willful siren, and—though she did an awfully good job of it—the pattern wore thin.
Her Hollywood career was building slowly but steadily until she had one smashingly successful period, topped off by an Academy Award. From there on it was downhill all the way as her career took a spectacular nosedive. Her personal problems and those unaccountable cosmetic surgeries also hampered her progress.
She always wanted to be an actress, and seems to have come by that ambition naturally. Her mother was Jean Grahame, a Glasgow-born actress who had attained some success on the London stage. Jean gave up her career when she married Michael Hallward, a writer and commercial and industrial designer, and traveled with him to Canada where their first daughter, Joy, was born sometime around 1917. While Joy was still an infant, the Hallwards relocated to the U.S. It was there, in Los Angeles, that Gloria was born on November 28, 1923 (not 1925 as she claimed for many years). She was named Gloria Grahame Hallward.
Gloria’s first schooling was at a San Diego nursery school. The Hallwards then moved to Pasadena where Gloria’s mother became a director at the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1979, while in London, Gloria (interviewed by Ian Woodward for Woman’s Weekly) spoke of those days: “I was more or less reared on Shakespeare. I’d come home from school and there they were, rehearsing Shakespeare and Chekhov in the front parlor … My mother was then a director and she was teaching me how to act practically from the moment I could walk and talk … So, when I discovered the local drama school, I just wanted to be a part of that world … Gradually I joined in on some of my mother’s productions. I played the page in The Merry Wives of Windsor and the child in The Toymaker of Nuremberg. I played Ophelia on the back lawn when I was about six, and the little lame girl in The Bluebird when I was seven. I never had any doubt, none at all, about what I wanted to do.”
But all was not well at home. The Depression had hit Michael Hallward hard, and he and his wife divorced.
It was while attending Hollywood High School that Gloria began to make professional progress. She won a summer scholarship to the Guy Bates Post School of the Drama, and won two National Forensic League theatrical competitions. In 1940 she appeared in a cornball rural comedy, Maid in the Ozarks, at the Grand Playhouse in Los Angeles. Also in the cast was future Hollywood co-star Robert Mitchum. (Her niece Vicky, Joy’s daughter, later married Mitchum’s brother Jack.)
Hollywood High’s 1942 senior class play was Ever Since Eve, and Gloria had a featured role. Among those attending the performance was producer Howard Lang. After the play, Lang spoke to Gloria and offered her an understudy spot in his production of Good Night, Ladies, then playing in San Francisco. She had one more month to go before graduating and the offer was for her to begin immediately, so arrangements were hurriedly made with the school authorities for Gloria to complete her studies by mail. With the consent of the school board and her parents, she left for San Francisco within 24 hours.
She understudied one of the leading actresses for six weeks when, in true Ruby Keeler tradition, the actress took ill and Gloria got to go on. She stayed on for the last few weeks of the California engagement, and continued in a leading role when the show moved to Chicago for a year’s run. Good Night, Ladies was a rehash of Ladies Night in a Turkish Bath, and Gloria (her name was still Gloria Hallward) frequently appeared in an all-enveloping sheet.
The show closed in ’43, and Gloria decided to head for Broadway. Once in New York, she quickly got another understudy job, this time to Miriam Hopkins, who had just taken over Tallulah Bankhead’s role of Sabina in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Miss Hopkins, however, was quite less destructible, so Gloria’s performance never got beyond the wings.
But she impressed the play’s producer, Michael Meyerberg, who took her out of the show and gave her a role in his new play, Star Dust. (Her understudy was another future movie siren, Marie Windsor.) It closed during the out-of-town tryouts.
Gloria got her first film work in three “Soundies” produced in New York during 1943–44. They were precursors to today’s music videos, short musical films featuring popular recordings of the day made to be shown on jukeboxes specially configured with small screens. She served primarily as background set decoration.
She finally got a chance to be seen on Broadway when she got a role in Jed Harris’ production of Nunnally Johnson’s The World’s Full of Girls. It opened at the Royale Theatre on December 6, 1943. The critics gave it an especially apathetic reception, but three of them singled out Gloria’s performance. The Daily News said: “Gloria Hallward is a flamboyant and amusing floozy,” and the World-Telegram noted that “the cast was fair—Frances Heflin, Gloria Hallward and Virginia Gilmore outstanding.” The Herald-Tribune commented: “Gloria Hallward conceives a particularly dreadful portrait of a slut,” which may or may not have been a compliment. In any event, the show folded six days later.
Portrait of Gloria Grahame, 1948.
She was next hired by George Abbott for a role in his production of A Highland Fling, which opened April 28, 1944, at the Plymouth Theatre. John Ireland, another future movie cohort, was also in the cast of this rather tepid comedy-fantasy, and Gloria spoke her lines in a Scottish burr. The closest she came to a personal rave notice came from the Herald-Tribune’s Howard Barnes, who said simply: “Gloria Hallward does an excellent job as a barmaid.” It closed a month later, on May 20.
But she was seen in this show by a Metro scout. He liked her work, signed her to a contract and then brought her to the Coast for a screen test. As of July 1944, Gloria became an MGM contract player. Her salary was $250 per week, and her new name was Gloria Grahame. (L.B. Mayer thought Gloria Hallward sounded “too theatrical.”)
She was immediately cast as the saucy title blonde in Blonde Fever (1944), playing a fickle, flighty waitress whose affections were vied for by Marshall Thompson and Philip Dorn. It was merely a Metro B programmer, but a Metro B was often the equivalent of most other studio’s A’s, so it seemed a fairly promising beginning. They then gave her a microscopic one-scene bit in Without Love, a 1945 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle—and that was it. The studio did keep her busy in the portrait gallery where they shot many leggy pin-ups, as they did with all their starlets. One of them wound up on the cover of the October 22, 1946, Life, with an accompanying feature on the newcomer. But Gloria’s looks, while certainly striking, didn’t quite fit the lush MGM glamour stereotype (think Lana), and not even a prestigious Life cover prompted them to give her more work.
She busied herself these years by doing USO tours. It was while doing one of these camp shows that she met 20th Century-Fox contract actor Stanley Clements, known mainly for playing supporting roles as jockeys and thugs. They were married in Wichita Falls, Texas, on August 29, 1945. It was by all accounts a turbulent union and Clements seemed to take his thuggish movie persona quite seriously. He was a heavy drinker, a compulsive gambler and wildly jealous. Two violent years later, after they had separated for the fourth time, Gloria sued for divorce.
In 1946 Frank Capra was trying to cast a young actress as Violet Bick, the town trollop in It’s a Wonderful Life, which he was about to begin at RKO. He wasn’t having much luck so he called Billy Grady, MGM’s casting director, and asked if he knew of a “young blonde sexpot.” According to Capra, in his autobiography The Name Above the Title, Grady re
plied: “Do I know any? For chrissake I’m up to here in blonde pussies that’ve never been to the post. Let me show you some tests.” Capra continued, “The second test was that of a sultry, surly young blonde that seemed undecided whether to kiss you or knock you down. ‘Hey Bill, who’s that dame?’ ‘Who is she, for chrissake? She’s a star. But do you think I can get any of our jerk directors to listen? Two years she’s been around here snapping her garters. You can have her for a cuppa coffee. Her name’s Gloria Grahame.’ Another loanout from MGM [the other was Donna Reed]. And another star was born.” Gloria later told interviewer Myrtle Gebhart that if it hadn’t been for It’s a Wonderful Life and Frank Capra, “I’d still be yawning my way to old age. For a year and a half I hadn’t done a thing but wait around.”
Crossfire with George Cooper (RKO, 1947).
Back at Metro after her new beginning, Gloria was now put to work. She was a shawp-tawkin’ Brooklyn girl who won current teen rage Frank Sinatra in It Happened in Brooklyn, a funny silent screen vamp in Red Skelton’s Merton of the Movies and a nightclub singer, dubbed by Carol Arden, who was murdered (the first of her many violent screen deaths) in Song of the Thin Man. All were released in 1947.
RKO borrowed her again to play another tart, Ginny, the worldly B-girl in Crossfire. Again, a small part, but a key one. She worked for all of two days, but this time attracted a good deal of attention, both critical and public. Her strikingly sharp, unusual features and lisping baby voice were used to great advantage, and she acted the weary, angry dance hall girl with far more than the usual clichéd characteristics. In addition, Crossfire was one of the year’s most important, most discussed films. Gloria was nominated for a 1947 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. She lost to Celeste Holm for Gentleman’s Agreement, but just being nominated put her solidly on the Hollywood map.