Actors - Janet Gaynor

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	Actors - Janet Gaynor

Janet Gaynor (October 6, 1906 – September 14, 1984) was an actress who, in 1928, was the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Early life

Born Laura Gainor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, her family moved west to San Francisco, California when she was a child. Upon graduating from high school, Gaynor decided to pursue a career in acting. For two years, she supported herself with odd jobs in Los Angeles, California while taking minor roles in films. Finally, in 1926, the redhaired actress was cast in the lead role in a silent film called The Johnstown Flood, the same year she was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. Her outstanding performance won her the attention of producers, who cast her in a series of films.

Rising career

Within one year, Gaynor was one of Hollywood's leading ladies. Her performances in Seventh Heaven
(the first of twelve movies she would make with actor Charles Farrell) and both Sunrise
and Street Angel
(in 1927, also with Charles Farrell) earned her the first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1928. It was the only time in Oscar history that this prestigious award was given for multiple roles. The award was given on the basis of the actor's total work over the year, and not just for one particular performance.

Gaynor was one of only a handful of leading ladies who made a successful transition to sound movies over the next decade. In 1937, she was again nominated for an Academy Award, this time for her role in A Star Is Born
. Soon after, despite the success of the film and the acclaim for her performance, she left film for almost twenty years, returning one last time in 1957 in the Pat Boone vehicle, Bernardine.

Death

She died in 1984, at the age of 77, partly as the aftermath of a traffic accident in San Francisco in which a driver running a red light crashed into her taxi, killing one of the passengers, and injuring the rest, including her husband, Paul Gregory, and her long-time companion, Mary Martin; Gaynor never fully recovered from the accident.

She was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

Posthumous revelations

After Boze Hadleigh's 1996 book Conversations with 10 Hollywood Lesbians, it emerged, although neither Gaynor nor Mary Martin were interviewees, or even still alive, that the pair had had an intimate longterm lesbian relationship, despite husbands and children, over a period of several years. Confirmed by (http://www.answers.com/topic/mary-martin, http://www.altladies.com/Notable_Womyn2.htm, http://www.hollywood-underground.com/hf.htm, http://www.gayinfo.tripod.com/A-Z-G.html).

In Hadleigh's 1994 book Hollywood Babble On (ISBN#1-55972-219-3), actor Robert Cummings is quoted as saying regarding Gaynor and Mary Martin:

"Janet Gaynor's husband was Adrian, the MGM fashion designer. But her wife was Mary Martin..."

Filmography

1926 The Blue Eagle
1926 The Johnstown Flood
1926 The Midnight Kiss
1926 The Return of Peter Grimm
1926 The Shamrock Handicap
1927 Seventh Heaven
(Academy Award for Best Actress)
1927 Sunrise (Academy Award for Best Actress)
1927 Two Girls Wanted
1928 Four Devils
1928 Street Angel
(Academy Award for Best Actress)
1929 Christina
1929 Happy Days
1929 Lucky Star
1929 Sunny Side Up
1930 High Society Blues
1931 Daddy Long Legs
1931 Delicious
1931 The Man Who Came Back
1931 Merely Mary Ann
1932 The First Year
1932 Tess of the Storm Country
1933 Adorable
1933 Paddy the Next Best Thing
1933 State Fair
1934 Carolina
1934 Change of Heart
1934 La Ciudad de Carton
1934 Servant's Entrance
1935 The Farmer Takes a Wife
1935 One More Spring
1936 Ladies in Love
1936 Small Town Girl/One Horse Town
1937 A Star Is Born
1938 Three Loves Has Nancy
1938 The Young in Heart
1957 Bernardine

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