Janet Gaynor

Janet Gaynor was born Laura Augusta Gainor (some sources stated Gainer) in Germantown, Philadelphia. Nicknamed “Lolly” as a child, she was the youngest of two daughters born to Laura and Frank De Witt Gainor. Frank Gainor worked as a theatrical painter and paperhanger. When Gaynor was a toddler, her father began teaching her how to sing, dance and perform acrobatics. As a child in Philadelphia, she began acting in school plays. After her parents divorced in 1914, Gaynor, her sister and her mother moved to Chicago. Shortly thereafter, her mother married electrician Harry C. Jones.[3] The family later moved west to San Francisco.  After graduating from San Francisco Polytechnic High School in 1923, Gaynor spent the winter vacationing in Melbourne, Florida where she did stage work. Upon returning to San Francisco, Gaynor her mother and stepfather moved to Los Angeles where she could pursue an acting career. She was initially hesitant to pursue an acting career and enrolled at Hollywood Secretarial School. She supported herself working by in a shoe store and later as a theatre usher. Her mother and stepfather continued to encourage her to become and actress and she began making the rounds to the studios (accompanied by her stepfather) to find film work.

Gaynor won her first professional acting job on December 26, 1924 as an extra in a Hal Roach comedy short. This led to more extra work in feature films and shorts for Film Booking Offices of America and Universal. Universal eventually hired her as a stock player for $50 a week. Six weeks after being hired by Universal, an executive at Fox Film Corporation offered her a screen test for a supporting role in the film The Johnstown Flood (1926). Her performance in the film caught the attention of Fox executives who signed her to a five-year contract and began to cast her in leading roles. Later that year, Gaynor was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars (along with Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Mary Astor, and others),

By 1927, Gaynor was one of Hollywood’s leading ladies. Her image was that of a sweet, wholesome and pure young woman who was notable for playing her roles with depth and sensitivity. Her performances in 7th Heaven, the first of twelve films she would make with actor Charles Farrell; Sunrise, directed by F. W. Murnau; and Street Angel, also with Charles Farrell, earned her the first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929, when for the first and only time the award was granted for multiple roles, on the basis of total recent work rather than for one particular performance. This practice was prohibited three years later by a new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rule. Gaynor was not only the first actress to win the award but, at 22, was the youngest until 1986, when deaf actress Marlee Matlin, 21, won for her role in Children of a Lesser God.

Gaynor was one of only a handful of established lead actresses who made a successful transition to sound films. In 1929, she was re-teamed with Charles Farrell (the pair were known as “America’s favorite love birds”) for the musical film Sunny Side Up. During the early 1930s, Gaynor was one of Fox’s most popular actresses and one of Hollywood’s biggest box office draws; in 1931 and 1932 she and Marie Dressler were tied as the #1 draw. After Dressler’s death in 1934, Gaynor held the #1 spot alone. She was often cited as a successor to Mary Pickford and was cast in remakes of two Pickford films, Daddy Long Legs (1931) and Tess of the Storm Country. Gaynor drew the line at a proposed remake of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which she considered “too juvenile”.

Gaynor continued with roles in State Fair (1933) with Will Rogers and The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935), which introduced Henry Fonda to the screen as Gaynor’s leading man. However, when Darryl F. Zanuck merged his fledgling studio, 20th Century Pictures, with Fox Film Corporation to form 20th Century Fox, her status became precarious and even tertiary to that of burgeoning actresses Loretta Young and Shirley Temple. According to press reports at the time, Gaynor held out on signing with the new 20th Century Fox until her salary was raised from $1,000 a week to $3,000. The studio quickly issued a statement denying that Gaynor was holding out for more money. She quietly signed a new contract, the terms of which were never made public.

Gaynor co-starred in Ladies in Love (1937) with Constance Bennett, Loretta Young and Tyrone Power, but her box office appeal had already begun to wane: once ranked #1, she had dropped to #24. She considered retiring due to her frustration with studio executives, who continued to cast her in the same type of role that brought her fame while audiences’ tastes were changing. After 20th Century Fox executives proposed that her contract be renegotiated and she be demoted to featured player status, Gaynor left the studio, but her retirement plans were quashed when David O. Selznick offered her the leading role in a new film to be produced by his company, Selznick International. Selznick, who was friendly with Gaynor off-screen, was convinced that audiences would enjoy seeing her portray a character closer to her true personality. He believed that she possessed the perfect combination of humor, charm, vulnerability and innocence for the role of aspiring actress Esther Blodgett (later “Vicki Lester”) in A Star Is Born. Gaynor accepted the role. The romantic drama was filmed in Technicolor and co-starred Fredric March. Released in 1937, it was an enormous hit and earned Gaynor her second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress; she lost to Luise Rainer for The Good Earth.

A Star Is Born revitalized Gaynor’s career and she was cast in the screwball comedy The Young in Heart with Paulette Goddard. That film was a modest hit, but by then Gaynor had definitely decided to retire. She later explained, “I had been working steadily for 17 long years, making movies was really all I knew of life. I just wanted to have time to know other things. Most of all I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to get married. I wanted a child. And I knew that in order to have these things one had to make time for them. So I simply stopped making movies. Then as if by a miracle, everything I really wanted happened.”

In August 1939, Gaynor married Hollywood costume designer Adrian with whom she had a son in 1940. The couple divided their time between their 250 acre cattle ranch north of Brasília, and their homes in New York and California. Both were also were heavily involved in the fashion and arts community. Gaynor returned to acting in the early 1950s with appearances in live television anthology series including Medallion Theatre, Lux Video Theatre, and General Electric Theater. In 1957, she appeared in her final film role as Pat Boone’s mother in the musical comedy Bernadine.  In November 1959, she made her stage debut in the play The Midnight Sun, in New Haven, Connecticut. The play, which Gaynor later called “a disaster”, was not well received and closed shortly after its debut.

Gaynor also became an accomplished oil painter of vegetable and flower still lifes. She sold over 200 painting and had four showings under the Wally Findlay Galleries banner in New York, Chicago, and Palm Beach from 1975 to February 1982.  In 1980, Gaynor made her Broadway debut as “Maude” in the stage adaptation of the 1971 film Harold and Maude. She received good reviews for her performance, but the play was panned by critics and closed after 21 performances. Later that year, she reunited with her Servants’ Entrance co-star Lew Ayres to film an episode of the anthology series The Love Boat. It was the first television appearance Gaynor made since the 1950s and would be her last screen role. In February 1982, she starred in the touring production of On Golden Pond. It would be her final acting role.

On the evening of September 5, 1982, Gaynor, her husband Paul Gregory, actress Mary Martin, and Martin’s manager Ben Washer were involved in a serious car accident in San Francisco. A van ran a red light at the corner of California Street and Franklin and crashed into the Luxor taxicab the group was riding in, knocking it into a tree. Ben Washer was killed while Mary Martin sustained two broken ribs and a broken pelvis and Gaynor’s husband suffered two broken legs. Gaynor sustained several serious injuries including eleven broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, pelvic fractures, a punctured lung, and injuries to her bladder and kidney. The driver of the van, Robert Cato, was arrested on two counts of felony drunk driving, reckless driving, speeding, running a red light and vehicular homicide. Cato pleaded not guilty and was later released on $10,000 bail. On March 15, 1983, he was found guilty of drunk driving and vehicular homicide and was sentenced to three years in prison.

As a result of her injuries, Gaynor was hospitalized for four months and underwent two surgeries to repair a perforated bladder and internal bleeding. She recovered sufficiently to return to her home in Desert Hot Springs but continued to experience health issues due to the injuries and required frequent hospitalizations. Shortly before her death, she was hospitalized for pneumonia and other ailments. On September 14, 1984, Gaynor died at Desert Hospital in Palm Springs at the age of 77. Her doctor, Bart Apfelbaum, attributed her death to the 1982 car accident and stated that Gaynor “…never recovered” from her injuries.  Gaynor is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery next to her second husband Adrian. Her headstone reads “Janet Gaynor Gregory,” her legal name after her marriage to her third husband, producer and director Paul Gregory.