14. A star was born on October 6, 1906
Born Laura Augusta Gainor in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Janet Gaynor had a successful career as an actress on the silver screen. Perhaps best remembered for her role as Vicki Lester in the original 1937 film A Star Is Born, Gaynor first earned her reputation as one of the most popular actresses of the silent film era. When she graduated from high school in 1923, Gaynor decided to pursue an acting career. She moved to Los Angeles, where she worked in a shoe store for $18 a week. During her first two years in LA, she garnered small parts in several silent comedy shorts and feature films. Then in 1926, at age 20, she landed the lead role in the epic silent film The Johnstown Flood. That year, she was also selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, along with other actresses such as Mary Astor, Joan Crawford, Fay Wray and Dolores del Río. The WAMPAS Baby Stars was an annual promotional campaign sponsored by the United States Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers. The campaign, which lasted from 1922 to 1934, honored 13 young actresses each year whom the association believed to be on the brink of stardom. The selectees were given extensive media coverage. That and her outstanding performance in The Johnstown Flood won Gaynor the attention of film producers, who began casting her in more movies. In 1928, at the age of 22, Gaynor was the first to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. At the time, the prize was awarded for multiple roles, given on the basis of the actor’s total work over the year, and not just for one particular performance. The three silent films that earned her the honor were Seventh Heaven, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel. Gaynor was one of only a handful of leading ladies who made the successful transition from silent films to “the talkies.” For a number of years, she was the foremost actress at Fox Studios and was given her choice of prime roles. She starred in such films as Sunny Side Up (1929), Delicious (1931), Merely Mary Ann (1931), Adorable (1933), State Fair (1933) and The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935), which introduced Henry Fonda to the screen as her leading man. In 1937 Gaynor had the lead role in the classic film A Star Is Born, opposite Frederic March. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress but lost out to Luise Rainer for her performance in The Good Earth. The other formidable contenders in that category that year were Greta Garbo in Camille; Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas; and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth. At age 32, Gaynor left the film industry for nearly 20 years in order to travel with her costume designer husband. She returned to the screen one last time in 1957, where she played Pat Boone’s mother in the film Bernadine. Gaynor was married three times. Her first marriage was to Jesse Lydell Peck, which lasted from 1929 to 1933. She was then married to MGM costume designer Adrian from 1939 until his death in 1959. They had one son, Robin Gaynor Adrian. In 1964 she married film producer Paul Gregory, and they lived in Desert Hot Springs, California. In addition to acting, Gaynor was an accomplished artist, and her oil paintings were featured at the Wally Findlay Galleries show in New York in 1977. Janet Gaynor died in Palm Springs, California, on September 14, 1984, at the age of 77. The star of A Star Is Born has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. ‘A Star Is Born’ is reborn A Star Is Born was such a successful film that it was remade twice. The screenplay for the original 1937 dramatic film was written by Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. In 1954, the film was made into a musical, starring Judy Garland and James Mason. It was directed by George Cukor, and the screenplay, adapted from the original, was written by Moss Hart. That year, Judy Garland was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film, but she lost out to Grace Kelly in The Country Girl. The film was remade once again in 1976, this time as a rock musical starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. It was directed by Frank Pierson and produced by Streisand and Jon Peters. Other actors who were considered to play the leading man were Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando and Neil Diamond. – R.B.