Product Code Database
Janet Gaynor (born Laura Augusta Gainor; October 6, 1906 – September 14, 1984) was an American actress. She began her career as an extra in shorts and silent films. After signing with Fox Film Corporation (later 20th Century-Fox) in 1926, she rose to fame and became one of the biggest box office draws of the era. In 1929, she became the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in 7th Heaven, (both 1927) and Street Angel (1928), the only occasion an actress won one Oscar for multiple film roles. Her success continued into the sound film era; for A Star Is Born (1937), she received a second Best Actress Academy Award nomination.
After retiring from acting in 1939, Gaynor married film costume designer Adrian, with whom she had a son. She briefly returned to acting in films and television in the 1950s and later became an accomplished oil painter. In 1980, Gaynor made her Broadway theatre debut in the stage adaptation of the 1971 film Harold and Maude, and appeared in the touring theatrical production of On Golden Pond. She died on September 14, 1984 from health complications caused by injuries sustained in a 1982 automobile accident.
After graduating from San Francisco Polytechnic High School in 1923, Gaynor spent the winter 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 do so and enrolled at Hollywood Secretarial School. She supported herself by working in a shoe store and later as a theatre usher. Her mother and stepfather continued to encourage her to become an 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. (2025). 9781557835512, Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 9781557835512
Later that year, Gaynor was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars (along with Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Mary Astor, and others).
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 was known as "America's favorite love birds") for the musical film Sunny Side Up. During the early 1930s, Gaynor was one of Fox Film'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 number-one draw at the box office. After Dressler's death in 1934, Gaynor held the top spot alone. She often was 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 (1932). Gaynor drew the line at a proposed remake of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which she considered "too juvenile".
Gaynor continued to garner top billing for 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, Twentieth Century Pictures, with Fox Film Corporation to form 20th Century-Fox, her status became precarious, and even tertiary to those of burgeoning actresses Loretta Young and Shirley Temple. According to press reports at the time, Gaynor held out on signing with 20th Century-Fox until her salary was raised from $1,000 per 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 received top billing above Constance Bennett, Loretta Young, and Tyrone Power in Ladies in Love (1937), but her box-office appeal had begun to wane: Once ranked number one, she had dropped to number 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 re-negotiated, and that 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 Pictures. 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 (1938) 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." At the top of the industry, she retired at age 33.
Gaynor also became an accomplished oil painter of vegetable and flower . She sold over 200 paintings 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 had made since the 1950s and was her last screen role. In February 1982, she starred in the touring production of On Golden Pond. This was her final acting role.
According to Gaynor's biographer Sarah Baker, Farrell proposed marriage during the filming of Lucky Star, but the two never followed through with it. In her later years, Gaynor would hold their different personalities accountable for their eventual separation.
Gaynor was married three times and had one child. Her first marriage was to lawyer Jesse Lydell Peck, whom she married on September 11, 1929. Gaynor's attorney announced the couple's separation in late December 1932. She was granted a divorce on April 7, 1933. On August 14, 1939, she married MGM costume designer Adrian in Yuma, Arizona. This relationship has been called a lavender marriage because Adrian was openly gay within the film community, and Gaynor herself was rumored to be bisexual. The couple had one son, Robin Gaynor Adrian, born in 1940. Gaynor and Adrian remained married until Adrian's death from a stroke on September 13, 1959.
On December 24, 1964, Gaynor married her longtime friend, stage producer Paul Gregory, to whom she remained married until her death. The two maintained a home in Desert Hot Springs, California, and owned 3,000 acres of land in Brazil, situated near Brasília.
Cato, a former policeman, in the previous year, had been charged with two felonies for using his car as a deadly weapon against a motorist, Mellicent Wauters, a dental assistant and amateur actress, with whom he had argued over a parking spot. Cato had been placed on informal probation; subsequently, the charges had been dropped.
Cato pleaded not guilty and was later released on $10,000 bail (equivalent to $ in ). 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 wreck and stated that Gaynor "never recovered" from her injuries. In September 1984, these injuries were officially ruled to have caused her death.
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.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Gaynor has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6284 Hollywood Blvd.
On March 1, 1978, Howard W. Koch, then the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, presented Gaynor with a citation for her "truly immeasurable contribution to the art of motion pictures".
In 1979, Gaynor was awarded the Order of the Southern Cross for her cultural contributions to Brazil.
| + Features | |||
| 1924 | Cupid's Rustler | Lost film Uncredited | |
| 1924 | Young Ideas | Uncredited | |
| 1925 | Dangerous Innocence | Lost film Uncredited | |
| 1925 | The Burning Trail | Lost film Uncredited | |
| 1925 | The Teaser | Lost film Uncredited | |
| 1925 | The Plastic Age | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | A Punch in the Nose | Bathing Beauty | Uncredited |
| 1926 | The Beautiful Cheat | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | The Johnstown Flood | Anna Burger | |
| 1926 | Oh! What a Nurse! | />Uncredited | |
| 1926 | Skinner's Dress Suit | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | The Shamrock Handicap | Lady Sheila O'Hara | |
| 1926 | The Galloping Cowboy | Lost film Uncredited | |
| 1926 | The Man in the Saddle | Lost film Uncredited | |
| 1926 | The Blue Eagle | Rose Kelly | |
| 1926 | The Midnight Kiss | Mildred Hastings | Lost film |
| 1926 | The Return of Peter Grimm | Catherine | |
| 1926 | Lazy Lightning | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | The Stolen Ranch | Uncredited | |
| 1927 | Two Girls Wanted | Marianna Wright | Lost film |
| 1927 | 7th Heaven | Diane | Academy Award for Best Actress |
| 1927 | The Wife - Indre | ||
| 1928 | Street Angel | Angela | |
| 1928 | 4 Devils | Marion | Lost film |
| 1929 | Lucky Star | Mary Tucker | Released as silent and sound versions, sound version is lost |
| 1929 | Happy Days | Herself | Lost film |
| 1929 | Christina | Christina | Lost film |
| 1929 | Sunny Side Up | Molly Carr | |
| 1930 | High Society Blues | Eleanor Divine | |
| 1931 | The Man Who Came Back | Angie Randolph | |
| 1931 | Daddy Long Legs | Judy Abbott | |
| 1931 | Merely Mary Ann | Mary Ann | |
| 1931 | Delicious | Heather Gordon | |
| 1932 | The First Year | Grace Livingston | |
| 1932 | Tess of the Storm Country | Tess Howland | |
| 1933 | State Fair | Margy Frake | |
| 1933 | Adorable | Princess Marie Christine, aka Mitzi | |
| 1933 | Paddy the Next Best Thing | Paddy Adair | |
| 1934 | Carolina | Joanna Tate | |
| 1934 | The Cardboard City | Herself | Cameo |
| 1934 | Change of Heart | Catherine Furness | |
| 1934 | Servants' Entrance | Hedda Nilsson aka Helga Brand | |
| 1935 | One More Spring | Elizabeth Cheney | |
| 1935 | The Farmer Takes a Wife | Molly Larkins | |
| 1936 | Small Town Girl | Katherine 'Kay' Brannan | |
| 1936 | Ladies in Love | Martha Kerenye | |
| 1937 | A Star Is Born | Esther Victoria Blodgett, aka Vicki Lester | Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress |
| 1938 | Three Loves Has Nancy | Nancy Briggs | |
| 1938 | The Young in Heart | George-Anne Carleton | |
| 1957 | Bernardine | Mrs. Ruth Wilson | |
| 1961 | The Four of Us | Ann Hathaway, with George Murphy as Tom Hathaway | Ed James TV Pilot; Guest Stars: Herb Vigran Raymond Bailey |
| + ! colspan="4" | Short subject | ||
| 1924 | All Wet | Uncredited | |
| 1925 | The Haunted Honeymoon | Uncredited | |
| 1925 | The Crook Buster | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1926 | Herself | |
| 1926 | Ridin' for Love | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | Fade Away Foster | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | The Fire Barrier | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | Don't Shoot | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | Pep of the Lazy J | June Adams | Uncredited |
| 1926 | Martin of the Mounted | Uncredited | |
| 1926 | 45 Minutes from Hollywood | Uncredited | |
| 1927 | The Horse Trader | Uncredited | |
| 1941 | Meet the Stars #2: Baby Stars | Herself |
| +Awards | ||||
| 1927 | Academy Awards | Best Actress | 7th Heaven | rowspan="3" |
| 1928 | Street Angel | |||
| 1937 | A Star Is Born |
|
|
