Norma Shearer
Canadian-American actress and early Academy Award winner.
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via Wikipedia: Norma Shearer · see source
She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Divorcee (1930) and was the first five-time acting nominee, with six total nominations.[1] Mick LaSalle called her a feminist pioneer and "the exemplar of sophisticated modern womanhood" on screen.[2] Edith Norma Shearer was born on August 11, 1902, and died on June 12, 1983; she acted in films from 1919 through 1942 and was a Canadian-American performer.[1]
Life and work
Her father's construction business failed in 1918, forcing the family into poverty, and her older sister suffered a mental breakdown.[3] Shearer described her childhood before that as "a pleasant dream"[3] Shearer consulted Dr. William Bates about her strabismus and performed daily exercises to conceal the cast.[4] She began modeling, becoming "Miss Lotta Miles" for Kelly-Springfield Tires.[5]
Shearer's ancestry included Scottish, English, and Irish roots, and she attended Montreal High School for Girls and Westmount High School while growing up in Montreal.[5] Her mother sold the family piano and dog to fund the move, and the three Shearer women arrived in New York in January 1920.[6][5] The Trial of Mary Dugan* (1929), Shearer's initial talking picture, proved highly successful, and critics praised her Canadian accent.[5]
References
- Wikipedia, "Norma Shearer" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Norma Shearer: 1903 Baptism certificate (view 17/29) (Westmount Advent Christian Church, Montreal, Quebec, Canada)"; "Norma Shearer Biography: Film Actress (c. 1902–1983)", Biography.com (FYI / A&E Networks); Shipman, David. The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years. Crown Publishers, 1970. p. 487-492; Shen, "Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World", Chronicle Books, 2016, p. 117; Morris, "Queen Norma – Shearer, That Is", Bright Lights Film Journal, April 1, 1996; Soares, "Norma Shearer: 'Queen of MGM' & 'L en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Norma Shearer" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: LaSalle 2000, p. 6 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Norma Shearer" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wayne, "The Golden Girls of Mgm: Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Others", Da Capo Press, 2003, p. 36 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Norma Shearer" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Vieira, "New York", Norma Shearer, 2017; Vieira 2013, p. 180; Dart, "Book review: The Art Of The Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers 1925 to 1940 by John Kobal", Art New Zealand, Spring 1981 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Norma Shearer" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lambert 1990, p. 15 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Norma Shearer" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Pace, "Norma Shearer, Film Star Two Decades, is Dead", The New York Times, June 14, 1983 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Norma Shearer (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Norma Shearer (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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