Susan Hayward arrived in Hollywood as a Brooklyn girl with a limp, a determination to succeed, and a name that was not even her own. Born Edythe Marrenner on June 30, 1917, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, she grew up in a tenement where money was always short. Her father worked as a transportation worker, and as a child, Susan and her brother collected bottles and cans to sell so the family could eat. At the age of seven her life nearly ended in a severe car accident.
She fractured her hip, spent months in a body cast, and took a full year to recover. The injury left one leg an inch and a half shorter than the other, forcing her to walk with a limp for the rest of her life. The limp became a source of teasing at school, but it did not keep her from the stage. When she was twelve she was cast as the lead in her school’s production of Cinderella in Flowerland.
Her classmates named her most dramatic, and the experience sparked a fixed ambition to pursue a career in Hollywood. She was a devoted moviegoer, especially inspired by the success of fellow Brooklyn-born actress Barbara Stanwyck, and by the time she graduated high school in 1935 she had grown into a striking young woman with a determined spirit. She began working as a model under the name Edythe Marrenner for the Walter Thornton modeling agency in New York. With color photography becoming increasingly popular, her distinctive features made her a natural fit for advertisements.
In 1937 the agency was featured in the Saturday Evening Post, and her career as a model took off. The attention reached David O. Selznick, who was searching for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in his upcoming production of Gone with the Wind. Edythe was one of many young women who auditioned, but her lack of film experience and heavy Brooklyn accent worked against her.
She did not get the role. Rather than return home, she stayed in Hollywood with her sister Florence and found an agent. By 1938 she had a six-month contract with Warner Brothers, and her name was changed to Susan Hayward. Her first roles were small and uncredited.
She appeared as Ronald Reagan’s girlfriend in Girls on Probation in 1938, but she refused to participate in the so-called casting couch system and instead focused on learning her craft. She remained determined even as her father died and her Warner Brothers contract came to an end. A new contract with Paramount Pictures followed, and in 1939 she appeared in Beau Geste alongside Gary Cooper and William Holden. The film was not a major success, but her performance drew attention from Hollywood producers.
In 1941 she played a supporting role in Adam Had Four Sons with Ingrid Bergman and Fay Wray. She then took the lead in the horror film Among the Living, impressing audiences with her dramatic range. The following year she appeared in Reap the Wild Wind, directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, and William Holden.
The same year she played a witch in the comedy I Married a Witch. In 1944 she appeared again with Wayne in The Fighting Seabees. Over the next several years she worked steadily through films such as Young and Willing, Jack London, The Hairy Ape, and And Now Tomorrow, but she continued to seek the leading roles that would carry her to the top of the industry. Her breakthrough came in dramatic roles.
Between 1947 and 1958 she received five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. The first came in 1947 for Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman. The second was for My Foolish Heart in 1949. By that point she was among the most recognized actresses in Hollywood and was able to choose scripts for herself.
In 1951 she played Bathsheba opposite Gregory Peck in the biblical epic David and Bathsheba. In 1952 she received her third nomination for With a Song in My Heart, a performance built around her portrayal of singer Jane Froman. She had now been nominated four times without winning. In 1957 she took on the role of Barbara Graham, a real-life convicted murderer, in the film I Want to Live.
Her powerful and emotionally demanding performance brought her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1958, the culmination of the career she had been building since arriving in Hollywood. The victory marked the peak of her professional life. Afterward she appeared in fewer films each year, devoting more attention to her personal life. In 1961 she co-starred with Dean Martin in Ada, but the films of her later years did not match the quality of those she had made during her prime.
Still, she continued to work in movies until 1972, when she made her final film, The Revengers. The end of her acting career opened a quieter chapter in her life. Her personal life mirrored the difficulties of her early years. In 1944 she married actor Jess Barker.
The couple had fraternal twin sons, Gregory and Timothy. The marriage was troubled. In 1945 Susan was rushed to the hospital after attempting suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. She recovered fully, and the marriage eventually ended in divorce.
In 1955 she met wealthy rancher Floyd Eaton Chalkley, and the two were married in 1957. They lived on his farm in Carrollton, Georgia, where Susan seemed to find the stability that had eluded her before. That peace ended in 1966 when Chalkley died. Susan was deeply affected and went into mourning for three years.
Her final public appearance came in 1974, when she presented the Best Actress Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony. Her friend Charlton Heston had to physically support her onstage; she was visibly ill. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 1972 and given only three months to live, but she fought against the disease for years. Susan Hayward died on March 14, 1975, in Hollywood, at the age of fifty-seven.
She had gone from a Brooklyn tenement to the heights of Hollywood, carried by a talent that turned her childhood hardships into some of the most powerful performances in American film, and she remains remembered as one of the leading actresses of her era.