Gloria Grahame (November 28, 1923 – October 5, 1981) was an Academy Award-winning American film actress.
Grahame was born Gloria Hallward in Los Angeles, California. Her father, Reginald Michael Bloxam Hallward, was an architect and author descended from King Edward III. Her mother, Jeannie McDougall, who used the stage name Jean Grahame, was a British stage actress and acting teacher who taught Gloria acting during her childhood and adolescence. She was signed to a contract with MGM Studios after Louis B. Mayer saw her performing on Broadway.
Changing her name to Gloria Grahame, she made her film debut in Blonde Fever (1944) and scored one of her most widely praised roles as the promiscuous Violet, who is saved from disgrace by George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). MGM was not able to develop her potential as a star and her contract was sold to RKO Studios in 1947.
Grahame was often featured in film noir pictures as a tarnished beauty with an irresistible sexual allure. During this time, she made films for several Hollywood studios. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Crossfire (1947).
in her Academy Award winning role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Grahame starred with Humphrey Bogart in the 1950 film In a Lonely Place, a performance which garnered her considerable praise. Though today it is considered among her finest performances, at the time it didn't help her career; it wasn't a box-office hit and Howard Hughes, owner of RKO Studios, admitted that he never saw her first starring role. When she asked to be loaned out for meaty roles in Born Yesterday and A Place in the Sun Hughes refused and made her do a supporting role in Macao (film). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952).
Other memorable roles included the scheming Irene Nieves in Sudden Fear (1952), the femme fatale Vicki Buckley in Human Desire (1953), and mob moll Debby Marsh in The Big Heat (1953). In a horrifying, especially for its time, scene, she is scarred by hot coffee thrown in her face by Lee Marvin's character.
Grahame was often regarded as a difficult actress to work with, and her career began to wane after her quixotic, but successful casting in the musical movie Oklahoma! (1955). Grahame was seen as difficult to cast with the demise of film noir, not evil, but too naughty to be an innocent. She began a slow return to the theater, but returned to films occasionally to play supporting roles, mostly in minor releases.
Grahame has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to Motion Pictures, at 6522 Hollywood Boulevard.
Grahame had a string of stormy romances and failed marriages during her time in Hollywood. These difficulties began to affect her career after marital and child custody problems began to influence Grahame on the set of Oklahoma!. In 1960, even Hollywood was scandalized after her marriage to Tony Ray, Grahame's former stepson and son of her ex-husband Nicholas Ray (In A Lonely Place, Rebel Without a Cause) whom she had divorced eight years previously. Gloria ended up having children by both father and son. Finding film roles difficult to obtain in Hollywood, she returned to the theater and continued to work as a stage actress.
In 1981, Grahame collapsed during a rehearsal for a British stage play, and returned to New York City, where she died soon after from breast cancer at the age of 57. She is interred in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. An account of her last days is given in the book Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool by Peter Turner.
She was survived by her children from various marriages, and a sister.
