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Seastrom, Victor: Directed Norma in He Who Gets Slapped (1924), and The Tower of Lies (1925).
Service, Robert W. (1874-1958): A Canadian author of "Dangerous Dan M'Grew" and "The Face on the Bar Room Floor" were two plays in which Norma recited for practice while involved with a theatrical group.
Sex Drive of Norma: Both Norma Shearer biographies make note of Norma’s sexual personality. Where this all started is still unknown, but it is known that Norma’s first lover was Jack Gardner, a childhood sweetheart. They met in Montreal, and when he went into the First World War, Norma bid him goodbye and later that night told a friend, “Jack doesn’t know this, but I’m not going to marry him. Even though he’s terribly attractive… He was my first beau. Never marry your first beau.” Norma’s most notorious lover was Victor Fleming, whom she met when he was directing her in 1924’s Empty Hands. He reportedly was the man who furthered her sexual knowledge. When she wanted to get more attached to him emotionally, he ditched her. The following lover was Monta Bell, whom even proposed to Norma during the filming of 1924’s The Snob and various other films. (Note: When Thalberg married Norma, the collaborations with Bell stopped; maybe Thalberg had some underlying reasons for that?)
In the previous relationships, sources state that sex had been a major strong point. With Irving Thalberg, that wasn’t the case at all. It was the exact opposite actually. While he did fit the exotic Mediterranean look that Norma liked the most, his poor health didn’t exactly give him the energy to satisfy Norma.
Francis Marion said, “And their sex life? Way down on the priority list, from what she told me. I don’t think they found all that much time for it. But with all those pressures, that was understandable enough.”
Helen Ferguson told Lawrence Quirk, “There was Irving’s fragile health, his many pressures; she was more mother and nursemaid than bed partner. If Irving was ‘too tired’ for sex, that was one husband who really meant it. I am positive they were faithful to each other, really loved each other. Their marriage was held up as a model for all Hollywood. But let’s face it; Irving’s sex drive was not strong, what with his health problems and his many tensions.”
Norma never did risk an affair, so she poured all her frustration into her love scenes. Neil Hamilton remembered, “And God, did she play the part to the hilt! Her love scenes positively sizzled, and she would get so passionate with me-before the camera’s eye, of course-that I used to wonder if she was getting enough at home.”
After Irving Thalberg died, Norma fluttered around Hollywood with several men; making up for lost time. Jimmy Stewart, possibly Mickey Rooney, and George Raft-who was one of the three main loves of her life-are the names that are most remembered. George Raft and Marti Arrouge were the only lovers who satisfied Norma both sexually and emotionally.
Shearer, Andrew (circa 1864-1944): Father of Norma Shearer. He was the first in the Shearer family known to have suffered from a mental illness, a trait that would be passed down to Norma and sister Athole. Childhood friends of Norma described him as a ghost like presence in the house. Around 1919, the Canadian economy fell into a temporary slump, where Andrew Shearer sold his business and lost most of the family money in the deal. He moved the family into a crime stricken area of Montreal, and Edith soon took Norma and Athole to New York to find jobs in the entertainment industry. The entire situation would affect Andrew for the rest of his life. He and Norma seldom spoke to each other in the 1920s, and it is presumed that he was uninvited to Norma's wedding to Irving Thalberg at Edith's insistence. They divorced in the early 1930s, and he married Elizabeth Shearer who nursed him until his death in 1944. When he died, he had lost his last grip on reality, and Norma would face a similar fate.
Shearer, Athole(9/20/1900-3/17/1985): Norma's sister. The happy childhood Athole lived showed no signs of the mental illness she would suffer from the majority of her life. The first known breakdown occurred after a boyfriend died in The First World War. Doctors diagnosed her with War Neurosis and kept her sedated in a dark room for over a month. When the War ended, however, the breakdowns continued, and Norma blew Athole’s problems off with a shrug of the shoulders and a line she would repeat for the decades to come, “I wish Athole would just pull herself together already.” Friends of Norma’s remembered situations where Athole was completely normal, than would get angry, throw a tantrum, then wander off in a day dream and become mentally slow and tired, becoming a completely different person. Her unstable marriage to motion picture director Howard Hawks only resulted in more frequent and serious breakdowns throughout the 1930s, and by 1942 Athole seemed to have officially gone, what the Hollywood insiders claimed, “bonkers.” Norma showed up at the divorce proceedings and testified on Athole’s behalf, telling the mass media that Athole was not feeling well enough to enter the courtroom.
Athole appeared with Norma in The Flapper, Way Down East, and The Restless Sex(all 1920). Both sisters had uncredited parts in all three films, but only Norma would further a career with film. They remained somewhat close when Norma was working but about twenty years after her retirement from the screen, Norma officially cut off contact from Athole, who was going in and out of what doctors feared were mental states of no return on a regular basis. They had no explanations, only mental shock treatments to offer. By the 1970s and early 1980s Athole had been appearing to be overcoming her struggle, and eventually was more mentally stable than Norma. She died in 1985 completely blind.
Shearer, Douglas(11/17/1899-1/5/1971): When Douglas Shearer came to visit his little sister Norma in the mid 20's, she managed to get him a job as an assistant in the camera department, then MGM forced him to work in the sound unit by himself when the talkies arrived. Though his sister got him the job, Douglas Shearer became one of the most important men in sound development and technology during his many years at MGM. He originated the process of playing musical scores on a soundtrack to go along in sync with the actors singing. The Broadway Melody(1929) was the first musical he used his technique on, and the process is still used to this very day. He won his first Oscar for The Big House (1930) and he went on to win eleven more Oscars, twelve total. Douglas was later appointed to head of technical research at MGM, and held his office from 1955 until his retirement in 1968. He would be the only member of his family to not experience suffering from mental illness.
Shearer, Edith(circa 1873-4/2/1958): Norma's mother. Edith appeared with her daughters in The Restless Sex, and Way Down East (both 1920). Being the most notorious woman in Montreal, it was public knowledge that she suffered from both Heroin and Nymphomaniac addictions, she allowed Norma and Athole to stay out and party with boys until the early hours of the morning, feeling that "youngsters deserve the most freedom." Douglas had similar privileges, and Edith didn’t even notice when he stumbled in the house, though neither he or Athole were as active as Norma. Luckily, Norma and Douglas were determined enough to pull themselves together and make themselves successes. Not one picture with Edith shows her smiling, even at Norma's wedding. Edith lost interest in her husband in the late 1910s, probably even before, and took it upon herself to care for Athole's mental illness, eventually having a complete mental breakdown herself in the 1950s.
Sherwood, Robert E.: Wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning play Idiot's Delight which was a 1939 hit for Norma and Clark Gable on the movie screen. He also wrote the screen adaptation of the film.
Smilin' Through(1932): Directed by Sidney Franklin; stars Norma, Fredric March, and Leslie Howard, Based on the play by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin. Smilin' Through was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, but lost to Thalberg's other classic, Grand Hotel. The first movie adaptation of the play was in 1921, the thrid was twenty years later with Jeanette MacDonald. In Quirk's Norma: The Story of Norma Shearer, director Sidney Franklin talks about the movie:That film was probably the happiest, most fulfilling professional experience I ever knew, and people mention Smilin' Through more to me than any other. Also, I was glad to be able to make some improvements and embellishments I felt the 1922 film I directed lacked, just as I was to be glad to do The Barretts once more for the same reason. My only reservation about the 1932 Smilin' Through was its comparative dearth of mood music (Irving Thalberg didn't care for music, one of his surprising oversights, I felt) and when I came to the second Barretts, I was determined to make up for that, as Irving had kept the music largely out of the 1934 version, to my great regret.
The film was Thalberg’s way to regain Norma’s good girl clout. After religious backlash from her sexual adventures in A Free Soul (1931) and Strange Interlude (1932), it probably was a wise move. Smilin’ Through revived Norma, and became one of the top-grossing films of that year.
Snob, The(1924, silent): Directed by Monta Bell; stars John Gilbert, Norma, and Conrad Nagel; Based on the story by Helen R. Martin. In Complicated Women, Mick LaSalle states that this is more than likely a lost film, but Gavin Lambert’s Shearer biography states that The Snob features one of Gilbert’s best performances as a social climber. Since Lambert also described scenes and acting from another lost Norma movie, 1925’s The Tower of Lies, it probably is more than likely lost.
Stanwyck, Barbara(7/16/1907-1/20/1990):
(Note: The Barretts of Wimpole Street had been released in 1934, Romeo and Juliet would not be released until April 1937, even though the premiere had taken place in September 1936.) As Katharine aged, her quietness was her way of rebelling against her mother. When Norma eventually tried to have a relationship with her daughter, the damage had been done, and Katharine relished in ignoring her mother the way she had been ignored as a child. Throughout most of her adulthood, Katharine lived in Los Angeles, enrolled at UCLA for a writing course, but gave it up to marry the popular TV actor Richard Anderson. When Katharine gave birth to a child, making Norma a grandmother, she (Norma) refused to have any relationship with the child and Katharine moved herself further away from her mother. The marriage didn’t last, and Katharine ended up in Aspen, Colorado. There she managed a bookstore, Explorer Booksellers, and was active in the local town events. (She would also marry Bill Stirling, former mayor of Aspen.) As Norma’s health declined, Katharine made no point of visiting her mother at the Motion Picture County Hospital. She died in early 2006 of cancer.
Stirling, Katherine Thalberg(6/13/1935-1/5/2006): Daughter of Norma and Irving Thalberg. Very needy as a child, Katharine’s demands for attention were ignored by Norma, who either blew her off altogether, or agreed to stick around with her daughter -making it clear she would rather be somewhere else. As if one child for Irving wasn’t enough, every one of Norma’s rivals at MGM were sure that when production was halted on Marie Antoinette for Norma’s “incapacity”, she would find her own away around giving birth to a second child. Unlike the way Let Us Be Gay (1930) was rushed into production when Norma found out she was pregnant the first time, Norma stayed off the screen for nearly three years this time around.
Strange Interlude(1932): Commercially unsuccessful movie adaptation of Eugene O’Neil’s legendary play which ran for over five hours on the stage (the movie was only an hour and fifty minutes though). Norma plays the lead character, Nina Leeds, who has a baby out of wedlock with Dr. Ned Darrell, Clark Gable, and passes it off as her husband’s. Thalberg's excuse for the failure of the film was a classic in itself, "It needed George Cukor."There are two crucial moments in the plot which parallel Norma’s own down fall towards the end of her life, one is the blindness of Nina and the other is the mental illness that runs in the Evans family. (Norma at the end of her life indeed went blind and doctors later confirmed that there was indeed a “suicidal pattern” in the Shearer family.)
My Note: The film can be a little dull, but Norma gives a phenomenal performance which is sometimes eerie to watch, and this is also one of the rare films, with the exception of 1934’s Men In White, where Clark Gable actually acts. He’s actually pretty good, too.
Strangers May Kiss(1931): Stars Norma Shearer, Neil Hamilton, and Robert Montgomery in one of her pre-code movies. After The Divorcee, released the previous year, Norma's public went mad for her new racy image. Strangers certainly continued her descent as Hollywood's definitive pre code icon. Things were different now, however. Norma had become a mother, and was determined more than ever to balance wife, mother, and modern professional woman. It was like something from a Ruth Chatterton preCode. In Norma: The Story of Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery sums it up best:
In Strangers May Kiss I sensed a new restlessness in her. Her career ambitions were as high as ever, but I felt she was compensating for something. It was nothing against the Thalberg marriage -it was a wonderful marriage- everyone thought them the ideal couple –but she seemed to be somehow taking charge on her own, while remaining always very solicitous of Irving in every respect. I was not the only one who felt Norma had such a strong inner drive, such a fierce discipline, she would have made it to all-out stardom no matter what the circumstances of her life.
Norma also gave Adrian a major headache on the Strangers May Kiss set, "She was obsessed with the idea that the pregnancy had left her pudgy, that the audience would be able to see through the fabric and undies straight to the stretch marks- it was ridiculous. In fact, she never looked better. Motherhood had given her a new bloom." (SNS)
For Complicated Women, Mick LaSalle reviewed the film:
Shearer is wonderful in Strangers May Kiss, and the picture is peppered with lots of well-turned moments- particularly when she finds out her lover it leaving her; and later, when he rejects her again, after he hears the rumors and realizes forty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong. “I won’t spend the rest of my life shrinking at shadows on the wall,” he tells her.
(My note: Prudish critics and the Hays office found a lot to object to in Strangers May Kiss, but it’s essential Shearer. Norma gives one of her best performances in one of her best movies.)
Stolen Jools, The(1931, short): A short subject about a search for Norma Shearer's stolen jewels. The short was to raise money for the National Variety Artists Tuberculosis Sanitarium. The short features a variety of Hollywood stars including: Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, William Haines, and Norma Shearer.
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg(1927, silent): Directed by Ernst Lubitsch; Stars Norma, Ramon Novarro, and Jean Hersholt; Based on Wilhelm Meyer Forster’s Old Heidelberg and The Student Prince by Dorothy Donnelly and Sigmund Romberg. (Note: Norma’s only film with Lubitsch and Novarro.)
Lubitsch’s exploitation of Novarro’s homosexuality, both on and off the screen, offended nearly everyone on the set. (See that entry for more information on what went down.)
Swanson, Gloria(3/27/1898-4/4/1983):