Margaret Sullivan, shit actress

I thought she was good in Back Street.

Liked her in The Shopworn Angel, too

I preferred reading about her in HAYWIRE

Do you mean Margaret Sullavan?

Love her in comedies, particularly THE GOOD FAIRY and THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER.

A wonderful actress--ethereal, delicate, highly nuanced.

Fuck you, OP.

brooke, dear, you had one story. You don't stop telling it. Follow your siblings.

[b]shit op[/b]

[bold] shit [/bold]

OP, that's just rude especially during the holiday season. And she was good.

Well he's right. She makes Blythe Danner look like Meryl Streep.

I watched this horrible film a little while ago, too. Hate to say it, but I watch it every..single...time it's on because it's so awful. The skiing...all the Nazis (Robert Stack)...the skiing.

I dislike Margaret Sullavan for the fact I just don't understand how she's considered anything attractive to the male leads. That weird overbite(?), mousy look, lispy voice. Ugh. Yes. June Allyson look...yuck!!!!

There's no accounting for taste, but did you know intelligence is linked to opinion?

And since good old OP can't spell the woman's name and putting words in boldface seems beyond him, I wouldn't put much faith in his opinions about anything.

That's great, r12, but how about an opinion about her acting and not tsk-tsks over spelling and formatting?

With her Everywoman appearance and demeanor, I'm always shocked she isn't more fondly remembered today.

She was sort of Dustin Hoffman before there was a Dustin Hoffman.

Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan Sullavan

Happy Now?

I happen to like her acting and SHOP AROUND THE CORNER is one of the great holiday movies and one of greatest romances of all time.

I can't think of anyone who could play the slightly neurotic female lead quite the way she did.

So yeah, she still has her fans, and I don't see what there is to be gained by trashing a woman who's not around to defend herself.

Cunt.

Her acting was too "precious" for me.

She bagged three famous husbands, William Wyler, Henry Fonda and Leland Hayward.

She was a fine actress, very unique. Not good-looking at all, but apparently men went crazy for her anyway. She was married four times. Supposedly she "loathed" acting; if so, then why the hell did she become an actress? She was so temperamental that she was the only player at MGM who could outbully Louis B. Mayer. Depressed (her youngest children had told her they wanted to live with their father Leland Hayward permanently) and going deaf, she committed suicide at age 50.

Her younger daughter Bridgette committed suicide not long after. Her son Bill committed suicide many years later.

Leland Hayward remarried twice after divorcing Sullavan (he was married five times in all). His last wife was the awful Pamela Harriman; she was so greedy that she stole two pearl necklaces and an emerald ring Brooke Hayward inherited after her sister Bridgette's death. She entrusted Harriman with the jewelry after Bridgette's suicide; Harriman said she'd keep the jewelry in a safe until Brooke wanted them. When Brooke asked for the jewelry back, Harriman said she didn't know where it was. In all likelihood, she sold them. She was a bottomless pit when it came to greed. Anyway, Leland Hayward died after years of illness and pain.

Brooke Hayward is still around, the only one of her crazy family who still survives.

Leland

Before she went crazy, she was one tough bitch!

[quote]Sullavan had a reputation of being both temperamental and straightforward. On one occasion Henry Fonda (then her ex-husband) had decided to take up a collection for a fireworks display on July 4. When Sullavan refused to make a contribution, Fonda complained loudly to a fellow actor. Then Sullavan rose from her seat and doused Fonda from head to foot with a pitcher of ice water. Fonda made a stately exit, and Sullavan, composed and unconcerned, returned to her table and ate heartily.

[quote]Another of her blowups almost literally killed Sam Wood, one of the founders of the Motion Picture Alliance. Wood was a keen anti-Communist. He dropped dead from a heart attack shortly after a raging argument with Sullavan, who had refused to fire a writer on a proposed film on account of his left-wing views. Louis B. Mayer always seemed wary and nervous in her presence. "She was the only player who outbullied Mayer", Eddie Mannix of MGM later said of Sullavan. "She gave him the willies".

I was going to ask wasn't she crazy - thanks r20!

R15,

for you.

Did you perhaps mean Maureen O'Sullivan OP?

Meh.

The old lush?

[quote]She is the Blythe Danner of the 1930s and 1940s.

Funny analogy. On target too !

The two stories about her in R20 make me like her !

Jealous fruit.

From "The Dick Cavett Show" interview with Katherine Hepburn: Oh Margaret? Well, that overbite you know. Poor dear, when she talked, it was click-click-click-click.

The men adored it. Except for poor Hank. You know, Henry Fonda. Henry was fond of, shall we say, oral service. Well, Margaret didn't get the hang of it until Vincent Price took her in hand, so to speak. Before that, she nearly circumcised poor Henry with that overbite. Oh yes.

I've never liked Sullavan either, but she is revered in the classic film community to the point of irritation.

Can someone find that What's My Line? clip of Ms. Sullavan and post it here?

She must have appeared there just before her suicide.

Here you go, r30, in all her neurotic glory, starting around the 18 minute mark.

Thanks r31!

While she confirms many things in the WML clip she hardly appears to be the bully who had the power or balls to make LB Mayer quake.

Margaret Sullivan was great as the witch in The Wizard of Oz.

I always liked Blythe Danner. Still do.

R33 I assume that's a joke.

Love her. Her performance in Three Comrades is heartbreaking.It was her only oscar nomination. Mediocre film, but she's wonderful.

Another supposed actress is Tyne Daly. She always plays herself. Before she says a line, I know when she'll pause in the sentence for dramatic effect.

Sullavan was a wonderful actress.

After Maggie's death from an overdose during previews in New Haven, producer Martin Gabel replaced her with his wife Arlene Francis, but the play soon closed.

Why did she spell her surname with that extra A? It looks like a typo.

slow moving thread

I forget where I read it, but one actress's autobiography - maybe Lauren Bacall's - said Margaret and her husband Leland Hayward where "huge snobs".

Lauren Bacall was no fan of Leland Hayward's after he left his wife Slim Hawks, the woman who helped discover her, to take up with Pamela Harriman.

The weirdest thing I recall from Brooke Hayward's memoir, "Haywire", was that her father Leland had such a sensitive stomach, he was only allowed to eat food that was white.

She worked for Warners you know.

Never got her allure. She was rather sour-looking most of the time. Like Jean Simmons, another alleged actress and "beauty" who left me cold.

I agree op

If it makes any of the naysayers here feel any better, Maggie Sullavan's film career only lasted about 5 years.

But she made at least one classic, The Shop Around the Corner, that will always keep her in the public eye and Hollywood history.

She began making films in 1933, her final one was in 1950, "No Sad Songs For Me", in which she played a wife/mother dying of cancer, with Natalie Wood playing her young daughter.

What's crazy about being so distressed about losing your hearing you lose your career in the process?

What is crazy is what you are, you heartless freak.

Hepburn loathed her. Never actually stopped loathing her. Calling her a pig and so forth. Hated her right from the beginning.

That's why she was piqued when Leland Hayward stopped proposing to her and married Sullavan soon after. She obviously didn't give a shit about Hayward but to go and marry that pig!

I thought she starred in The Enchanted Cottage, but that was Dorothy McGuire.

If Katharine Hepburn hated her, she couldn't have been all that bad.

"The Shop Around the Corner" is poignant because if it's present day Budapest (1939, 1940), then "The Shop Around the Corner" will soon become "The Shop on Main Street." (Seeing previews of the latter, a Holocaust-era drama set in mittel-Europa, frightened me as a child.)

I liked her, but then I like Blythe Danner much better than M.

The Shop Around the Corner is so much more interesting to watch if you know that in real life, Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan had been friends for years ,and that he had a huge unrequited crush on her.

My favorite of her films is "The Good Fairy." She is so charming in it.

My girlfriend and I went to a revival screening of The Good Fairy and the audience was abuzz because Ann Miller was there. When she was a child actress she had a small part in the film. About halfway through the screening we see Ms. Miller pass our aisle after leaving her seat and I told my friend to follow her. Miller went to the ladies room and inside my friend asked her if she was enjoying the film. She said that she had never seen it before but "Honey, I'm leaving. Life's too short to put up with that snooty bitch", presumably referring to Sullavan. My friend came back and told me and we howled with laughter.

She can't be much of an actress. When I googled her, Margaret Sullivan the journalist came up way before she did.

She drove her children to suicide.

Hey now!! Blythe Danner is a wonderful actress. Also, one of the most beautiful older people you'll ever see. Her only disadvantage, I think, is being the mother of Goop. Yuck.