Janet Gaynor: La Petit PowerHouse

On October 6th, 1906 Laura Augusta Gainer was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Frank D. Gainer, a paperhanger, painter and amateur actor and his lovely housewife Laura Buhl.
In 1914 the couple divorced and Laura Buhl married Harry C. Jones who relocated the family to San Francisco, California where Laura graduated with honors from Polytechnic High School the following year.
She and her sister Helen enrolled in Hollywood Secretarial School where they became stenographers while trying to enter some realm of the movie profession.
With their stepfather's encouragement Helen became a secretary for film and television producer Hal Roach and therefore exercised a little nepotism netting her sister a role as a bathing beauty in 1924's All Wet.
On the advice of her stepfather she changed her name to Janet Gaynor and began landing other small parts in feature films before her breakout role as Anna Burger in The Johnstown Flood. Shortly thereafter she attracted the attention of Fox Studio which saw her as the next Mary Pickford and signed her to a $100.00 per week contract. This led to her being cast in more important roles such as The Shamrock Handicap, The Blue Eagle, That Midnight Kiss and The Return of Peter Grimm.
Within a year she was one of Hollywood's leading ladies, with excellent performances in Seventh Heaven, Sunrise and Street Angel in 1928 which earned her the first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929, the only time in Oscar history it was given for multiple roles, she was also the youngest to ever win the award for best actress.
Following the success of Seventh Heaven with fellow actor Charles Ferrell, she commanded $300.00 per week and the duo went on to star in a total of eleven romantic films together and were given the moniker, "world's favorite sweethearts."
Gaynor was one of the first to make a smooth transition from silent films to "talkies." She gracefully passed the voice test but was not pleased with her performance, opting instead to take voice lessons, but the studio encouraged her to be herself, her first all speaking and singing part came in the way of Sunny Side Up in 1929.
On September 11th, 1929 she married Jesse Lydell Peck until the couple's divorce on April 7th, 1933.
As Fox Studios golden girl she had her choice of prime roles such as Delicious, Merely Mary Ann and Adorable, but when Daryl F. Zanuck merged his fledgling studio 20th Century Pictures with Fox Film Corporation to form Twentieth Century Fox, her status became quite precarious when child star Shirley Temple came on the scene, they always said children will still the limelight every time.
Janet managed to terminate her contract with the studio and achieved acclaim in films now by David O. Selznick at MGM.
In 1936 she starred opposite my Robert Taylor in Small Town Girl (a personal favorite I watch weekly--I know a bit obsessive) followed by Ladies in Love, A Star is Born and The Young in Heart, after which she left the film industry for almost twenty years, returning once more in the role as Pat Boone's mother in Bernadine.
At the age of 33 she retired from Hollywood in 1939 as Hollywood's highest paid actress at $252,583.00 annually, she married MGM costume designer Adrian on August 14th, 1939 until his death on September 13th, 1959 which left her devastated and ill. The couple had one child, a son Robin Gaynor Adrian born in 1940.
She credited producer Paul Gregory with aiding in her survival and on December 24th, 1964 the couple were married, moving to Palm Springs where she painted florals, became a gourmet cook, and merchandised a line of specialty foods. The couple remained married until his death on September 14th, 1984.
Janet was very close friends with fellow actress Mary Martin and the two frequently traveled together with their husbands around town and abroad.
So it was no surprise that in 1982 the pair were traveling in a cab in San Francisco when Robert Cato ran a red light at the corner of California Street and Franklin--crashing into the Luxor taxicab carrying Gaynor, Mary Martin, Martin's manager Ben Washer and Gaynor's husband Paul Gregory.
The accident killed Ben Washer and injured Gaynor's husband and Mary Martin. Janet was in serious condition with eleven broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, pelvic fractures, an injured bladder and a damaged kidney.
Janet Gaynor never fully recovered from her injuries and passed away just two years later from pneumonia and complications from the accident on September 14th, 1984 at the age of 77.
She is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

Previously I never had the pleasure of seeing Janet Gaynor's work before witnessing her comedic talents in Small Town Girl a month or so ago. She was a pint sized dynamo chocked full of talent, vulnerability and sincere wholesomeness that translates perfectly onscreen, offering voyeurs a most genuine look at what one can accomplish with no formal training.
So to all of you would be actors still holding tightly to that dream, do just that..continue to dream while you make it happen, never give up, never retreat.


Sources:
Baker, Sarah. Lucky Stars: Janet Gaynor and
Charles Farrell, Georgia: Bear Manor Media,
2009.
Menefee, David W. The First Female Stars:
Women of the Silent Era. Connecticut: Praeger, 2004
Photo Credits:
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