RIP Gloria Stuart
The New York Times reports: Gloria Stuart, a glamorous blond actress during Hollywood’s golden age who was largely forgotten until she made a memorable comeback in her 80s in the 1997 epic Titanic, died on Sunday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 100.
Her daughter, Sylvia Vaughn Thompson, confirmed the death.
Ms. Stuart had long since moved on from Hollywood when James Cameron, the director of Titanic, rediscovered her for the role of Rose Calvert, a 101-year-old survivor of the ship’s sinking. She was 86 at the time.
Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actress. It was her only Oscar nomination, and she was the oldest person ever to receive one for acting. (She lost to Kim Basinger.)
Audiences in 1997 had little if any memory of Ms. Stuart’s early screen career, but it had been substantial: a total of 46 films from 1932 to 1946. She abandoned movies, she said, after growing tired of being typecast as “girl reporter, girl detective, girl overboard.”
“So one day, I burned everything: my scripts, my stills, everything,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1997. “I made a wonderful fire in the incinerator, and it was very liberating.”
In the best of her early movies, Ms. Stuart, a petite and elegant presence, was forced to seek shelter with Boris Karloff in James Whale’s classic horror film The Old Dark House (1932) and was horrified when Claude Rains, her mad-scientist fiancé, tampered with nature in The Invisible Man (1933), also directed by Whale.
Although Screen Play magazine had called Ms. Stuart one of the 10 most beautiful women in Hollywood, she was more than a pretty face. She was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild and helped found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, an early antifascist organization.
A great lady in every sense of the word.
Her daughter, Sylvia Vaughn Thompson, confirmed the death.Ms. Stuart had long since moved on from Hollywood when James Cameron, the director of Titanic, rediscovered her for the role of Rose Calvert, a 101-year-old survivor of the ship’s sinking. She was 86 at the time.
Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actress. It was her only Oscar nomination, and she was the oldest person ever to receive one for acting. (She lost to Kim Basinger.)
Audiences in 1997 had little if any memory of Ms. Stuart’s early screen career, but it had been substantial: a total of 46 films from 1932 to 1946. She abandoned movies, she said, after growing tired of being typecast as “girl reporter, girl detective, girl overboard.”
“So one day, I burned everything: my scripts, my stills, everything,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1997. “I made a wonderful fire in the incinerator, and it was very liberating.”
In the best of her early movies, Ms. Stuart, a petite and elegant presence, was forced to seek shelter with Boris Karloff in James Whale’s classic horror film The Old Dark House (1932) and was horrified when Claude Rains, her mad-scientist fiancé, tampered with nature in The Invisible Man (1933), also directed by Whale.
Although Screen Play magazine had called Ms. Stuart one of the 10 most beautiful women in Hollywood, she was more than a pretty face. She was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild and helped found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, an early antifascist organization.
A great lady in every sense of the word.
Comments