Acting Career and Personal Life
Arriving in New York City, Susann landed bit parts in movies, plays (such as The Women), and commercials. A year later, she landed a decent theatrical job playing a lingerie model, earning $25.00 a week. While in New York City, Susann met a press agent, Irving Mansfield (né Mandelbaum). The two dated despite the fact that Susann was not sexually attracted to Mansfield. In turn, Mansfield wooed Susann by placing items and photos of her in theater and society sections of New York newspapers. The ploy worked, and the couple married on April 2, 1939, at Har Zion Temple in Philadelphia.
After the wedding, Mansfield went on to manage Susann's career. Mansfield made sure Susann was placed in news columns, and she soon was a regular on The Morey Amsterdam Show. She then got a spot in the Broadway show A Lady Says Yes, starring Carole Landis and Jack Albertson. The following year, Susann wrote her first play, Lovely Me, for production on Broadway. It closed after only 37 performances.
Despite Mansfield's devotion to Susann, rumors of her infidelities surfaced throughout their marriage. One of Susann's first affairs was with actor/comedian/singer Eddie Cantor. Cantor hired Susann for a role in the touring production of the play, Banjo Eyes. Cantor dumped Susann after his wife discovered the affair and demanded that he quit the play. In 1942, Susann met comedian Joe E. Lewis and the two began an affair. Susann fell hard for Lewis which prompted her to write Mansfield a "Dear John" letter shortly after he was drafted by the United States Army in 1943. When Lewis learned that Susann and Mansfield separated and that Susann intended for her and Lewis to marry, he applied for a USO position, and was sent to New Guinea.
In late 1944, Mansfield and Susann got back together, and in 1946, the couple had a son whom they named Guy. At age three, Guy was diagnosed as autistic. The following year, Guy was committed to an institution where he remains to this day. Mansfield and Susann told no one of their son's true condition. The couple told friends that Guy was asthmatic, and placed in a school in Arizona for the healthy climate. For the rest of her life, Susann was tormented with guilt over institutionalizing her son.
Read more about this topic: Jacqueline Susann
Famous quotes containing the words acting, career, personal and/or life:
“We don’t want bores in the theatre. We don’t want standardised acting, standard actors with standard-shaped legs. Acting needs everybody, cripples, dwarfs and people with noses so long. Give us something that is different.”
—Dame Sybil Thorndike (1882–1976)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freest country on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The trouble is that no devastating or redeeming fires have ever burnt in my life.... My life began by flickering out.”
—Ivan Goncharov (1812–1891)