Early Life
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Granville was the daughter of stage actors, and made her film debut at the age of nine in Westward Passage (1933). Over the next couple of years she played uncredited supporting roles in such films as Little Women (1933) and Anne of Green Gables (1934) before playing the role of Mary in the film adaptation of Lillian Hellman's 1934 stage play The Children's Hour. Renamed These Three, a 1936 film that told the story of three adults (played by Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, and Joel McCrea) who find their lives almost destroyed by the malicious lies of an evil attention-seeking child. For her role as that child, Granville was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, then the first youngest person to be nominated for that award. Despite this success, and although she continued to work, the next few years brought her few opportunities to build her career.
In 1938, she starred as the saucy mischievous daughter in the multi-Academy Awards nominated hit comedy film Merrily We Live and as girl detective Nancy Drew in the hit film Nancy Drew, Detective. The Nancy Drew film success led to Granville reprising the role in three sequels from 1938 to 1939, including Nancy Drew... Reporter (1939).
Read more about this topic: Bonita Granville
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)