Margaret Sullavan - Hearing Defect

Hearing Defect

Sullavan suffered from the congenital hearing defect otosclerosis that worsened as she aged, making her more and more hard of hearing. Her voice had developed a throatiness because she could hear low tones better than high ones. From early 1957 Sullavan's hearing was worsening; she was becoming depressed and sleepless and often wandered about all night. She would often go to bed and stay there for days, her only words: "Just let me be, please". Sullavan had kept her hearing problem largely hidden. On January 8, 1960 (one week after Sullavan's death), The New York Post reporter Nancy Seely wrote: "The thunderous applause of a delighted audience—was it only a dim murmur over the years to Margaret Sullavan? Did the poised and confident mien of the beautiful actress mask a sick fear, night after night, that she'd miss an important cue?" In addition to her hearing defect, Sullavan's children, Brooke, and in particular Bridget and Bill, often proved rebellious and contrary. As a result of the divorce from Hayward, the family fell apart. Sullavan felt that Hayward was trying to alienate their children from her. When the children went to California to visit their father they were so spoiled with expensive gifts that, when they returned to their mother in Connecticut, they were deeply discontented with what they saw as a staid lifestyle.

By 1955, when Sullavan's two younger children told their mother that they preferred to stay with their father permanently, she suffered a nervous breakdown. Sullavan's older daughter, Brooke, in 1977 wrote about the breakdown in her autobiography Haywire: Sullavan had humiliated herself by begging her son to stay with her. He remained adamant and his mother had started to cry. "This time she couldn't stop. Even from my room the sound was so painful I went into my bathroom and put my hands on my ears". In another scene from the book, a friend of the family (Millicent Osborne) had been alarmed by the sound of whimpering from the bedroom: "She walked in and found mother under the bed, huddled up in a fetal position. Kenneth was trying to get her out. The more authoritative his tone of voice, the farther under she crawled. Millicent Osborne took him aside and urged him to speak gently, to let her stay there until she came out of her own accord". Eventually Sullavan agreed to spend some time (two and a half months) in a private mental institution. Her two younger children also spent time in various institutions.