Margaret Sullavan - Hollywood

Hollywood

Sullavan arrived in Hollywood on May 16, 1933, her 24th birthday. Her film debut came that same year in Only Yesterday. She chose her scripts carefully. She was dissatisfied with her performance in Only Yesterday. When she saw herself in the early rushes, she had been so appalled that she had tried to buy out her contract for $2,500, but Universal refused. In his November 10, 1933, review in The New York Herald Tribune, Richard Watts, Jr. wrote that Sullavan "plays the tragic and lovelorn heroine of this shrewdly sentimental orgy with such forthright sympathy, wise reticence and honest feeling that she establishes herself with some definiteness as one of the cinema people to be watched". She followed that role with one in Little Man, What Now? (1934), about a couple struggling to survive in impoverished post–World War I Germany.

Originally, Universal had been reluctant to make a movie about unemployment, starvation and homelessness, but Little Man had been an important project to Sullavan. After Only Yesterday she wanted to try "the real thing". "It's a slice of life ... ife as so many people are living it today in America and anywhere". She later said that it had been one of the few things she had done in Hollywood that gave her a great measure of satisfaction.The Good Fairy (1935) was a comedy that Sullavan, although not a natural comedienne, had insisted on doing to demonstrate her "wide-ranging versatility". During the production, she married its director, William Wyler.

King Vidor's So Red the Rose (1935) dealt with the Civil War effects on the South and preceded Gone With the Wind by four years and Margaret Mitchell's novel by one year. Sullavan played a childish Southern-belle who matures into a responsible woman. The film also dealt with the situation of the freed black characters. In Next Time We Love (1936), Sullavan plays opposite the then-unknown James Stewart. She had been campaigning for Stewart to be her leading man and the studio complied for fear that she would stage a threatened strike. The film dealt with a married couple that has grown apart over the years. The plot was unconvincing and simple, but the gentle interplay between Sullavan and Stewart saves the movie from being a soapy and sappy experience. Next Time We Love was the first of four films made by Sullavan and Stewart.

In the comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936), Sullavan plays opposite her ex-husband Henry Fonda. The original script was rather pallid and Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell were brought in to punch up the dialogue, reportedly at Sullavan's insistence. Sullavan and Fonda play a newly married couple and the movie is a cavalcade of insults and quips. Her seventh film, Three Comrades (1938), is a drama set in post–World War I Germany. Three returning German soldiers meet Sullavan who joins them and eventually marries one of them. She gained an Oscar nomination for her role and was named the year's best actress by the New York Film Critics Circle. Sullavan reunited with Stewart in The Shopworn Angel (1938). Stewart played a sweet, naive Texan soldier on his way to Europe (World War I) who marries Sullavan on the way. Her ninth film was the rather soapy The Shining Hour (1938), playing the suicidal sister to Joan Crawford. In The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Sullavan and Stewart worked together again, playing colleagues who do not get along at work, but have both responded to a lonely-hearts ad and are (without knowing it) exchanging letters with each other. The Mortal Storm (1940) was the last movie Sullavan and Stewart ever did together. Sullavan is a young German girl engaged to a confirmed Nazi (Robert Young) in 1933. When she realizes the true nature of his political views, she breaks the engagement and turns her attention to anti-Nazi Stewart. Later, trying to flee the Nazi regime, Sullavan and Stewart attempt to ski across the border to safety in Austria. In the attempt Sullavan is gunned down by the Nazis (under orders from her ex-fiance). Stewart, at her request, picks her up and skis into Austria so she can die in a free country.

Back Street (1941) was lauded as one of the best performances of Sullavan's Hollywood career. She wanted Charles Boyer to play opposite her so much that she agreed to surrender top billing to him. Boyer plays a selfish and married banker and Sullavan his long-suffering mistress. Although he loves Sullavan, he is unwilling to leave his wife and family in favour of her. So Ends Our Night (1941) is yet another wartime drama. Sullavan (on loan for a one-picture deal from Universal) plays a Jewish girl perpetually on the move with falsified passport and identification papers and always fearing that the officials will discover her game. On her way across Europe she meets up with a young Jewish boy (Glenn Ford) and the two fall in love.

A 1940 court decision obligated Sullavan to fulfill her original 1933 agreement with Universal. Two additional pictures became legal "musts". Back Street (1941) came first, and, as Universal had been urging her to do a light comedy, Appointment for Love (1941) would be Sullavan's last picture with that company. In the film, Sullavan appeared with Boyer again. Boyer's character marries Sullavan who tells him that his past affairs mean nothing to her. She insists that each must have an apartment in the same building and that they meet only once a day, at seven o'clock in the morning. Cry 'Havoc' (1943) is another war drama (World War II) but one of the rare all-female pictures. Sullavan played the strong mother figure who keeps a crew of nurses in line in a dugout in Bataan, while they are awaiting the advance of Japanese soldiers who are about to take over. It was the last film Sullavan made with MGM. After its completion she was free of all film commitments. She had often referred to MGM and Universal as "jails". When her husband, Leland Hayward, tried to read her the good reviews of Cry 'Havoc', she responded with usual bluntness: "You read them, use them for toilet paper. I had enough hell with that damned picture while making it - I don't want to read about it now!"

Sullavan retired from films from 1943 to 1950 and concentrated on her family and the stage. She came back to the screen in 1950 to do one last picture, No Sad Songs for Me. She played a fifties suburban wife and mother who learns that she will die of cancer within a year and who then determines to find a "second" wife for her soon-to-be-widower husband (Wendell Corey). Natalie Wood, then eleven, plays their daughter. After No Sad Songs for Me and its favorable reviews, Sullavan had a number of offers for other films, but she decided to concentrate on the stage for the rest of her career. Sullavan had a reputation of being both temperamental and straightforward. On one occasion Henry Fonda (then her ex-husband) had decided to take up a collection for a fireworks display on July 4. When Sullavan refused to make a contribution, Fonda complained loudly to a fellow actor. Then Sullavan rose from her seat and doused Fonda from head to foot with a pitcher of ice water. Fonda made a stately exit, and Sullavan, composed and unconcerned, returned to her table and ate heartily. Another of her blowups almost literally killed Sam Wood, one of the founders of the Motion Picture Alliance. Wood was a keen anti-Communist. He dropped dead from a heart attack shortly after a raging argument with Sullavan, who had refused to fire a writer on a proposed film on account of his left-wing views. Louis B. Mayer always seemed wary and nervous in her presence. "She was the only player who outbullied Mayer", Eddie Mannix, MGM, later said of Sullavan. "She gave him the willies".