The personification of elegance, Norma Shearer was the most versatile actress through the twenties, thirties and forties at the most opulent Hollywood studio. No star worked harder to create an image of glamour. Unfailingly attentive to every detail of costume and make-up, all had to be perfect. By the time she was twenty eight, she was the undisputed Queen of the MGM lot. She rose from an obscure Canadian background to silent films and despite both D.W. Griffith and Flo Ziegfeld’s pronouncements that she had no future, she found her style in the talkies: Private Lives, The Barretts Of Wimpole Street, Marie Antoinette, The Women, Idiot’s Delight and more than 30 other films, playing opposite the leading men of her day. Her marriage to Irving Thalberg, the ‘boy genius’ Vice President of MGM’s production ensured their impeccable teamwork. Yet her public triumph was shadowed by Thalberg’s death at the age of 37 and her ferocious battle with Louis B. Meyer to retain Thalberg’s stock in the company. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
