Susan Hayward | Biography & Facts | Britannica (2025)

Susan Hayward (born June 30, 1917, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died March 14, 1975, Los Angeles, California) was an American film actress who was a popular star during the 1940s and ’50s known for playing courageous women fighting to overcome adversity.

Marrener grew up in a working-class family. Following her graduation from Girls’ Commercial High School, she began working as a photographer’s model. After filmmaker George Cukor saw a colour photo of her in the Saturday Evening Post, she was invited to audition for the part of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Her lack of acting experience came through in her screen test, however, and she was not given the part. Nonetheless, she acquired an agent—as well as a new name, Susan Hayward—and in 1937 she embarked on a series of uncredited bit parts in movies. Her first credited role was in Girls on Probation (1938), starring Ronald Reagan, although her more substantial part in Beau Geste (1939) is frequently described as her feature film debut. Hayward went on to appear in such movies as Adam Had Four Sons (1941); Cecil B. DeMille’s Reap the Wild Wind (1942); The Fighting Seabees (1944), in which she costarred with John Wayne; and Deadline at Dawn (1946). Hayward’s portrayal of a nightclub singer who gives up her career for her husband and falls into alcoholism in Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. She was nominated again for her leading role in the melodrama My Foolish Heart (1949).

In 1951 Hayward played the wife of an itinerant preacher in I’d Climb the Highest Mountain, a stagecoach passenger under attack in the western Rawhide, an ambitious fashion designer in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, and a biblical queen in David and Bathsheba. In Walter Lang’s With a Song in My Heart (1952), she portrayed the real-life singer Jane Froman, who battled back from severe injuries sustained in an airplane crash at the height of her career; Hayward received a third Oscar nomination for her performance. She also appeared in Henry King’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Throughout the 1950s Hayward costarred with a series of prominent leading men, including Robert Mitchum (The Lusty Men [1952] and White Witch Doctor [1953]), Charlton Heston (The President’s Lady [1953]), Victor Mature (Demetrius and the Gladiators [1954]), Gary Cooper (Garden of Evil [1954]), Tyrone Power (Untamed [1955]), and Clark Gable (Soldier of Fortune [1955]).

Hayward played the troubled 1930s Broadway star Lillian Roth in I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), earning best-actress honours at the Cannes film festival and her fourth nomination for an Academy Award. In I Want to Live! (1958), a movie based on real events, Hayward portrayed Barbara Graham, a prostitute who was convicted (possibly wrongly) with two companions of having murdered a wealthy widow in 1953 and was executed in the gas chamber. For her moving performance, Hayward finally received an Oscar.

Hayward’s output decreased markedly following her triumph. Her later films included Thunder in the Sun (1959), The Marriage-Go-Round (1961), Where Love Has Gone (1964), and Valley of the Dolls (1967). Her last appearance was in the title role of the television movie Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole (1972). Hayward’s death from cancer was attributed by several writers to her having acted in the 1956 film The Conqueror, which was filmed close to the atomic testing range at Yucca Flat, Nevada; 91 members of that cast and crew later got cancer, including costar John Wayne and director Dick Powell.