Janet Gaynor: Movies, Awards & Box Office

Born Laura Augusta Gainor on October 6, 1906 in Germantown, Philadelphia, she grew up in a theatrical family; her father was a painter and paperhanger who taught her singing, dancing and acrobatics as a toddler. Nicknamed “Lolly” as a child, she appeared in school plays and after her parents’ divorce moved with her mother to Chicago and later San Francisco, where she graduated from Polytechnic High School in 1923. Determined to reach Hollywood she enrolled in the Hollywood Secretarial School while working in a shoe store and as a theatre usher, and on December 26, 1924 she landed a tiny extra part in a Hal Roach comedy. Within weeks Universal hired her as a stock player for $50 a week and a screen test for Fox’s The Johnstown Flood earned her a five‑year contract, leading to her selection as one of the 1925 WAMPAS Baby Stars alongside Joan Crawford and Mary Astor. By 1927 Gaynor was a major leading lady, starring opposite Charles Farrell in 7th Heaven, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel, performances that secured the first Academy Award for Best Actress when the Academy honored multiple roles in 1929. Her sweet, wholesome screen image and emotional depth carried her successfully into the sound era, and she remained a top‑box‑office draw throughout the early 1930s, often tied with Marie Dressler for the number‑one spot and later holding it alone after Dressler’s death. She continued to headline remakes of Mary Pickford classics such as Daddy Long Legs and Tess of the Storm Country, and earned a second Best Actress nomination for her luminous turn in the Technicolor hit A Star Is Born (1937). Frustrated by repetitive roles and studio pressure, Gaynor retired in 1939 at age 33, marrying the openly gay costume designer Adrian shortly thereafter and welcoming a son, Robin, in 1940; the couple split their time between a 250‑acre cattle ranch in Brazil and homes in New York and California. After Adrian’s death in 1959 she wed stage producer Paul Gregory in 1964, a marriage that lasted until her own passing. Gaynor returned briefly to the screen in the 1950s, appearing in live television anthology programs and making her final film appearance in Bernardine (1957). An accomplished oil painter, she sold more than two hundred still‑life works and exhibited at Wally Findlay Galleries from 1975 to 1982. In 1980 she made her Broadway debut as Maude in the stage adaptation of Harold and Maude and later toured in On Golden Pond, her last acting role. A serious automobile collision in September 1982 left her with multiple broken ribs, a punctured lung and other injuries; despite surgery and months of recuperation she never fully recovered. Janet Gaynor died on September 14, 1984 in Palm Springs at age 77, her death officially attributed to complications from the 1982 crash. She is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery beside Adrian, her headstone bearing the name Janet Gaynor Gregory. Her legacy endures through a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, a pioneering Academy Award, and a body of work that helped shape the transition from silent to sound cinema.