SHEARER, NORMA

SHEARER, NORMA (1902–1983), U.S. actress. Born Edith Norma Shearer in Westmount, Quebec, Canada, to lumber/construction company president Andrew Shearer and Edith Mary Fisher, Shearer was schooled in the family's middle-class home until 1912, when she enrolled in the Montreal High School for Girls. In 1914, she transferred to Westmont High School. She had been a child model, and at 14 won a beauty contest. A fan of silent film actress Pearl White, Shearer dreamed of becoming an actress herself. When the family business began to decline and her parents were forced to sell their home in 1919, Shearer quit school and went to work plugging sheet music. Her mother left her father in 1920, taking Shearer and her sister Athole to New York. Florenz Ziegfeld rejected Shearer for his Follies, but she was able to find extra work with her mother and sister in the films The Flapper (1920), Way Down East (1920), and The Restless Sex (1920). During this time Shearer also worked as an art model to help bring in money. After securing Edward Small as an agent, Shearer got roles in The Stealers (1920), The Sign on the Door (1921), and The Leather Pushers (1922). Universal Studios manager irving thalberg tried to sign Shearer, but the studio was unwilling to pay for moving expenses. Thalberg soon quit Universal and went over to the Mayer Company, where he was able to secure a six-month contract and moving expenses for Shearer and her family. Her first films for Mayer were The Wanters (1923) and Pleasure Mad (1923). After Mayer merged with Metro and Goldwyn to become MGM, Shearer's first film for the new studio was He Who Gets Slapped (1924). Following her engagement to Thalberg, Shearer converted to Judaism with the help of Wilshire Boulevard Temple's Rabbi Edgar Magnin. The rising star of such films as His Secretary (1925) and After Midnight (1927) married Thalberg on Sept. 29, 1927. After her return from a European honeymoon, Shearer starred in MGM's second talkie, The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929). In 1930, she won the best actress Oscar for The Divorcee and gave birth to her son, Irving Grant Thalberg Jr. In 1932, Shearer became a U.S. citizen. One of the highest-paid actresses of the Depression era, she was dubbed by others in the industry as Queen Norma or Queen of the Lot. In 1935, she gave birth to her daughter, Katherine. Shearer returned to film after a yearlong absence with Romeo and Juliet (1936), but three weeks after the film's Aug. 20 New York premier, Thalberg died from a congenital heart defect. After the devastating loss of her husband and fighting off a severe case of pneumonia, Shearer intended to retire but ended up signing a final six-picture contract with MGM, which included Marie Antoinette (1938) and The Women (1939). She finally retired in 1942. Shearer remained active in Hollywood, presenting the first Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1945 and helping to establish the careers of Janet Leigh and Robert Evans in the 1950s, but she mostly focused on her family. Her health began failing in the 1970s, and by the 1980s she was moved to the Motion Picture and Television Fund's hospital in Woodland Hills, California, where she died. She is buried next to Thalberg at Forest Lawn in Glendale, California. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: "Shearer, Norma," in: The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives (1998). (Adam Wills (2nd ed.)