Early days , c. 1920 In January 1920, the three Shearer women arrived in New York, each of them dressed up for the occasion. "I had my hair in little curls", Shearer remembered, "and I felt very ambitious and proud." Her heart sank, however, when she saw their rented apartment: "There was one double bed, a cot with no mattress and a stove with one gas jet. The communal bathroom was at the end of a long, dimly lit hallway. Athole and I took turns sleeping with mother in the bed, but sleep was impossible anyway—the elevated trains rattled right past our window every few minutes." The introduction to Ziegfeld proved equally disastrous. He turned Shearer down flat, reportedly calling her a "dog", and criticized her crossed eyes and stubby legs. She continued doing the rounds with her determination undimmed: "I learned that
Universal Pictures was looking for eight pretty girls to serve as extras. Athole and I showed up and found 50 girls ahead of us. An assistant casting director walked up and down looking us over. He passed up the first three and picked the fourth. The fifth and sixth were unattractive, but the seventh would do, and so on, down the line until seven had been selected—and he was still some ten feet ahead of us. I did some quick thinking. I coughed loudly, and when the man looked in the direction of the cough, I stood on my tiptoes and smiled right at him. Recognizing the awkward ruse to which I'd resorted, he laughed openly and walked over to me and said, 'You win, Sis. You're Number Eight. , 1926 Other extra parts followed, including one in
Way Down East, directed by
D. W. Griffith. Taking advantage of a break in filming and standing shrewdly near a powerful arc light, Shearer introduced herself to Griffith and began to confide her hopes for stardom. "The Master looked down at me, studied my upturned face in the glare of the arc, and shook his eagle head. Eyes no good, he said. A
cast in one and far too blue; blue eyes always looked blank in close-up. You'll never make it, he declared, and turned solemnly away." Still undeterred, Shearer risked some of her savings on a consultation with Dr.
William Bates, a pioneer in the treatment of
strabismus. He wrote out a series of muscle-strengthening exercises that after many years' daily practice would successfully conceal Shearer's cast for long periods of time on the screen. She spent hours in front of the mirror, exercising her eyes and striking poses that concealed or improved the physical flaws noted by Ziegfeld or Griffith. At night, she sat in the galleries of
Broadway theatres, studying the entrances of
Ina Claire,
Lynn Fontanne, and
Katharine Cornell. In desperate need of money, Shearer resorted to some modeling work, which proved successful. On her modeling career, she commented: "I could smile at a cake of laundry soap as if it were dinner at the Ritz. I posed with a strand of imitation pearls. I posed in dust-cap and house dress with a famous mop, for dental paste and for soft drink, holding my mouth in a whistling pose until it all but froze that way." She became the new model for Kelly-Springfield Tires and was bestowed with the title "Miss Lotta Miles" and depicted seated inside the rim of a tire, smiling down at traffic from a large floodlit billboard. Finally, a year after her arrival in New York, she received a break in film: fourth billing in a
B-movie titled
The Stealers (1920). In January 1923, Shearer received an offer from
Louis B. Mayer Pictures, a studio in Northeast Los Angeles that was run by a small-time producer,
Louis B. Mayer.
Irving Thalberg had moved to Louis B. Mayer Pictures as vice president on February 15, 1923, but had already sent a telegram to Shearer's agent, inviting her to come to the studio. After three years of hardship, she found herself signing a contract. It called for $250 a week for six months, with options for renewal and a test for a leading role in a major film called
The Wanters.
Hollywood Shearer left New York around February 17. Accompanied by her mother, she felt "dangerously sure of herself" as her train neared Los Angeles. When she was not welcomed, even an hour after her arrival, she realized that there would be no star treatment from her new studio. Dispirited, she allowed Edith to hail a taxi. The next morning, Shearer went to the Mayer Company on Mission Road to meet with Thalberg. Shearer was momentarily thrown by their confused introduction, but soon found herself "impressed by his air of dispassionate strength, his calm self-possession and the almost black, impenetrable eyes set in a pale olive face". publicity photo Shearer was less impressed, however, with her first screen test: "The custom then was to use flat lighting, to throw a great deal of light from all directions, in order to kill all shadows that might be caused by wrinkles or blemishes. But the strong lights placed on either side of my face made my blue eyes look almost white, and by nearly eliminating my nose, made me seem cross-eyed. The result was hideous." The day after the test had been screened for Mayer and Thalberg, cameraman
Ernest Palmer found Shearer frantic and trembling in the hallway. Speaking with her, he was struck by her "fierce, almost raging disappointment", and after viewing the test himself, agreed that she had been "poorly handled". Under Palmer's own supervision, a second test was made and judged a success by the studio brass. The lead in
The Wanters seemed hers, until the film's director,
John M. Stahl, objected, finding her "unphotogenic". Again, Shearer was to be disappointed, relegated to a minor role. '' (1925) She accepted her next role in
Pleasure Mad, knowing "it was well understood that if I didn't deliver in this picture, I was through". After only a few days of shooting, things were not looking good. Shearer was struggling. Finally, the film's director,
Reginald Barker, complained to Mayer that he could get nothing out of the young actress, and when summoned to Mayer's office, she fully expected the axe to fall: But to my surprise, Mr. Mayer's manner was paternal. 'There seems to be a problem,' he said, 'tell me about it.' I told him that the director had shouted at me and frightened me. Nobody had warned me that Mayer was a better actor than any of us, and I was unprepared for what happened next. He staged an alarming outburst, screaming at me, calling me a fool and a coward, accusing me of throwing away my career because I couldn't get on with a director. It worked. I became tearful, but obstinate. 'I'll show you!' I said to him. 'You'll see!' Delighted, Mayer resumed the paternal act. 'That's what I wanted to hear', he said, smiling. Returning to the set, Shearer plunged into an emotional scene. "I took that scene lock, stock, and barrel, fur, fins and feathers", she remembered, earning her the respect of her director and her studio. As a reward, Thalberg cast her in six films in eight months. The apprenticeship served Shearer well. On April 26, 1924, Louis B. Mayer Pictures was merged with
Metro Pictures and the
Samuel Goldwyn Company to form
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Shearer was cast with
Lon Chaney and
John Gilbert in the studio's first official production,
He Who Gets Slapped. The film was a conspicuous success and contributed to the meteoric rise of the new company, and to Shearer's visibility. By late 1925, she was carrying her own films, and was one of MGM's biggest attractions, a
bona fide star. She signed a new contract; it paid $1,000 a week and would rise to $5,000 over the next five years. She bought a house for herself and Edith at 2004 Vine Street, which was located under the
Hollywoodland sign.
Irving and Norma outside the White House, 1929 Having become a star, Shearer's new challenge was to remain one. Many other talented actresses were at the studio, and she realized she would have to fight hard to stay ahead of the pack. Seeing that sensational newcomer
Greta Garbo was one of a kind, she went to Thalberg and "demanded recognition as one of another kind". It was just one of the many visits she paid to his office, always to plead for better material, better parts. Thalberg would listen patiently, then invariably advise her to keep toeing the line, that MGM knew best, and that the movies she complained about had made her a popular actress. Occasionally, Shearer would burst into tears, but this seemed to make "no more impression than rain on a raincoat". Privately, Thalberg was very impressed by Shearer. In a story conference, when her name was suggested to him for the part of a girl threatened with rape, Thalberg shook his head, and, with a wry smile, he said, "She looks too well able to take care of herself." Thalberg's appeal was not primarily sexual. What attracted Shearer was his commanding presence and steely grace, the impression he gave that wherever he sat was always the head of the table. In spite of his youth – he was only 26 – Thalberg became a father figure to the 23-year-old actress. At the end of a working day in July 1925, Shearer received a phone call from Thalberg's secretary, asking if she would like to accompany Thalberg to the premiere of
Chaplin's
The Gold Rush. That night, they made their first appearance as a couple. A few weeks later, Shearer went to Montreal to visit her father. While there, she had a reunion with an old school friend, who remembered: "At the end of lunch, over coffee, Norma leant in across the table. 'I'm madly in love', she whispered. 'Who with?' I asked. 'With Irving Thalberg', she replied, smiling. I asked how Thalberg felt. 'I hope to marry him', Norma said, and then, with the flash of the assurance I remembered so well, 'I believe I will. Over the next two years, both Shearer and Irving saw other people.
Louise Brooks remembered: "I held a dinner party sometime in 1926. All the place cards at the dinner table were books. In front of Thalberg's place was
Dreiser's Genius, and in front of Norma's place, I put
The Difficulty of Getting Married. It was so funny because Irving walked right in and saw
Genius, and sat right down, but Norma kept walking around. She wouldn't sit down in front of
The Difficulty of Getting Married – no way!" By 1927, Shearer had made a total of 13 silent films for MGM. Each had been produced for under $200,000, and had, without fail, been a substantial box-office hit, often making a $200,000+ profit for the studio. She was rewarded for this consistent success by being cast in
Ernst Lubitsch's
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, her first prestige production, with a budget over $1,000,000. While she was finishing
The Student Prince, Shearer received a call summoning her to Thalberg's office. She entered to find Thalberg sitting at his desk before a tray of diamond engagement rings. He granted her the option to choose her own ring; she picked out the biggest. After weeks of rumors, provoked by wearing the ring, it was announced in August 1927 that they were to wed. On September 29, 1927, they were married in the Hollywood wedding of the year. Shearer had two children with Thalberg –
Irving Thalberg, Jr. (1930–1987), and Katherine (1935–2006). Before they were married, Shearer
converted to Judaism so she could marry Thalberg.
Transition to sound One week after the marriage,
The Jazz Singer was released. The first
feature-length motion picture with sound, it effectively changed the cinematic landscape overnight and signaled the end of the
silent motion-picture era. It also spelled the end of many silent careers, and Shearer was determined hers would not be one of them. Her brother,
Douglas Shearer, was instrumental in the development of sound at MGM, and every care was taken to prepare her for the microphone. Her first talkie,
The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929), turned out to be a tremendous success. Shearer's "medium-pitched, fluent, flexible Canadian accent, not quite American, but not at all foreign", was critically applauded, and thereafter widely imitated by other actresses, nervous about succeeding in talkies. Despite the popularity of her subsequent early talking films,
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney and
Their Own Desire (both 1929), Shearer feared the public would soon tire of her "good girl" image, and took the advice of friend and co-star
Ramón Novarro to visit an unknown photographer named
George Hurrell. There, she took a series of sensual portraits that convinced her husband that she could play the lead in MGM's racy new film,
The Divorcee (1930).
Pre-Code award during the
3rd Academy Awards in November 1930. Shearer won an
Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in
The Divorcee, and a series of highly successful
pre-Code films followed, including
Let Us Be Gay (1930),
Strangers May Kiss (1931),
A Free Soul (1931) with
Leslie Howard and
Clark Gable,
Private Lives (1931), and
Strange Interlude (1932). All of these were box-office hits, placing Shearer in competition with
Joan Crawford,
Greta Garbo, and
Jean Harlow as MGM's top actress through the remainder of the decade. Shearer's marriage to Thalberg gave her a degree of power in Hollywood that was resented by rivals such as Crawford, who complained that Shearer would always be offered the best roles and best conditions: "How can I compete with Norma when she's sleeping with the boss?" Shearer's pre-Code films included period dramas and theatrical adaptations. ''
Smilin' Through'' (1932), which co-starred
Fredric March, was one of the most successful films of the period. An adaptation of
Eugene O'Neill's four-hour experimental
Strange Interlude (1932), which also starred
Clark Gable, was a disappointing adaptation of O'Neill, but a showcase for Shearer, thus a major hit.
The First Lady of MGM and Shearer in
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) The enforcement of the
Production Code in 1934 forced Shearer to drop her celebrated "free soul" image, and move exclusively into period dramas and "prestige" pictures. Of these,
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) proved her most successful at the box office, making a profit of $668,000, in part because the film contained elements that slipped by the newly instituted Production Code. In that film, she played a role made famous by
Katharine Cornell. Shearer also took on another play popularized by Cornell in
Romeo and Juliet (1936) (her first film of the 1930s to lose money), and
Marie Antoinette (1938) (a budget of almost $2,500,000 was too great for the studio to expect a profit), though their elaborate sets and costumes helped make the films immensely popular with audiences. Shearer was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Actress on six occasions, winning only for
The Divorcee in 1930. She was nominated the same year for
Their Own Desire, for
A Free Soul in 1931,
The Barretts of Wimpole Street in 1934,
Romeo and Juliet in 1936, and
Marie Antoinette in 1938.
Marion Davies later recalled that Shearer came to a party at
San Simeon in her
Marie Antoinette costume; Davies said she was not about to remove the door so Shearer could enter, so Norma made her grand entrance through wider doors leading from another room. Four chairs were arranged so she could sit at the table in her voluminous skirts. George Cukor, who directed Shearer in
Romeo and Juliet, offered this character sketch of the actress: '' In 1939, she attempted an unusual role in the dark comedy ''
Idiot's Delight'', adapted from the 1936
Robert E. Sherwood play. It was the last of Shearer's three films with
Clark Gable, after
A Free Soul (1931) and
Strange Interlude (1932).
The Women (1939) followed, with an entirely female cast of more than 130 speaking roles. Shearer was also one of the many actresses considered for the role of
Scarlett O'Hara in
Gone With The Wind (1939) and some publications even reported that she won the role in 1938. However, she withdrew herself from consideration after negative feedback from movie fans. Years later when asked about potentially playing Scarlett, Shearer jokingly said, "Scarlett is a thankless role. The one I'd really like to play is
Rhett!" Critics praised the suspenseful atmosphere in her next film,
Escape (1940), where she played the lover of a
Nazi general who helps an American free his mother from a
concentration camp. With increasing interest in the war in Europe, the film performed well at the box office, but Shearer passed up roles in highly successful films
Now, Voyager and
Mrs. Miniver, to star in
We Were Dancing and
Her Cardboard Lover (1942), which both failed at the box office. In 1942, Shearer unofficially retired from acting. == Retirement ==