This one is tougher!
Born in Huntsville Alabama on January 31, 1902 our Dead Celeb was a successful American actress, talk-show host and bon vivant. It is said that her deep, husky voice resulted from chronic bronchitis. Hailing from a powerful Southern Democratic family she was the niece of one Senator, the granddaughter of another Senator and the daughter of a Speaker of the House.
At 15, she won a movie-magazine beauty contest and convinced her family to let her move to New York quickly winning bit parts in non-speaking roles and making a name as a hard-partying girl-about-town. During this time she began to use cocaine and marijuana, going as far as saying "Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know- I've been using it for years.". She became known for her wit and for her outspokenness. She professed to having a ravenous appetite for sex, but not for a particular type. Once, at a party, one of her friends brought along a young man who boldly told her that he wanted to make love to her that night. She didn't bat an eye and said, "And so you shall, you wonderful, old-fashioned boy."
In 1931 she was set to become Paramount Pictures next Marlene Dietrich but she found film-making to be very boring and didn't have the patience for it. She didn't like Hollywood either and when she met producer Irving Thalberg, she asked him, "How do you get laid in this dreadful place?" Although not very interested in making films, the opportunity to make $50,000 per film was too good to pass up.
By the war years, she was quite openly bisexual but she successfully avoided scandal related to her affairs, regardless of the gender of her lovers. Her personality, it was said, made her almost irresistible as a friend, or a lover. In 1933, she nearly died following a five-hour emergency hysterectomy for an advanced case of gonorrhea, which she claimed she contracted from Gary Cooper. Only 70 pounds when she left the hospital, she stoically said to her doctor, "Don't think this has taught me a lesson!"
David O. Selznick called her the "first choice among established stars" to play Scarlett OHara but although her screen test for the role in black-and-white was superb, she photographed poorly in Technicolor.
In 1944 she received critical acclaim for her performance in the latest Hitchcock drama. The performance is widely acknowledged as her best on film, and won her the New York Film Critics Circle Award. Almost childlike in her immodesty, she declared upon accepting her trophy "
Dahlings, I was wonderful!
Though her career slowed in the mid-1950s, she never faded from the public eye and she continued to perform in the 1950s and 1960s on Broadway, in the occasional film, as a highly-popular radio show host, and in the new medium of television.
She died in St. Lukes Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia arising from influenza, complicated by emphysema, at the age of 66 on December 12, 1968, and is buried in Saint Paul's Churchyard, Chesterton, Maryland. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame at 6141 Hollywood Blvd.
Her last coherent words were "Codeine... bourbon."
Other famous quotes:
"The only reason I went to Hollywood was to fuck that divine Gary Cooper."
"There is less to this than meets the eye"
"I'm as pure as the driven slush.
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