Margaret Sullavan

Margaret Brooke Sullavan (May 16, 1909 – January 1, 1960) was an American stage and film actress.

Sullavan began her career onstage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday. Sullavan preferred working on the stage and made only 16 movies, four of which were opposite James Stewart in a popular partnership. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Three Comrades (1938). She retired from the screen in the early forties, but returned in 1950 to make her last movie, No Sad Songs for Me, in which she played a woman who was dying of cancer. For the rest of her career she would only appear on the stage.

Sullavan experienced increasing hearing problems, depression, and mental frailty in the 1950s. She died of an overdose of barbiturates, which was ruled accidental, on January 1, 1960 at the age of 50.

Early life

Sullavan was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the daughter of a wealthy stockbroker, Cornelius Sullavan, and his wife, Garland Brooke. The first years of her childhood were spent isolated from other children. She suffered from a painful muscular weakness in the legs that prevented her from walking, so that she was unable to socialize with other children until the age of six. After her recovery she emerged as an adventurous and tomboyish child who preferred playing with the children from the poorer neighborhood, much to the disapproval of her class-conscious parents.