Born On This Day- October 6th... Actress Janet Gaynor

A superstar of the silent screen, she was the 1st Academy Award winning Best Actress, for the films Sunrise, Seventh Heaven & Street Angel. She held the record as the youngest Best Actress winner for almost 60 years. She successfully made the transfer to sound & was Oscar nominated again for the original film version of A Star is Born; other notable films include The Johnstown Flood (her first starring role), State Fair, & Small Town Girl.


Janet Gaynor usually played a naive waif in films, but in real life she was far more worldly. An early advocate for better parts & more money, she did the unthinkable in going on strike against Fox Studios, paving the way for future stars. Gaynor was also a gifted painter. She lived in Brazil during the 1950s & 60s. This seems to be a way to get away from a curious press that might pay attention to her closeness to  actress Mary Martin, who had a farm adjacent to Gaynor's there. Numerous sources claim that Gaynor's 3 husbands were gay. The second was MGM's legendary fashion designer, Gilbert Adrian, & the two had a son. (Rumor had it that during labor, doctors told Adrian his wife might lose the baby, to which he replied, "Oh no, I'll have to go through that again!"). William Mann's meticulously researched book Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910-1969 claims that Gaynor was a lifelong lesbian, seriously involved with at least 2 other stars, Margaret Livingston &, most significantly, Mary Martin. Actor Robert Cummings once quipped: "Janet Gaynor's husband was Adrian, the MGM fashion designer. But her wife was Mary Martin."

She later played Maude in a Broadway version of the film Harold & Maude & her last screen apperance was on The Love Boat. Gaynor's work was her legacy, as she surely would have wished, & it remains a powerful one even today. If she was forced, like so many actors of her era, to live a closeted life, she at least did it as much on her own terms as she could during her time in the Hollywood spotlight.