Helen Hayes

Actress Helen Hayes, dubbed "First Lady of the American Theatre" thrived on stage and screen in an eighty year career, being the first to win an Academy Award, Emmy Award, Grammy Award, and Tony Award in competitive categories. This was despite living through the tragedy of losing her only daughter to polio, and spending much of her time in hospitals, dealing with her asthma that would flare up in theaters because of the dust.

Hayes was born on October 10, 1900, in Washington, D.C., and began acting onstage at the age of five in Miss Hawke's May Ball. Her first film was a short film that she filmed when she was just ten, Jean and the Calico Doll, and her first feature film was The Weavers of Life in 1917. Throughout, Hayes preferred the stage over film, and most of her work was on the stage at this point, despite having asthma, causing frequent trips to the hospital because of interaction with theater dust.

In 1928, Hayes married playwright Charles MacArthur and followed him to Hollywood when he received a contract. This renewed her interest in films, and in 1931, she filmed her first role in a film with sound, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, with Robert Young who had a much smaller role. It was this film that won Hayes her first Oscar. Hayes and MacArthur's daughter, Mary, was born in 1930, and became an aspiring actress. In 1937, they adopted an infant boy, James, who would also go on to become an actor.

Hayes followed her Oscar success appearing in A Farewell to Arms with Gary Cooper, an actor whom she was very attracted to, and What Every Woman Knows, a role she had originally created on Broadway. The interest in making films was short-lived for Hayes as she returned to Broadway, starring in Victoria Regina through three separate runs.

In 1947, Hayes won a Tony award for her role in Happy Birthday, and after following this with a role in The Glass Menagerie, just two years later, tragedy struck as her daughter, Mary, died of polio. Hayes continued in the theater and filmed a few movie and television roles as well, winning an Emmy Award for best actress in 1953. That same year she was the first recipient of the Sarah Siddons Award. Three years later, Hayes had more success with a role in the film Anastasia, starring with Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner, but tragedy struck once more, as she lost her husband, Charles.

It would be quite some time before Hayes would return to her film career, and she filled her time with the love of the stage, appearing in different productions, among them Time Remembered, for which she won another Tony Award, and The Front Page, perhaps the most successful play written by her husband and his writing partner, Ben Hecht, back in 1928. In 1970, Hayes made her grand return to film in the movie Airport, a movie filled with big name actors and actresses, such as Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, and Maureen Stapleton. Hayes won her second Oscar for this role.

By 1971, Hayes's asthma had become too much for her, and she was forced to give up performing on the stage, concentrating her efforts on film and television, and also working to raise money for the fight of others with asthma. She appeared in Disney films, such as Herbie Rides Again and Candleshoe, her last film. She continued to appear on television with guest star spots on shows like The Love Boat, and also a few TV movies. In 1976, she won a Grammy Award for her recording of the Bill of Rights.

Hayes also spent her remaining years writing three books, A Gift of Joy, On Reflection, and My Life in Three Acts. She discussed many things of her own life in these books, such as dealing with the death of her daughter, and returning to Catholicism after the death of Charles. Hayes's great friend, Lillian Gish, died in February 1993, and had left Hayes as her beneficiary. Hayes died one month later, on March 17, of congestive heart failure. The lights on Broadway were dimmed for one minute that evening in her honor. 

YUDDY