page_title: Norma Shearer
section_title: Hollywood
hierarchical_section_title: Norma Shearer / Career / Hollywood
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait photograph of Norma Shearer from the 1925 film A Slave of Fashion. According to Ebay description "This comes from Shearer's personal collection, and was taken from a series of antique scrapbooks in which she kept a set of photographs from her early roles. Even for her, they were hard to come by, and many of the photographs in the scrapbooks seem to have been researched and rediscovered by Thalberg and Shearer after their marriage (... Measures 7 1/2" x 9 1/2").
context_page_description: Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress who was active on film from 1919 through 1942. Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated ingénues. She appeared in adaptations of Noël Coward, Eugene O'Neill and William Shakespeare, and was the first person to be nominated five times for an Academy Award for acting, winning Best Actress for her performance in The Divorcee.
  Reviewing Shearer's work, Mick LaSalle called her "the exemplar of sophisticated 1930s womanhood ... exploring love and sex with an honesty that would be considered frank by modern standards". As a result, Shearer is celebrated as a feminist pioneer, "the first American film actress to make it chic and acceptable to be single and not a virgin on screen".
context_section_description: 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".
  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 objected, finding her "unphotogenic". Again, Shearer was to be disappointed, relegated to a minor role.
  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 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.
caption: Shearer in Slave to Fashion (1925)
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