The youngest of three children, Edythe Marrenner was born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. Her father, of Irish descent, and her mother, of Swedish descent, endowed her with the milky complexion and ruby hair that would become her trademark. She grew up in poverty, overshadowed by her older sister Florence, who was her mother’s favorite. Edythe harbored a lifelong grudge over what she perceived as her mother’s neglect.
At seven, Edythe was hit by a car and suffered a fractured hip. Doctors told her she might never walk again. However, after six months, she managed to get around on crutches and returned to school after a year. The injury left her with one leg shorter than the other, requiring a lift in her shoe. Classmates made fun of her walk, but it became a distinctive strut for her in Hollywood.
“I learned at a very early age that life is a battle. My family was poor, my neighborhood was poor. The only way I could escape the awfulness of life was at the movies. There I decided that my big aim was to make money. And it was there that I became a very determined woman.”
As a teenager, Edythe was brought to Hollywood as one of the hundreds of girls who had a chance to screen test for the part of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” (1939). The test was poor. It took several years of studio-subsidized acting and voice lessons before her talent emerged, and she was renamed Susan Hayward.
Susan’s personality is often described as cold, icy, and aloof. She did not like socializing with crowds. She loved sport fishing and owned three ocean-going boats for that purpose. Movie directors appreciated Susan’s professionalism and high standards. She was considered easy to work with but was not chummy after the cameras stopped.
“My life is fair game for anybody. I spent an unhappy, penniless childhood in Brooklyn. I had to slug my way up in a town called Hollywood, where people love to trample you to death. I don’t relax because I don’t know how. I don’t want to know how. Life is too short to relax.”
Hayward won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of real-life death row inmate Barbara Graham in “I Want to Live!” (1958). Her performance was “so vivid and so shattering” that the New York Times remarked, “anyone who could sit through this ordeal without shivering and shuddering is made of stone.”
“I never thought of myself as a movie star. I’m just a working girl. A working girl who worked her way to the top—and never fell off.”
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