Biography for
Gloria Stuart More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

4 July 1910, Santa Monica, California, USA

Date of Death

26 September 2010, Los Angeles, California, USA (lung cancer)

Birth Name

Gloria Frances Stewart

Height

5' 5" (1.65 m)

Mini Biography

Gloria Stuart was born on a dining room table on 4th Street in Santa Monica, on July 4th, 1910. Her early roles as a performing artist were in plays she produced in her home as a young girl. She was the star of her senior class play at Santa Monica High School in 1927. Attending the University of California, at Berkeley, she continued to perform on the stage. Gloria Stuart married and move to Carmel, where she performed in a production of "The Seagull" which was transferred to the Pasadena Playhouse in 1932. It was there that talent scouts for both Paramount and Universal saw her. In a famous dispute, the heads of the two studios flipped a coin and Universal won. She played lead roles for director James Whale, including (The Old Dark House (1932),The Invisible Man (1933), and The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933)). The hard work at the studio estranged her from her first husband. (Gloria Stuart helped create the Screen Actors Guild) She played the leading lady in Roman Scandals (1933), on the set of which she met her husband Arthur Sheekman. She was dissatisfied with the roles in which she was cast at Universal and played roles in films for other studios. Ultimately, a few years after having her daughter, Sylvia (named after the role she was playing when she met Sheekman) she left the cinema and sought roles on the stage in New York. In the 1940s, she opened an art furniture shop where she created decoupage lamps. tables and trays, many of which sold to stars like Judy Garland and others. Later, Stuart took up oil painting and was very prolific, showing and selling her work in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Her landscapes of The Watts Towers are on permanent collection at The Los Angeles County Museum. She also took up and mastered the art of bonsai and some of her trees are on permanent collection in the Huntington Library Japanese Garden. When her husband fell ill 1970s, (he died in 1978) she returned to acting doing a range of television shows. In 1982, she returned to the screen appearing in a brief dance scene with Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year (1982).

About this time a friend she knew half a century earlier in Carmel, who was a master printer, re-entered her life and from him, Stuart learned the craft of fine printing. She established a printing press in her home studio called Imprenta Glorias. where she created a body of fine artist's books. Her greatest book, "Flight of Butterfly Kites" is in permanent collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Gloria Stuart won a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Oscar-nomination for her performance as the Old Rose in Titanic (1997). In July, 2010, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored Gloria Stuart with a Centennial Celebration. She was the first such honoree to be living for a centennial. At 100 years of age, she had completed her greatest artist's book with her great grand daughter working as her apprentice and also her final appearance on film in her grandson's documentary about her, entitled Secret Life of Old Rose: The Art of Gloria Stuart (2012) when she died at home at the age of 100 on September 26, 2010.

IMDb Mini Biography By: secretlifeofoldrose@gmail.com

Spouse

Arthur Sheekman	(29 July 1934 - 12 January 1978) (his death) 1 daughter
Blair Gordon Newell	(21 June 1930 - 17 May 1934) (divorced)

Trivia

Oldest person ever to be nominated for an Academy Award, 2/10/98.

Chosen by People Magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world (1998).

Founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.

She was the only cast member of Titanic (1997) who was alive at the time of the actual disaster.

Titanic (1997) was her second film that featured a doomed ship. One of her early films, Here Comes the Navy (1934), was filmed aboard the USS Arizona.

Mother-in-law of television writer Gene Thompson.

Shortened her last name from "Stewart" to "Stuart" because she thought its six letters balanced perfectly on a theater's marquee with the six letters in "Gloria".

Her daughter, Sylvia Vaughn (Sheekman) Thompson Park, born June 19, 1935, is a gourmet food writer and has authored several cookbooks.

Following her husband's death she engaged in a 13-year relationship with printer Ward Ritchie, born in 1904. They first met 1930 when he was a best friend of first husband, sculptor Blair Gordon Newell. The two reacquainted in March 1983 and were lovers until his death in 1996.

Turned down Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) because she felt that the material was not to her dramatic acting abilities; however, Darryl F. Zanuck forced her to do the picture, and explained that she would be seen by millions, due to Shirley Temple's popularity. Stuart agreed in a 1998 interview that Zanuck was correct.

She has four grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

Stepdaughter of Fred J. Finch.

She graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1927 and attended the University of California-Berkeley but dropped out.

Her younger brother, Thomas Stewart, died in infancy in 1912 from spinal meningitis.

Her younger brother, Frank Finch, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, was born in 1911.

Grandchildren are David Oxley Thompson, born on January 15, 1957 in Berkeley, California; Benjamin Stuart Thompson, born on September 21, 1959 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England; Dinah Vaughn Thompson, born on December 6, 1960 in Los Angeles, California; and Amanda Thompson, born on July 30, 1962 in Berkeley, California.

Her eleven great-grandchildren are Jacob Thompson; Samuel Thompson; Deborah Thompson; Tziporah Thompson, Sarah-Leah Thompson; Dylan Sapia, Weston Sapia, Stuart Sapia, Jasen Sapia, Maggie Thompson and Frannie Whelan.

Interviewed in "It Came from Horrorwood: Interviews with Moviemakers in the SF and Horror Tradition" by Tom Weaver (McFarland, 1996).

In Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935), Stuart played a young woman whose mother pushes her to marry an unlikable rich man, but the young woman falls in love with a poor man. In Titanic (1997), Stuart's character did all that, 84 years earlier.

She is the grandmother-in-law of Jill Church and Ella Thompson.

Lived directly opposite the house in Brentwood, California where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered.

Not to be confused with Gloria Stewart, James Stewart's wife.

Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2000.

Was a member of the Wesley United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, California.

She became a member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee and was on the executive board of the California State Democratic Committee.

Although it was rumored that she was buried at several well-known Hollywood cemeteries, Gloria Stuart was cremated and her ashes were distributed, according to her life long wishes, in Santa Monica Bay, as family, friends and Titanic crew and cast members stood on the Santa Monica Pier.

Helped form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936.

Was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.

Personal Quotes

When I graduated from Santa Monica High in 1927, I was voted the girl most likely to succeed. I didn't realize it would take so long.

Onward and Upward - Avanti!

Salary

Street of Women (1932)	$125/week
Titanic (1997)	$10,000/week

Where Are They Now

(July 2008) Brentwood, Los Angeles, California