1. Jeanne Eagels was posthumously nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her 1929 role in The Letter after dying suddenly that year at the age of 39.
29 Facts About Jeanne Eagels
1. 2.
Jeanne Eagels attended St Joseph's Catholic School and Morris Public School.
3.
Jeanne Eagels quit school shortly after her First Communion to work as a cash girl in a department store.
4.
Jeanne Eagels began her acting career at a young age in Kansas City, appearing in a variety of small venues.
5.
Jeanne Eagels left Kansas City around the age of 15 and toured the midwestern US with the Dubinsky Brothers' traveling theater show as a dancer.
6.
Jeanne Eagels later played the leading lady in several comedies and dramas put on by the Dubinskys, who later founded AMC Theatres.
7.
Jeanne Eagels's hair was brown, but she bleached it when she went to New York.
8.
Jeanne Eagels was in the supporting cast of Mind the Paint Girl at the Lyceum Theatre in September 1912.
9.
Jeanne Eagels played opposite George Arliss in three plays in 1916 and 1917.
10.
Jeanne Eagels quit this show due to illness and subsequently traveled to Europe.
11.
Jeanne Eagels appeared in several other Broadway shows between 1919 and 1921.
12.
Jeanne Eagels went on tour with Rain for two more seasons and returned to Broadway to give a farewell performance in 1926.
13.
In 1926, Jeanne Eagels was offered the part of Roxie Hart in Maurine Dallas Watkins's play Chicago, but she walked out during rehearsals.
14.
Jeanne Eagels next appeared in the comedy Her Cardboard Lover with Leslie Howard, touring for several months.
15.
Jeanne Eagels appeared opposite John Gilbert in the MGM film Man, Woman and Sin, directed by Monta Bell.
16.
In 1928, after failing to appear for a performance of Her Cardboard Lover in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Jeanne Eagels was banned from the stage for 18 months by Actors Equity.
17.
The ban did not stop Jeanne Eagels from working in film, and she made two sound films for Paramount Pictures, The Letter and Jealousy, both released in 1929.
18.
Jeanne Eagels's first marriage was to actor Maurice Dubinsky whom she married when she was a teenager.
19.
Jeanne Eagels went to several sanatoriums in an effort to kick her dependency.
20.
When she entered her 30s, Jeanne Eagels began suffering from bouts of ill health that were exacerbated by her excessive substance abuse.
21.
In September 1929, Jeanne Eagels underwent eye surgery at St Luke's Hospital in New York City.
22.
The assistant chief medical examiner who performed Jeanne Eagels' autopsy concluded that she died of "alcoholic psychosis".
23.
The medical examiner stated that while Jeanne Eagels had not consumed alcohol in the two days preceding her death, she had been "acting strangely" and suffering from hallucinations three or four days before she died.
24.
Toxicology reports revealed that Jeanne Eagels still had alcohol in her organs when she died in addition to heroin and chloral hydrate.
25.
Jeanne Eagels's death was attributed to an overdose of the chloral hydrate.
26.
Jeanne Eagels was survived by her mother Julia Eagles and several brothers and sisters.
27.
Jeanne Eagels was the first performer to be nominated by the Academy after her death, though hers, like all the nominations at the 2nd Academy Awards, was unofficial, being among several actresses "under consideration" by a board of judges.
28.
In 1957, a mostly fictionalized film biography entitled Jeanne Eagels was made by Columbia Pictures, with Eagels portrayed by Kim Novak.
29.
Jeanne Eagels' family sued Columbia over the way Jeanne Eagels had been depicted in the movie.