Enchanting Dorothy McGuire
Dorothy McGuire was one of those Hollywood actresses who was more known for her acting abilities than her looks. She was very attractive, though, even beautiful, with her beauty being more than skin-deep. She had intelligence, integrity, serenity and grace. She also displayed a shyness and vulnerability, and I think there was something sad about her demeanour. Not so surprisingly she was suited to play dramatic and complex roles, later in her career she portrayed mothers often.
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Jane Wyatt, who co-starred with Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman's Agreement, said she once asked Loretta Young about McGuire and her lack of stardom and why she didn't have a bigger career. Young reportedly answered: "I'll tell you why she didn't. I wanted to be a star; Dorothy wanted to be an actress." Wyatt explained: "Dorothy wasn't interested in being a star; she wanted to be a pure actress. She really was an actress through and through, and everybody adored her." McGuire addressed this topic herself in a 1982 interview with The Times: "I love my career, but I never felt much about it — about how to nurture it. It's been very erratic, after all ... To this day, I don’t know what shapes a Hollywood career ... I was never a classic beauty. I had no image. So I found myself in a lot of things accidentally."
Born on 14 June 1916, Dorothy had a long and distinguished career on both the stage and screen. She made her stage debut at the age of 13, in J.M. Barrie's play A Kiss for Cinderella, at the Omaha Community Playhouse opposite Henry Fonda. She achieved Broadway fame playing the title role in Claudia, a role she would repeat in the Hollywood adaptation of the play in 1943. She starred in a total of 27 feature films before she ventured into television, well into the 1980s. Her best-known films are The Enchanted Cottage, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Spiral Staircase, Gentleman's Agreement and Friendly Persuasion. She never won an Oscar but was nominated once for Best Actress, for her role in Gentleman's Agreement (1947).
In her personal life McGuire only married once. Her husband was Life magazine photographer John Swope and they were married (with two children) for more than 35 years until his death in 1979. Dorothy died at the age of 85 of cardiac arrest after a brief illness.
I really like her and watched 15 of her films up till now, listed below in order of release date.
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My favourite film is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — I simply love that film — and Gentleman's Agreement comes 2nd. My least favourite films are Claudia and the recently watched Mother Didn't Tell Me. I think Claudia needs a rewatch because it's been a while since I've seen it and at the time I was not really into it. This month I watched Old Yeller, Mother Didn't Tell Me and Make Haste to Live. You can read my notes on these last three films in my upcoming September round-up post.
NOTE: I had published this post on a film blog that no longer exists and had it in my draft folder of this blog since forever. I updated it a little bit and included the most recent watches.
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PHOTOS/GIFS IN THIS POST FROM TOP TO BOTTOM:
*Dorothy McGuire;
*Dorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase (1946); (gif by me)
*Dorothy McGuire with her husband John Swope and their daughter Topo, photographed by Jean Howard;
*Gentleman's Agreement (1947) with Dorothy McGuire and Gregory Peck; (gif by me)
*Dorothy McGuire in Old Yeller (1957). (screenshot by me)