Norma Shearer

She has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6636 Hollywood Boulevard, and is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in a crypt emblazoned with the name "Norma Arrouge," next to film star Jean Harlow. After a long bout with diabetes, a broken hip, and a number of strokes, Jan Sterling died on March 26, 2004, in Los Angeles, California, a few days before her 84th birthday. Confounding the skeptics, they were still happily married at the time of her death, though in her declining years she reportedly called Arrouge "Irving.". Inactive for nearly two decades, she made an appearance at the Cinecon Film Festival in Los Angeles in the fall of 2001. She retired from acting in 1942 and married Martín Arrouge, a ski enthusiast quite a few years her junior. They never married but stayed together until his death in 1993. After Thalberg died in 1936, Shearer embarked upon a series of little known but enthusiastic love affairs, including one with teenage film star Mickey Rooney and tough-guy actor George Raft. In the 70s she entered into a strong personal relationship with actor Sam Wanamaker.

She was nominated the same year for her role in Their Own Desire, in 1931 for her role in A Free Soul, in 1934 for The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in 1936 for Romeo and Juliet, and in 1938 for Marie Antoinette which was reputedly her favorite role. Herbert Hoover in the TV miniseries Backstairs at the White House. Starting as a film extra in 1920, she was already a popular star in 1927 when she married MGM's second-in-command Irving Thalberg, with whom she had two children. Shearer won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Divorcee in 1930. She retired from films in favor of the stage in 1969 and returned before the cameras in 1976 to portray Mrs. She was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood. Married and divorced to actor John Merivale (http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0580881/) in the 40s, Sterling's career slipped down after the death of her second husband, actor Paul Douglas, in 1959. Norma Shearer (August 10, 1902 - June 12, 1983) was an American actress born in Montreal, Quebec. During the following years, she appears regularly in movies like Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Kathy O, and The Female Animal.

Also the same year, she travelled to England to play the role of Julia in the first film version of George Orwell's 1984, despite being several months pregnant at the time. In 1954 Sterling was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her great performance in The High and the Mighty. Shuttling between films and television, she showed up in nearly all the major live anthologies of the 1950s, stood out in such 'bad girl' film roles in Caged (1950), The Big Carnival [aka 'Ace in the Hole'] (1951), Flesh and Fury (1952), The Human Jungle (1954), and Female on the Beach (1955), while making a more sympathetic impression in Sky Full of Moon (1952). In 1948 she broke into films supporting the Academy Award winner Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda, in a key, emotional role.

Then, the actrees Ruth Gordon insisted she change her stage name and the two hit upon 'Jan Sterling'. Seldom cast in passive roles, Sterling was at her best in parts calling for hard-bitten, sometimes hard-boiled determination. As a teenager she returned to Manhattan, and billed as Jane Sterling, made her first Broadway appearance in Bachelor Born and went on to appear in such major stage offerings as Panama Hattie, Over 21 and Present Laughter. In 1947, she made her movies debut in Tycoon, now billed as Jane Darian. She was schooled by private tutors in London and Paris, and was enrolled in Fay Compton's dramatic school in London.

Sterling was educated in private schools before heading to Europe with her family. Jan Sterling was born Jane Sterling Adriance on April 3, 1921, in New York City, NY, into a prosperous family. One of Hollywood's most talented and versatile stars, often cool and stunning blonde in Hollywood film noir movies of the 1940s and '50s, the actrees Jan Sterling ensured audiences of a real good time with her sexy roles in soaps, crime action and comedies.