Gloria Stuart

Following her husband's death, she engaged in a 13-year friendship with printer Ward Ritchie, born in 1904. They first met in 1930 when he was best friends with first husband, sculptor Blair Gordon Newell. The two reacquainted in March 1983 and he taught her fine printing. They remained close until his death in 1996.

Gloria Stuart was born on a dining room table on 4th Street in Santa Monica, California on July 4, 1910. Her early roles as a performing artist were in plays she produced in her home as a young girl.

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

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

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.

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 (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.

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

She helped form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (1936).

At the height of her early career as a contract player for 20th Century Fox, a young fan of Stuart's--Ray Pearl, from Chicago--had her portrait tattooed across his chest. Stuart met with Pearl in person, an event which was photographed and profiled in Life magazine in fall 1937.

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.

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.

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

When her husband fell ill in the 1970s (he died in 1978), she returned to acting doing a range of television series.

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.

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

Gloria Stuart won a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Oscar-nomination for her performance as the Old Rose in Titanic (1997).

Chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World (1998).

She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6714 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on September 27, 2000.

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 age 87, she was the oldest person ever to be nominated for an Academy Award. Christopher Plummer later surpassed her when he was nominated at age 88 for All the Money in the World (2017).