Margaret Sullavan

Born in Norfolk, Virginia to wealthy stockbroker Cornelius Hancock Sullavan and heiress Garland Council Sullavan, Margaret Brooke overcame a muscle weakness in her childhood to go on to become a rebellious teenager at posh private schools. She went on to perform with the University Players at Harvard and made her Broadway debut in Hello, Lola in 1926.

Turned down the part of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934). Claudette Colbert was then given the role and won a best actress Oscar for her performance.

Universal placed an ad in movie industry Trade Papers in early 1936 promoting Carl Laemmle's 30th Anniversary Celebration. The ad included a list of planned productions for 1936. One listed title was "Strangers At the Feast", to star Margaret Sullavan. She was soon replaced by Jane Wyatt before the project was canceled and the movie eventually was never made.

Gave birth to her 1st child at age 28, a daughter Brooke Hayward on July 5, 1937. Child's father was her 3rd husband, Leland Hayward.

Sullavan and Robert Young were in three films together - Three Comrades (1938), The Shining Hour (1938), and The Mortal Storm (1940).

Was considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939).

As written in a 1940s Architectural Digest piece about her Brentwood, California home, Sullavan shared that she chose the Connecticut-style colonial home due to her love of New England. After years of searching for the quintessential property, she and her then-husband Leland Hayward purchased a rambling saltbox house on 100 bucolic acres in Brookfield, Connecticut.

Gave birth to her 3rd child at age 31, a son William Hayward on March 27, 1941. Child's father was her 3rd husband, Leland Hayward.

Her youngest daughter, Bridget, was found dead in her Manhattan apartment on October 31, 1960, only eleven months after her mother died. It was ruled a suicide by drug overdose, like her mother's death. She was 21 years old.

Her eldest daughter, actress Brooke Hayward, wrote an autobiographical book titled "Haywire" which was a best-seller in 1981. It was later made into the television movie Haywire (1980), starring Lee Remick.

Her son, William Hayward, also committed suicide. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the heart on March 8, 2008, in his trailer in Castaic, California. He was 66 years old.

Joshua Logan said of her: "She was so attractive, and so beautiful, and she had so many little Southern tricks... to win you, but she was willful as all get out." (From the 2017 dual biography of Henry Fonda and James Stewart, Hank & Jim, by film historian Scott Eyman).