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Norma Shearer retired from the screen before the age of forty because she wanted to be remembered at the height of her beauty, saying, "It is better to go while still on top of things."

 

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No expense was spared for Norma's elaborate costumes in Marie Antoinette. Even without her husband in charge, she was still the "Queen of MGM." She chose her co-star Tyrone Power, whom she fell in love with offscreen. "When we first met, my heart stood still..." Power was considered one of the most beautiful and dashing men in Hollywood.

 

Costume design

© 2002 Sandy McLendon

“For such a little lady, she had a giant will and determination.” – Robert Morley

In Marie Antoinette, Norma Shearer achieved her greatest illusion of beauty.

Norma Shearer’s co-star in Marie Antoinette didn’t know the half of it. For ten weeks in 1938, Morley witnessed Norma bending an entire movie studio to her will, but he could not have fully understood the urgency behind the requests she made of every cameraman, lighting technician, wardrobe woman, and makeup artist. Only a select few at M-G-M knew the reason for that urgency, and they weren’t talking.

By the time Marie Antoinette was in production, Norma Shearer was one of the most famous movie stars in the world. “The First Lady of the Screen” was the billing, and her exquisitely patrician appearance fully lived up to the title. What the public didn’t know was something any number of studio minions were dedicated to suppressing – the on-screen beauty was a masterful illusion.

Before Norma went into the movies, she was a model. This pose was as the
mascot of Kelly Springfield tyres, Miss Lotta Miles. Kelly Springfield invested
wisely – the company is still in business today, eighty years on.

Not that Norma Shearer wasn’t pretty – she was, and she had always been counted so. But before she entered the movies, her beauty had been the kind that any number of young women possess. Charming in real life, even beautiful on first sight, Norma’s looks revealed some very distinct flaws on close inspection, and close inspection was what the movies were all about. Sometime around 1919, Norma began to view herself as a candidate for a movie career, and her first move towards that end was to look into her mirror and identify all the physical shortcomings that stood between her and her goal. They were:

· Her right eye (camera left) appeared slightly crossed, due to a condition called strabismus, more commonly known as a cast.

· Both eyes lacked the huge, luminous “look” seen in screen beauties like Gloria Swanson. Norma’s eyes were of normal size, but they tended to squeeze somewhat closed when she smiled or talked.

· Her legs were not the slender, shapely ones expected of a screen siren; her ankles were thick and the legs themselves were slightly bowed.

· She had a squarish, almost masculine torso, with little of the coveted wasp-waisted appearance normally associated with beautiful women.

· Her somewhat large hands lacked the long, tapering fingers that many actresses were famous for.

In addition, time – the enemy of every actress – would eventually take a toll.

To be fair to Norma, as she was indeed fair to herself, there were as many pluses as minuses. Her skin was fine and poreless. She had exceedingly thick chestnut hair; if anything, it was luxuriant to the point of unruliness. Her bust was not large, but her décolleté and shoulders were beautiful. And there was one major asset – a profile worthy of a Roman goddess.

In the hands of another, less determined woman, Norma’s liabilities might very well have outweighed her assets; we might never have seen or heard of her, other than as the most minor and fleeting of bit players. But Norma’s character was attuned to triumphing over adversity, and she set about the serious business of overcoming each and every flaw, one by one. It occupied her for a lifetime.

THE EYES

This early (1922) shot of Norma shows the strabismus and
slight squint that kept her out of the Ziegfeld Follies.

Norma began her work with her major liability – her eye cast. She had excellent reason to be concerned; she had lost a chance to become a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl because of it.  Master showman Florenz Ziegfeld told her personally that it was too great a liability for someone who wanted to be an actress. There is still some controversy about how she took care of the problem. Norma’s major biographers, Lawrence J. Quirk and Gavin Lambert, differ on the details, with Quirk citing a small operation by an eye specialist, and Lambert crediting the Bates Method, a system of eye exercises created by Dr. William Horatio Bates. Bates was a New York ophthalmologist who believed in correcting eyesight by means of exercise instead of glasses; his book, The Cure of Imperfect Eyesight, was brand-new at the time Norma’s quest began. While Norma could certainly have used the Bates Method, it should be noted that the Bates Association, still in existence today, makes no claims that its method will work for strabismus. However, the exercises used in the Bates Method are intended to promote flexibility of focus, which was a major issue for Norma, since the cast was most apparent when she had to change focus abruptly. Quirk’s representation that Norma had some surgery may also be correct; early photographs of her show a very slight squint in the eye that is not apparent in later pictures. And Norma may well have combined both surgery and eye exercise; many people affected by strabismus do just that. 

What is definitely known is that Norma had the ability to control the cast’s appearance for a period of time, since her screen work is virtually free of traces of the problem. It was not something she always controlled in real life. Maureen O’Sullivan, who worked with Norma on The Barretts of Wimpole Street, confided to an interviewer that the cast was actually attractive “in person”, and that its extent was such that one could not be entirely sure Norma was looking directly at a particular individual. There are also stories that the affected eye could “roll out” when Norma lost control of the eye’s muscles, and it seems that the problem was greatest when Norma was tired, upset, or angry.

Since Norma’s control of the eye was not absolute, she also invented an entire series of diversionary measures calculated to help keep the problem from showing. The basic rule was to keep as much as possible to profile or one-quarter profile shots, where only one eye showed to the camera. In less severe cases of strabismus like Norma’s, the eyes appear crossed only in relation to each other; if one sees only one eye, it appears normal without the “reference point” provided by the other. Norma’s profile was uncommonly beautiful, and her face was unusually symmetrical, so she had an advantage most stars lack – she could easily work either profile towards the camera, which she did to great effect. She also used the “blocking” of scenes to break up the awkward transition that could occur when her onscreen character had to change focus, often turning away from the camera, changing focus, then turning back. Skilful editing also helped; “rolling out” incidents could be trimmed from the end of a scene, or a reaction shot of another actor spliced in to take the place of a bad moment.

After a few experiences as an extra, Norma landed her first real part in 1920’s The Stealers. Her first primitive attempt to enlarge her eyes with makeup can be seen here, as well as the size of her hands. The “iciness” problem that D.W. Griffith noted with the light blue colour of Norma’s eyes is in evidence, too. Norma would get prettier, and her leading men handsomer.

Still, Norma’s control of the eye must have been impressive; she was working in movies nearly constantly from the time she decided to go into them, and there is nothing easier in the movie business than to get rid of a new player who is not working out. Much of her early career was in cheaply-made independent productions, where no one had time or inclination to coddle an actress with a problem of any sort, and in which retakes were kept to a minimum. Whatever she was doing, it worked well enough to start her on her way. There is evidence that the strabismus re-emerged as a problem in Norma’s later years, after she left M-G-M. She was under serious consideration by Warner Bros. for a contract, but she ultimately refused to make the move, and told Warner producer Hal Wallis that an “eye problem” was the reason she was declining the offer. And the cast shows in many photographs taken of Norma after her retirement from the screen, including a famous one with Jean Simmons, Stewart Granger, and Deborah Kerr at the premiere of 1952’s Young Bess.  

When Norma let her guard down, her strabismus could be seen.

Still, for the years of her career, Norma had the cast under sufficient control that she could concentrate on other eye problems. There were two, and they concerned her greatly. The first was that her eyes were of a type often seen in people of Norma’s Scottish background; they tended to “crinkle” when she smiled or laughed, appearing small. The second was that her eyes were of a light blue shade that could photograph as “icy”, making her appear strange onscreen. No less an authority than D. W. Griffith had told Norma that she could not work at the star level in movies because of the situation, when Norma had done extra work on Griffith’s Way Down East in 1920. Proper lighting and constant improvement in film stocks took care of the “iciness” problem, but the apparent size of her eyes kept Norma in a state of long-standing cosmetic anxiety. It was bad enough when Norma entered the movie business; Gloria Swanson’s huge, expressive eyes were the standard by which all other actresses’ were judged. By the late 1920’s, Joan Crawford’s emergence as a star worsened the situation; Crawford’s even more enormous eyes set a fashion every woman tried to emulate.

Norma’s emerald green eye shadow in Lady of the Night
was an early attempt to enlarge the size of her eyes.

In The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Norma added long false eyelashes
to her arsenal of eye-enlarging measures.

Norma was famous for her trim, neat berets, which were
adopted specifically to avoid overshadowing her face and eyes.

For Marie Antoinette, Norma kept her wigs as white as her makeup base,
making her dark eye makeup more prominent.

There was nothing Norma didn’t try at one time or another.  Her first attempts included elaborate applications of eye shadow, often in a bright green colour. She applied shadow not only to the upper lid, but also extended it around the outer corner of the eye, in an attempt to maximise size. By the 1930’s, she was using false lashes; stills from 1934’s The Barretts of Wimpole Street show her with a pair fully three-quarters of an inch long, heavily mascara-ed. She also used cosmetic tricks with the rest of her face to make her eyes more prominent; the main pattern was to keep anything from distracting attention from her carefully highlighted eyes. Hairstyles and hats were kept off her face as much as possible, to throw her eyes into greater relief; Norma became famous for her combed-back bob and her berets. On Marie Antoinette, Norma’s wigs were very specifically styled to avoid competing with her face and eyes. Actual hairstyles of the  Louis Seize period were very tall and wide, and were powdered, turning the hair a greyish colour. Sydney Guilaroff’s wigs for the film kept most (though not all) of the height, but eliminated the correct period width. The sides of each wig were kept close to her head, and their colour was precisely that of Norma’s makeup base, so that there would be nothing taking attention away from her mascara-ed lashes. As with all Norma’s films, a very light colour was used for her foundation makeup. Max Factor’s Silver Stone No. 1 – the lightest available shade – was Norma’s preference; the product contained some silver dust to increase reflectance under motion-picture lighting. Norma was so enamoured of this tactic, her later contracts specified that no one else on a Shearer picture could use a base within a specified number of (darker) shades from hers. Some other actresses grumbled about the clause; Mrs. Patrick Campbell made wisecracks about “Norma Shearer and her cast of Ethiopians” during the filming of 1934’s Riptide, which did not endear her to Norma. Even less felicitous was Mrs. Pat’s tactless mention of Norma’s “teensy-weensy little eyes”. Campbell never appeared in another Shearer movie after that, but this may have been a pre-emptive move by other studio employees determined to spare Norma further offence, rather than a request from Norma herself.

Norma’s tricks weren’t foolproof; this still from Riptide shows
her right eye very slightly off-kilter.

If you lower your head slightly, your eyes look larger;
no one knew this better than Norma.

Other measures employed on Shearer movies were eyelights – small pin-point lights mounted very near the camera, focussed on Norma’s eyes – and an occasional use of foreshortening. This was accomplished by having Norma hang her head very slightly; the eyes appeared larger in proportion to the lower half of the face, but this tactic was used more in publicity stills than on film. Another way that Norma “opened up” her eyes was to avoid the use of eyeliner on her lower lids; such a line would have enclosed the eye and limited its size. During the shooting of publicity stills for Marie Antoinette in 1938, new problems with the blue of Norma’s eyes emerged, as a result of new panchromatic still film that made them look too dark- the exact opposite of the ‘iciness’ problem experienced with older orthochromatic film. Still photographer Laszlo Willinger solved the problem by putting a blue-gelled eyelight on her, which made panchromatic film register Norma’s eyes in the way to which she had become accustomed.

Norma started leaving off much of her eye makeup beginning with Romeo and Juliet. Beauty took precedence over authenticity in this shot – Norma’s flattering hairstyle was actually what young men wore in Fifteenth-Century Verona.

For all Norma’s tricks, she began to dispense with some of them, beginning with 1937’s Romeo and Juliet. From that picture forward, her eye-shadow became less elaborate and conspicuous, and her false lashes assumed more reasonable proportions. In Marie Antoinette, Norma even made bold use of the one problem she normally never allowed to show – her cast. In a prison scene, she evoked the incarcerated Queen’s loneliness and mental debilitation by allowing her right eye to wander very slightly. By the time of her last three pictures, Norma was working without any eye makeup that could be pinpointed as anything more than normally corrective in nature [i]; she had made peace with her eyes at last.

THE LEGS

When Norma made He Who Gets Slapped in 1924,
she didn’t have the clout to keep her legs from being photographed.
 She would get the clout later – and use it.

Norma was happiest when her legs weren’t on display at all.  Here in The Barretts of Wimpole Street,
she hid them with long skirts, a rug, and Flush the dog.

To quote Norma herself, “my legs are not my best feature”, but exactly as she had done with her eyes, Norma worked out a number of strategies that kept moviegoers happily unaware of any problems. In general, Norma endeavoured to keep her legs out of sight whenever possible. Her period pictures, such as Marie Antoinette, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Romeo and Juliet, gave her the opportunity to hide them completely under long skirts, which was much Norma’s preferred method. Modern-dress pictures were another matter entirely, and required very different tactics.

Unusually for a modern-dress Shearer picture, Norma was able to put her legs on view in 1940’s Escape.
The snowy locale of the story made boots mandatory; the boots hid the ankles Norma disliked displaying.

First, Norma wore the highest heels possible, which slim the ankle somewhat; the ankle area was where her biggest problem lay. She also favoured shoes with a high vamp, which were not only fashionable for most of the years of her stardom, but which also tend to make the foot look narrower and smaller. In her 1940 modern-dress movie, Escape, Norma was able to gain nearly the freedom she enjoyed in period costume; the snowy Bavarian setting of the story allowed her to wear boots that concealed her ankles. Stockings were something Norma generally dispensed with; the seam found in stockings of her day would have called attention to the leg, as their sheen also would have. Having done what she could about the legs themselves, Norma borrowed methodology from her eye problems, and invented a series of diversionary manoeuvres.

Shots of Norma walking in short modern skirts were always kept to an irreducible minimum, and Norma often concluded such shots by ending up behind a piece of furniture. In 1934’s Riptide, Norma tackled her leg problems head-on, to brilliant effect. In her first scene, she wore the most revealing costume she had ever sported on-screen; it was essentially a bare-midriffed showgirl’s outfit, covering no more than a two-piece bathing suit would have. Norma’s legs were bare from hip to ankle, which normally would never have done. But in Riptide, Norma and costume designer Adrian (Gilbert Adrian Rosenberg) had equipped the costume’s bottom half with streamers that trailed the floor, and Norma worked out elaborate “business” involving getting her feet tangled in the streamers and then kicking her way loose. With her legs in constant motion this way, the audience had no means to focus on any deficiencies, and Norma bolstered the effect by making certain she was behind furniture whenever she came to a stop in the action. The froth of legs and streamers made Norma appear to have the most beautiful, desirable gams on earth.

The very slight bowing of Norma’s legs was concealed by keeping her at a one-quarter angle when she wore short skirts; the problem was not apparent unless Norma was viewed head-on. In real life, matters could not be so conveniently arranged, and many candid shots of her show the problem plainly, notably one taken on the steps of the chapel where Norma’s wedding to Martin Arrougé took place.

Adrian’s white satin evening dresses for Norma hid her legs,
and enhanced her body.

Since the long-skirts trick was so effective and gave Norma such freedom, evening dress was a constant feature of Shearer movies. In nearly every modern-dress picture, Norma sported at least one Adrian number in bias-cut white crepeback satin, generally with very little worn underneath. These dresses not only concealed Norma’s ankle problem, they gave an illusion of perfect legs under them. The line of Norma’s legs was fine in a one-quarter view, even if the details were problematic. Norma was so insistent on having such a dress in each of her movies, Adrian fondly dubbed them “Norma’s Nightgowns”.

To deflect attention from her legs, Norma used two tricks in The Women that can be seen here.  She’s wearing a busy jacket and hat that Adrian copied from couturier Elsa Schiaparelli’s designs, with a plain dark skirt, to keep the eye above her waist. Standing behind the table provided extra insurance.

Norma’s concern about her legs extended to “real” life, as well. In 1933, Norma and Irving sailed from San Pedro on the S.S. California. Her ensemble’s matching lapels, scarf, gloves, and cape lining were calculated to draw the eye upward, and Norma did her valiant best to arrange her ankles attractively.

Another modern-dress trick was to keep all the interest of a costume above the waist; an example of this can be seen in 1939’s The Women. In the scene where Norma visits a manicurist, she’s wearing a Schiaparelli-inspired, Adrian-designed “Box” jacket, two-toned, with a fancy arrangement of lapels and collar, and an intriguing hat with an ornate pin. With them, she wears the narrowest and plainest of dark skirts, and dark shoes: the eye is led up, so that only a viewer looking for Norma’s leg problems will spot them. Norma took this show on the road, as well; many candid off-screen shots of her in the 1930’s show her in suits that have striking details such as striped lapels, with very plain skirts and shoes. Norma’s splendid shoulders and décolleté also helped keep an audience’s eyes off her legs, and Adrian’s costumes for her often took full advantage of these assets.

For stills, Norma was most proficient at posing in ways that made her legs look much better than they were, as photographer George Hurrell found when he worked with her for the first time. A slinky pose and allowing her legs to extend provocatively from an open dressing gown gave that famous first Hurrell sitting the illusion that Norma’s legs were perfect.

Irving Thalberg wasn’t certain that Norma was sexy enough for The Divorcee.
Norma’s first sitting with George Hurrell proved him wrong – and got her the part.

Unlike Norma’s relinquishing of much of the fancy eye makeup she wore in earlier years, the leg problems troubled her all her life. After her retirement, she was seldom seen in public without evening dress. Later, when slacks for women became permissible, Norma embraced them whole-heartedly, both on and off her beloved ski slopes, relying on them until her last years in the Motion Picture Country Home.

THE TORSO

Inherited from her father, Andrew Shearer, Norma’s build would have been stocky had she not controlled her weight. She had one thing going for her; Norma was uncommonly athletic for a woman of her time. Tennis, rowing, skiing, and swimming were lifelong favourites of hers, and the result was to give Norma the means she needed to appear screen-slim. Her supremely flat stomach was the envy of other women all her life, and that single advantage was all Norma required to create the illusion of a perfect body. Her main means of dealing with the situation were inspired by fine art.

Norma’s use of skilful poses like this one minimised her waist;
note the left hand helping to give the illusion of an inward curve.

For starters, Norma often used a variation of a pose known to artists as the contraposto position; the subject stands in a three-quarter profile turned away from the viewer, with the shoulders and torso turned in the opposite direction, to a front one-quarter pose. Norma’s specialised version did for her what contraposto has done for countless others over the course of centuries: the width of her squarish waist was visually reduced, and the exaggerated line of her shoulders further minimised the waistline, as well. Norma’s contribution to the classic arrangement was to bend the leg nearest the camera, which brings us to Norma’s second trick: her adoption of Hogarth’s “Line of Beauty”. In the Eighteenth Century, painter William Hogarth had printed a work titled “The Analysis of Beauty”, in which he opined that an “S”-curve – not too deep or too shallow – was the most beautiful line possible in art. Norma’s bending of her downstage leg, plus the use of contraposto, gave her body that line, completely concealing its basic blockiness. Over time, Norma evolved more and more sinuous poses utilising the principle of the Line of Beauty. Combined with the sensuality of Adrian’s “Nightgowns”, these positions gave Norma a remarkable appearance of slenderness and feminine grace.

Hogarth’s S-shaped “Line of Beauty” was Norma’s main means of giving herself
the luscious curves expected of a star.

Norma was tightly corseted in Smilin’ Through, and her waistline retouched into the bargain.

As was done with Norma’s legs, costuming helped with the waistline problems. Corsetry was employed when necessary; M-G-M had girdle specialists who could provide a custom-fitted solution for anyone. 1932’s Smilin’ Through is perhaps the ultimate use of this tactic on Norma; her waist is corseted to near-nothingness in the flashback sequences. Adrian often provided costume details that lengthened and slimmed the line of Norma’s torso; Marie Antoinette is filled with variations on one of his methods. Taking full advantage of a fashion detail of the period, the Queen’s court dresses were designed with a waistline forming a “V” just below Norma’s waist. Modern-dress costumes also contributed details that helped; jackets usually featured both a stressed shoulder line (à la Joan Crawford), and a peplum, a flared area at the hem. Once again, an hourglass silhouette was created where none really existed.

Only close inspection reveals that Norma isn’t as wasp-waisted as she seems;
the peaked shoulders and peplum of the jacket create an illusion of a narrower waist.

THE HANDS

Norma wasn’t crazy about her hands, so George Hurrell retouched them in this portrait.
Even when Hurrell did it, retouching hands did not always yield a credible result.

Norma’s bracelets were calculated to keep critical eyes away from her hands.

Although the most minor of her problems, Norma’s hands came in for their share of attention. For much of her career, Norma eschewed coloured nail polish; the contrasting colour drew attention to the hands. Jewellery was used to control their apparent size; Norma seldom wore rings on-screen, because they pointed up the inelegance of her fingers, but she esteemed wide, ornate Cartier-style bracelets that drew the eye away from the hands themselves. In later years, Norma did wear coloured polish – it was even a story point in The Women – but she counterbalanced the negative aspects of the style by growing her nails exaggeratedly long and filing them to narrow ovals, to give an increased look of length and slenderness to her fingers. Retouching helped in stills; the famous Hurrell sitting that got Norma her part in The Divorcee is an example.

ODDS AND ENDS

Norma exploited every advantage that presented itself to her; a new brand of mascara might be deemed to give her something she had heretofore lacked, or a set might have lighting that made her look sensationally attractive, and therefore would be worth repeating in subsequent movies. Norma was ruthless with herself in watching her dailies -–then called “rushes” – constantly looking for weaknesses of appearance or performance that needed correction. During such screenings, she could sometimes be heard to comment “Well, I won’t do that again!” – and she didn’t. Her position as Irving Thalberg’s wife did not, as has been claimed, give her immunity from the usual responsibilities of a star, but she did take care to use her star-power to get the best M-G-M had to offer in the way of scripts, direction, costume, and general technical polish. She also was able to talk to Irving about retakes she felt were needed; Irving himself believed in them as a way to improve movies before release. Norma viewed the process of movie-making as a series of challenges, and she worked herself and everyone around her to the bone to meet every one. There was nothing minor on a Shearer movie; Norma involved herself in every aspect of filming, even rehearsing and directing the acting nuances on Marie Antoinette with her fellow actors when director W.S. Van Dyke indicated he intended to capture each scene in only one take.

The importance of Norma’s grooming, nearly supernatural in its flawlessness, can hardly be overestimated.  The appearance she presented was so refined in each detail that the illusion of overall perfection was remarkably enhanced. The perfection was not only to be seen onscreen; Norma’s standards of camera readiness extended to her private life, as well. With most classic stars, it is easy to tell which surviving photographs are studio shots, and which are candid ones taken in real life – just look at the grooming.  Pictures of Norma taken during her years of stardom nearly always defy classification in this way.  Her hair, makeup, and dress are just as perfect at a train station or nightclub as they were inside M-G-M’s soundstages and portrait galleries.

GETTING OLDER

Norma did herself a great many favours in life, not the least of which was the exemplary care she took of herself. Genuine rest and relaxation, as opposed to the nightclub variety, was always important to her, and it paid off handsomely, as did her athleticism. It also helped that Norma never fell prey to the “disease of the stars”, alcoholism; she thus spared herself a great deal of puffiness and sagging.

At the very end of her career, Norma looked at least as young as she had ten years earlier, and in some ways she looked younger. Her formerly chestnut hair had become lighter in colour, and it was styled in ways that were increasingly bouffant, giving a less severe, younger look. Her personal grooming remained as finicky as ever, avoiding the stray eyebrows and straggling hair that can add years to one’s appearance. Her athletic endeavours and careful diet helped her to avoid the osteoporosis-induced stooping of the shoulders that plagued some of her contemporaries, including Joan Crawford. And the quick, light, girlish body language she had perfected for Romeo and Juliet and Marie Antoinette remained part of her performing style for the remainder of her career. Her love affair with Silver Stone No. 1 stood her in good stead; its reflective qualities now served to “bounce” light off the lines in her face, helping to conceal them from the camera.

As Norma got older, she compensated by lightening her hair and making it
more bouffant in style. It’s still a good trick.

Norma got away with playing a fourteen-year-old in Marie Antoinette,
but she declined to risk the sixteen-year-old Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone With the Wind. The difference was daylight.

Norma also controlled her apparent age in other ways; her refusal of the title role in 1940’s Mrs. Miniver was one example. The script called for Norma to play the mother of a grown son; Norma felt strongly that such a blatant inference of age would set audiences to looking for physical signs of it – and that they would find them. Her turn-down of the most coveted role of her time – Scarlett O’Hara in 1939’s Gone With the Wind – was almost surely due, at least in part, to her qualms about her ability to portray the young heroine. Not only was Scarlett sixteen at the beginning of the story, the script’s first scene would have required Norma to pull off this illusion of youth in broad daylight, on the front steps of Tara – in Technicolor. While Norma had played the fourteen-year-old Archduchess Toinette successfully the year before in Marie Antoinette, that brief illusion had been produced on a soundstage, under highly controlled conditions. Norma knew better than anyone else that there was no use pushing her luck over the course of a four-hour movie. And her concern with her appearance may have been an added factor in her refusal of the Warners’ contract offered to her in 1942; technical standards at that studio (at that time) were not of the standard Norma was accustomed to at M-G-M. It took time and retakes to get the very best from Norma, and both were commodities deliberately held in short supply at Warner Bros.

As dedicated to beauty as Norma was, she pulled no punches when it was time for Marie-Antoinette
to go to the guillotine.  M-G-M makeup wizard Jack Dawn did the prosthetic makeup Norma is wearing.

In spite of Norma’s fears of appearing older onscreen, she did make one notable exception, which occurred in Marie Antoinette. At the end of the story, the Queen, now the Widow Capet, is being taken in a butcher’s cart to her death by beheading. As important as beauty was to Norma, she was more than actress enough to tackle this sequence with staggering honesty. Although there have been some unkind remarks that Norma merely did without makeup for the scene, she actually wore an intricate prosthetic makeup [ii], probably designed by M-G-M’s Jack Dawn. Her lips were thinned and lightened to an ashy grey, and her lashes too. Shadowing and lining of her face, as well as a straggling wig, completed the look, which was a remarkable facsimile of the real Marie-Antoinette’s appearance. The makeup had been based on an on-the-spot sketch drawn by Eighteenth Century French artist Jacques-Louis David as the actual Queen passed him on her way to the guillotine on 16^th October, 1793. If Norma’s startlingly realistic appearance seemed out of character for a star known for such onscreen elegance, it was not; it was an extension of the same courage that had led her to overcome her defects in the first place.

SUMMING UP

Even though every known detail of Norma Shearer’s secrets of performance has been included here, only watching Shearer’s films will give a true appreciation of how she applied them. Words cannot convey the effect of Norma’s makeup combined with her physical control, against the background of one of Adrian’s inimitable costumes, with the truth of one character or another blazing in her face all the while. And her voice, with its rich violincello notes, was a remarkable contribution to her allure. There was more; over the years, she learned her self-imposed rules so well she was able to ignore some of them, and emerge the more beautiful for the gain in naturalness. The sum of her magic is best expressed in a line spoken by Joseph Schildkraut in Marie Antoinette; his character was speaking of Norma’s Dauphine of France, but the words apply equally to Norma herself:

“In motion you are Grace itself – and in repose, a statue of Beauty.” [iii]

It was the tribute nineteen-year-old Edith Norma Shearer had, without knowing it, yearned for that day in front of her mirror, so many years before. On the day those words were spoken to her on a Culver City soundstage, we can only hope there was a part of her that was aware of their resonance outside the scene she was playing.  A part that knew she herself, starting from the faultiest of beginnings, had earned every word.

Sandy McLendon writes about design, fashion, and film.  His work has appeared in
Modernism, Old House Interiors, and Jetset.  He lives in Atlanta, GA, USA.

SOURCES

Norma Shearer: A Life, by Gavin Lambert. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1990.
Norma: The Story of Norma Shearer, by Lawrence J. Quirk. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1988.
The Films of Norma Shearer, by Jack Jacobs and Myron Braun. Citadel Press, Secaucus, 1976
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