Local Carrollton Georgia News
Susan Hayward Remembered
September 21st, 2008
Susan Hayward was instrumental in the establishment of Carroll
County's Catholic Church as well as the county's hospital. Many locals still talk about how she would come
to town and shop "just like anybody else would." A comment that echoes even to this day, "she didn't expect to
be treated any different than anybody else in Carroll County,
Georgia."
Her birth name was Edythe Marrenner, and while many folk in Carroll County, Georgia claim her as one of their own (even today), she was actually born in
Brooklyn, New York. She began her career as a photographer's model, but traveled to Hollywood in 1937 with
the goal of securing the Scarlett O'Hara role in the highly publicized movie Gone with the Wind.
According to legend, Hayward's screen name was chosen by her managers primarily because it was "as close to
Rita Hayworth as we can get away with."
History tells us that she did not win the role of Scarlett O'Hara, but Hayward found employment playing bit
parts until she was cast in Beau Geste in 1939 opposite film legend Gary Cooper. During the World War II years,
she played leading lady to John Wayne two times (Reap the Wild Wind in 1942 & The Fighting Seabees in 1944).
She also starred in the film version of The Hairy Ape in 1944. Later in 1955, she was cast by Howard Hughes
to play Bortai in the historical epic The Conqueror, again opposite John Wayne.
 After the war ended, she became one of Hollywood's most popular
leading ladies in films such as Tap Roots (1948), My Foolish Heart (1949), David and Bathsheba (1951), and
With a Song in My Heart (1952). In 1947, she received the first of five Academy Award nominations for her
role as an alcoholic nightclub singer in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman.
During the 1950s she won acclaim for her dramatic performances as President Andrew Jackson's melancholic wife in
The President's Lady (1953); the alcoholic actress Lillian Roth in I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), based on Roth's
best-selling autobiography of the same name, for which she received a Cannes award; and the real-life California
murderer Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958). Hayward's portrayal of Graham won her the Academy Award for
Best Actress. She replaced the fired Judy Garland as Helen Lawson in the 1968 film adaptation of Jacqueline
Susann's Valley of the Dolls.
Hayward was married to actor Jess Barker for 10 years, and they had two children. The marriage was described in
Hollywood gossip columns as bumpy. They divorced in 1954. During the contentious divorce proceedings, Hayward
felt it necessary to stay in the United States and not join the Hong Kong location shooting for the film "Soldier
of Fortune". She shot her scenes with co-star Clark Gable indoors in Hollywood. A few brief, distant scenes of
Gable and a Hayward double walking near landmarks in Hong Kong were combined with the indoor shots to create a
remarkably effective illusion.
In 1957, Hayward married Eaton Chalkley, a Georgia rancher and businessman who had formerly worked as a federal
agent. Though he was an unusual husband for a Hollywood movie star, the marriage was a happy one. She lived with
him in Carroll County, Georgia, becoming a popular figure
in a state that in the 1950s was off the beaten path for most national celebrities. In December 1964, the couple
was baptized Catholic at SS Peter and Paul's Roman Catholic Church on Larimar Avenue, in the East
Liberty section of Pittsburgh, by one Father McGuire. She had met McGuire while in China and promised him that
if she ever converted, he would be the one to baptize her.
Chalkley died in 1966 and was buried in Carroll County.
Hayward went into mourning; she did little acting for several years; and she took up residence in Florida because she
preferred not to live in her Georgia home without her late husband. Hayward died at age 57 on March 14, 1975,
of pneumonia-related complications of brain cancer, having survived considerably longer than doctors had originally
predicted. She was cremated and buried next to Chalkley in Carroll
County. She was survived by her two sons from the marriage with Barker.
Hayward has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6251 Hollywood Boulevard.
Susan Hayward's burial site, found just off State Highway 113 between Carrollton and Temple, next to
Our Lady of Perpetual Health Catholic Church, is a popular attraction in Carroll County, Georgia.
Click for a Map
to 210 Center Point Road, Carrollton, Georgia
To learn more about Susan Hayward, visit
Wikipedia.com, our primary source for non-local information within this article (under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License).
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