Gloria Stuart

I just want to take a moment to acknowledge Gloria Stuart at her passing.

I don't think she was really a household name at all, but mention "Old Rose" from Titanic and almost everyone knows who you are talking about. (Those are usually the type of actresses I tend to admire.)

I don't want to focus on the fact that she played a supporting role in that 1997 film (over 10 years ago!) but I have to draw a comparison between the movie and what Gloria Stuart represents to me.

I went to see Titanic with my grandparents and my cousin on New Year's Eve, late in the evening. Since the movie ran for over three hours, it was 1998 by the time we stepped out of the theatre. I have seen Titanic since then, but believe me, you can't really fully appreciate Titanic (or many other movies of that proportion) unless you see it FULL SIZE - in the theater, with only the light of what is happening on the screen before you and the sounds surrounding you.

We laughed at the funny parts, gasped at the scary parts, and cried like babies during the tragic and heartbreaking parts. As we left the theatre we discussed the movie and traded our experiences.

THAT is what great movies should do to people.

As I said, I don't want to focus on the fact that Gloria Stuart played the storyteller in that movie, because that particular moment in her career should not be what defines it. I do remember watching the Oscars that year (Titanic swept, by the way) and feeling such great respect and admiration for the oldest actress ever nominated for an Academy Award. To me, that proved that you are never too old to do what you love.

Recently, I've had to amend that lesson:

You're never too old to keep doing what you love.

You see, Gloria Stuart was always an actress, and she was in some pretty recognizable movies besides Titanic. It is just that our current generation has lost touch with the mystique of her era. We look back with awe at movies like Gone with the Wind and those great old classic Hollywood musicals and wonder from a distance what it must have been like to be part of that glamour and magic. I read autobiographies of actresses and see scenes like Katharine Hepburn running into Ginger Rogers and it is like some surreal, distant fiction - too good to be true. I look at old black and white photos of studio gatherings, parties, or movie sets and it doesn't feel like I'm looking back a generation or two. It feels like I'm looking at another time and another world.

(And maybe that's why movies like Titanic are that fascinating. They aspire to that level of Hollywood greatness.)

I have heard more than one actor complain that Wikipedia is grossly inaccurate, but I have to say it may be one of the best resources for finding out information - in a general sense if not an accurate one - about people we wouldn't otherwise be able to research without considerable effort. Gloria Stuart's page on the encyclopedia gives you the sense of who she was and what she meant to Hollywood.

Movie roles aside, Gloria Stuart, it says, was born in Santa Monica - not far from Hollywood. Several people in her family were accomplished in their own careers. It says she dropped out of Berkeley to get married, and was not only active in theatre, but in the world of art, and knew several prominent artists. It also features a picture of her with the other "WAMPAS Baby Stars" in 1932 (seen above).

(WAMPAS is the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers who picked starlets every year and introduced them at a grand party. More info HERE and HERE.)

Her Wikipedia article also claims she was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.  However, the article for SAG says she was one of the members who was especially supportive in the early years (and not necessarily a founder).  Stuart was an activist and surely played a key role in actors having the rights they do in their workplaces today.

(A side note:  She apparently also volunteered to join the French Resistance around the time of World War II, when she and her second husband were visiting France, but was turned down.  She ended up taking singing lessons and entertaining troops.)

Still active in the art world, she also owned her own shop and later created artists' books, some of which ended up in the Metropolitan Museum, Library of Congress, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Bibliothèque nationale de France, to name a few places.

Two lines stand out to me in the whole article.

• "Stuart was a versatile female lead, but was never given the roles that would make her a major star, a source of great frustration."

• "Stuart died in her sleep on September 26, 2010 at the age of 100, due to respiratory failure."

She wrote an autobiography -- I Just Kept Hoping.  It has just been added to my list!  I will always look up to Gloria Stuart.  She did what she loved wholeheartedly, tirelessly, endlessly.

Recommended:  "Gloria Stuart, an Actress Rediscovered Late, Dies at 100" By ALJEAN HARMETZ and ROBERT BERKVIST on NYTimes.com