October 5

Gloria Grahame dies of stomach cancer in New York City, 1981. She first hit the scene in Blonde Fever (1944) and made noteworthy appearances in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Crossfire (1947) and In a Lonely Place (1950). Her busiest year in movies was 1952, when she appeared in four films: The Greatest Show on Earth, Macao, Sudden Fear and The Bad and the Beautiful. For that last film, she played the ambitious, unfaithful wife of writer Dick Powell and took home the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She followed her Oscar win with The Big Heat (1953), The Cobweb (1955) and Oklahoma! (1955), but it was her personal life that made the headlines. As chronicled in Lawrence Frascella's book, Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, Grahame, who was married to director Nicholas Ray, was home alone when Ray's estranged teenage son Anthony showed up unannounced. Grahame and the younger Ray hit it off, the older Ray came home, found them in a compromising position, and the marriage was over. The actress later wed Anthony, observing, "I married Nicholas Ray, the director. People yawned. Later on I married his son, and from the press's reaction you'd have thought I was committing incest or robbing the cradle!"