JEANNE EAGELS (personality)

Jeanne Eagels (born Eugenia Eagles and sometimes known as Jeanne Eagles or Amelia Eagles) was an actress from the 1910s to the 1920s. Her father died in 1910, leaving his widow with six children, and Jeanne quit school and went to work in a department store. She soon became a dancer and actress in a traveling company in the Midwest. She moved to New York City and became a Ziegfeld Girl, dying her hair blonde. She appeared in some plays, and then some movies in the middle 1910s. In 1922, she starred in the stage play version of Rain, and then toured with it for several years. She appeared several more movies and plays in the late 1920s. During this period, she had problems with drinking, and was disruptive on film sets, sometimes not showing up. In 1928, after she failed to appear for a play performance, she was banned from Actors Equity from appearing on the stage for 18 months, she went to Hollywood and made The Letter (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film) and Jealousy. Soon after she was preparing to return to Broadway, when she passed away in 1929 at the age of 39, perhaps from a drug or alcohol overdose. In 1957, a very fictionalized biography was made by Columbia Pictures, called "Jeanne Eagels", and she was played by Kim Novak.