Margaret Sullavan

About Margaret Sullavan

She was an American stage and film actress. She began her career onstage in 1929 with the University Players on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1933, she caught the attention of film director John M. Stahl and made her screen debut that same year in Only Yesterday. She continued to be successful on stage and film, best known for The Shop Around the Corner.

Sullavan preferred working on the stage and made only 16 films, four of which were opposite close friend James Stewart in a popular partnership that included The Mortal Storm and The Shop Around the Corner.

On January 1, 1960, at about 5:30 p.m., Sullavan was found in bed, barely alive and unconscious, in a hotel room in New Haven, Connecticut. Her copy of the script to Sweet Love Remembered, in which she was then starring during its tryout in New Haven, was found open beside her, as well as a bottle of prescribed pills. Sullavan was rushed to Grace New Haven Hospital, but shortly after 6:00 p.m. she was pronounced dead on arrival. She was 50 years old.

No note was found to indicate suicide, and initially no conclusion was reached as to whether her death was the result of a deliberate or an accidental overdose of barbiturates. Ultimately, the county coroner officially ruled Sullavan's death an accidental overdose.

Her daughter actress Brooke Hayward