The Legacy
“I think she was lost there for a little while,” said Barker, who by that time was She was born in at Auburn and busy with his own life. Other Brooklyn with the name accounts say she was stricken with grief. Edythe Marrenner. She But, Barker said, she “had to occupy her was discovered by David time,” so, living in Fort Lauderdale, she got O. Selznick and in 1939 interested in sport fishing. She became quite did a screen test for a good at it too, competing in tournaments. movie he was producing called “Gone With the Slowly, she returned to acting and hoped Wind.” Her agent to get into television. She filmed a couple of changed her name to pilots, but before any of these projects could Susan Hayward, and it come to fruition tragedy struck again. was with that name that she rose to the top of In 1955 – the same year she had met her profession, with one Chalkley – Hayward had filmed a movie Oscar, four Best Actress with John Wayne called “The Conqueror.” nominations, a Golden Produced by Howard Hughes, the film was Globe and a star on shot on location outside St. George, Utah, Hollywood’s Walk of not far from where the government in 1953 Fame. had detonated a 32-kiloton atomic bomb. After the exterior shots were made, Hughes trucked some 60 tons of dirt from the site to Any of her movie an RKO soundstage in Los Angeles, where fans can recite these the cast and crew had the stuff blown in facts, and many of them their faces during interior filming. travel to West Georgia to visit her final resting Some 20 years afterward, that same cast place beside Chalkley, at and crew began to become ill, many with Our Lady of Perpetual what proved to be fatal cancers. Barker Help. believes that exposure to radioactive soil was what caused the pancreatic cancer which She said many times that Carrollton was later spread to his mother’s brain. the only hometown she had ever known, In 1974 she presented the Best Actress award at the Oscar ceremony, but she was so ill she had to be helped to the dais and held up by co-presenter Charlton Heston. Less than a year later she was dead. She was 57; the same age her husband had been.
Many of those fans who trace her life to her final resting place leave notes on her grave, telling her how much they enjoyed her movies, how much her acting roles influenced their lives. The letters talk about her and it is a sentiment that has succeeded her Oscar, her co-stars and her spirit. in the lives of her descendants. Greg Barker The notes are addressed to Susan Haylives only an hour from Carrollton; one of his sons, Hayward’s grandson, plays in a ward, but that name was just another one Carrollton-based band and married a Car- of the many roles she played. The name she preferred was the only name she chose for rollton girl. herself: Mrs. Eaton Chalkley. WGL
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