Happy Birthday Janet Gaynor, It Was Nice To Know Ya

Born Laura Augusta Gainor on this day, in the year that saw the city by the bay destroyed by madness, across the land in the city of brotherly love (before moving, oddly enough, to San Fran just a few years later), our intrepid little firecracker, after rising never any further than to the pixie-ish height of five foot nothing (same height as my lovely wife), and slapdashing her way through bit parts and uncredited doo-dads of several silent features and shorts, and reaching pre-stardom in The Johnstown Flood, not to mention being called out as one of the WAMPAS (Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers for those who need to go past the acronym) baby Stars of that same year - an honour that also went to Mary Astor, Joan Crawford, Fay Wray and the two Dolores's, Costello and Del Rio that very same year - became the darlin' of the first Academy Awards, as she took home the first ever award for being the best darn actress in a motion picture, winning thricely, as she was credited for Sunrise, Seventh Heaven and Street Angel all in the same breath (pretty good breakthrough year the tiny starlet of just twenty-one did have), and shot to the top of the pops in the US, working with everyone from Borzage to Murnau to Borzage again and again and then some more (and let us not forget screen lover Charles Farrell, who she made a dozen films with, and were the cutest couple this side of the Pecos), before becoming a star once again in the first of three (soon to be four - yikes) versions of A Star is Born (directed by Wild Bill Wellman to make it official), a film that incidentally would garner her a second of those Oscar nomination thingees, and eventually leaving show biz for the love of a man - even if that man was famed designer Adrian, and was most likely a quite lavender marriage, at least on his part, though one hears rather substantiated rumours of the lovely little Miss Gaynor's sexual preferences as well (and one may even dream of them at night), but I must digress, in order to get on with the sad ending of our beautiful kewpie doll leading lady, from complications from a car wreck (a drunk driver nonetheless) that she was involved in two years prior to her 77th birthday (with "long time friend" Mary Martin), and finally say that this fan of the sexy, charming and cute as goddamn hell Miss Gaynor (drop dead gorgeous is another term one could just as easily use), had wished she had done more movies to be watched by me, but at least we have what we have - an angel (street or otherwise) with the eyes to conquer worlds and the alabaster cheeks to launch a thousand, no a million, no a billion ships a day.