Academy Award-nominated actress Martha Hyer, 89, dies
The New Mexican
By Robert Nott
June 9, 2014
Martha Hyer, one of the last studio glamour girls of the
Golden Age of Hollywood, died May 31 at her Santa Fe home. She was 89 and had
lived in Santa Fe since the mid-1980s.
A representative from Rivera Funeral Home confirmed the
death and said there was no funeral service or memorial planned.
A striking blonde who once turned down a date request
from the young Sen. John F. Kennedy, Hyer was nominated for an Academy Award as
best supporting actress for her work in 1958’s Some Came Running, an MGM film
starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. She lost to Wendy
Hiller, for her role in Separate Tables. Although she put on a good face during
the remainder of the Oscars show, Hyer later recalled that she went home and
cried all night.
The Oscar nod did not help Hyer’s career, which started
with a three-year contract at RKO in the early 1940s and ended with a series of
forgettable cheap films made in both America and Europe.
Martha Hyer was born Aug. 10, 1924, in Fort Worth, Texas,
to Julien C. Hyer (a Texas legislator) and Agnes Barnhart. In her 1990
autobiography, Finding My Way, she described her childhood desire to be an
actress and her love of film. “Movies were magic, our passport to outside,” she
wrote.
She enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse in California,
where she was spotted by a Hollywood talent agent — despite the fact that she
was playing a bearded elder in a Greek tragedy. Soon, she was under contract to
RKO during the war years, appearing in several B-Westerns. “I was Little Nell
in lots of those,” she wrote.
For several years, Hyer was unable to secure a secure
toehold in Hollywood, although she worked in everything from Abbott and
Costello Go To Mars to the B-adventure Yukon Gold and the African safari film
The Scarlet Spear. She married the latter’s director, C. Ray Stahl, but the
marriage quickly ended in divorce.
Hyer’s first big break came when she was cast as William
Holden’s fiancée in Billy Wilder’s 1954 romantic comedy Sabrina, which starred
Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. In her autobiography, she recalled Bogart
as being helpful and selfless in his scenes with her.
But ensuing roles in pictures like Red Sundown, opposite
Rory Calhoun, and Francis in The Navy, opposite Donald O’Connor and a talking
mule, again stalled Hyer’s career. She worked with Rock Hudson — whom she said
was shallow and self-centered — in 1956’s Battle Hymn. In quick succession, she
found herself playing straight woman to the likes of David Niven, Bob Hope and
Jerry Lewis in films that spotlighted their characters, not hers. She liked
Niven and Hope, but not Lewis.
Some Came Running, based on the James Joyce novel,
briefly rescued Hyer and brought her critical acclaim. She wrote fondly of the
experience, noting that MacLaine was “brilliant,” Sinatra “never better” and
Martin “marvelous.” MacLaine received a best actress nomination for her work on
the film.
But most of Hyer’s 1960s films were weak, including
Bikini Beach, House of 1,000 Dolls and Picture Mommy Dead — “all ones I’d
rather forget,” she wrote. She did secure a supporting role in Hal Wallis’ 1965
production The Sons of Katie Elder, but she again played second — or in this
case, fifth — fiddle to a cast topped by John Wayne and Dean Martin.
She married Wallis in December 1966. In her
autobiography, she reflected on both his strong points and his weaknesses,
including his tight-fisted approach to spending that left her to finance the
couple’s lifestyle.
By her own admission, Hyer became caught up in the
high-living culture of the Hollywood lifestyle and began overspending. Shortly
after she penned a first-person account of her lifestyle in a 1959 Life
magazine article, she came home to find her Hollywood home robbed of all its
goods. She later managed to pay ransom money to get some of her paintings back.
Worse was to come. By the early 1980s, Hyer was in debt
to loan sharks, to the tune of several million dollars. With her career behind
her — her last film roles were in the early 1970s — she turned to God for help
and found immediate solace and peace. In her memoir, she wrote: “God poured
through me.”
Shortly thereafter, Wallis, as well as some lawyers and
the FBI, helped Hyer work her way out of her financial mess.
Hyer first visited New Mexico when Wallis was here
filming Red Sky at Morning, the 1971 movie version of Richard Bradford’s 1968
novel. “The Indians say Santa Fe is sacred ground. I believe it,” she wrote.
Wallis died in 1986, and Hyer moved to Santa Fe shortly
thereafter. “This country casts a spell and it never lets go,” she wrote.
Hyer became somewhat of a recluse in her later days,
preferring to paint, hike and spend time with close friends.
“When you live with fame as a day-to-day reality, the
allure of privacy and anonymity is as strong as the desire for fame for those
who never had it,” she said.
HYER, Martha
Born: 8/10/1924, Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.A.
Died: 5/31/2014, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.
Martha Hyer’s westerns – actress, screenwriter:
Thunder Mountain – 1947 (Ellie Jorth)
Gun Smugglers – 1948 (Judy Davis)
Roughshod – 1949 (Marcia)
Rustlers – 1949 (Ruth Abbott)
The Kangaroo Kid – 1950 (Mary Corbett)
Outcasts of Black Mesa – 1950 (Ruth Dorn)
Salt Lake Raiders – 1950 (Helen Thornton)
Frisco Tornado – 1950 (Jean Martin)
The Lone Ranger (TV) – 1950 (Molly Crawford)
Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (TV) – 1950 (Elsa Gray)
Yukon Gold – 1952 (Marie Briand)
Wild Stallion – 1952 (Caroline Cullen)
Battle of Rogue River – 1954 (Brett McClain)
Wyoming Renegades – 1954 (Nancy Warren)
Red Sundown – 1956 (Caroline Murphy)
Showdown in Abilene – 1956 (Peggy Bigelow)
Once Upon a Horse… - 1958 (Miss Amity Babb)
Rawhide (TV) – 1959 (Hannah Haley)
The Deputy (TV) – 1960 (Joy Cartwright)
Zane Grey Theater (TV) – 1960 (Laurie Pritchard)
Blood on the River – 1964 (Nancy Mailer)
The Sons of Katie Elder – 1965 (Mary Gordon)
Branded (TV) – 1965 (Callie Clay)
The Night of the Grizzly – 1956 (Angela Cole)
The Virginian (TV) – 1970 (Amalia Clark)
Rooster Cogburn – 1975 [screenwriter]