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My journey ends here...

GRAHAM Sheilah

Born Lily Sheil.

Date of birth : September 15, 1904, Leeds, England.

Date of death : November 17, 1988, Palm Beach, Florida.

Profession Hollywood columnist.

Addresses

* 1937 : 1443 North Hayworth Avenue, Hollywood

* 1942 : 33 West 55t Street, New York

* 1954 : 607 North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills.

Portrait

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Story

She was the youngest of six children of Louis and Rebecca Sheil. Her father, an immigrant Ukrainian Jewish tailor who had fled the pogroms, died of tuberculosis on a trip to Berlin in 1906.
With their mother, the children moved to a basement flat in the East of London. Her mother who spoke a little English, struggled to provide for her children there by cleaning public lavatories.
In 1914 she was forced by these circumstances to place her daughter, aged 6 (

), in the Jews Hospital and Orphanage.
Although she had been trained for a career in teaching, when she left the Orphanage, her mother was dying of cancer, and she returned home to take care of her.
Upon her mother's death in 1920, aged 16 she took a job in a department store demsontrating a speciality toothbrush, and moved into her own tiny flat in London's West End.

In 1925, aged 19, she married John Graham Gilliam (1884, England-1965, England), a kindly man aged 41, who proved impotent, went bankrupt, and looked the other way when she went out with other men. during this marriage, largely through the tutelage of her husband, she improved her speech and manners. She also enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, changed her name and became a music-hall dancer as a "Cochran's girl".
It was during this time that she began to write professionally, anecdotally receiving 2 guineas from the Daily Express for an article she wrote on a challenge by her husband. While still in England, she attained some success as a freelance writer and published 2 novels, both of which sold poorly.

In 1933 she struck out on her own to seek fame and fortune in America where she emigrated in 1934, leaving behind her first husband, whom she would divorce in June 1937. Her modest youthful success as a writer enabled her to land jobs as a staff reporter in New York, working successively for the Mirror and the Journal.
In 1935, John Neville Wheeler, head of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) recruited her to write NANA's syndicated Hollywood column. Later she would talk about the dichotomy between dealing with notoriously ignorant moviemakers and the discomfort she felt over her own limited education and background in the company of her colleagues in journalism, and screenwriters, like Dorothy Parker and Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
She quickly rose to fame through her column "Hollywood Today" which she would write daily over 35 years, interrupted only by serving as a war correspondent during World War II. The column would reach a peak of being carried in 178 papers in 1966 (compared to 100 papers for rival Louella Parsons and 68 for Hedda Hopper).

After her divorce in 1937, she became engaged to Dermot Chichester, Marquess of Donegall.

A month later, she met Francis Scott Fitzgerald (

) at that time scriptwriter in Hollywood, with whom she related having immediately fallen in love, and the engagement was broken soon therafter.

They lived together at 1443 North Hayworth Avenue, Hollywood (

).

Fitzgerald was still married to Zelda who was institutionalized in an asylum. Nonetheless, she protested her description as his mistress in her book "The Rest of the Story", saying that she was " a woman who loved Scott Fitzgerald for better of for worse until he died". In fact, she was the one who found his body in their living room where he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940. They had been together only 3 -1/2 years.
Upon Fitzgerald's death, seeking a respite from the social demands and frantic pace of covering "the film capital of the world", she arranged for an assignment as a foreign correspondant in NANA's London bureau. This also afforded her the opportunity to demonstrate her abilities as a serious journalist. Her first major story from England was an in-depth interview with George Bernard Shaw and she would later file another with Britain's war prime minister, Winston Churchill. Her brief respite from Hollywood would stretch to the conclusion of the war.

While in her native England, she met Trevor Cresswell Lawrence Westbrook (

)(January 1908, England-1978, England), whose company manufactured Spitfire fighter planes for the Royal Air Force.

Emigration Trevor Westbrook January 2, 1942

They married after her return to the USA on January 9, 1942, in Virginia

.

Graham's 2 children, Wendy (born in 1942 in New York) (

;

)

and Robert T. (born on December 21, 1945 in New York)(

) were born during this marriage which ended in divorce in 1946, and were given the Westbrook surname.

As an adult, Wendy discovered that her father was in fact British philosopher A.J.Ayer. This one also suggested that Robert's father was most likely the Hollywood actor Robert Taylor, who Graham had an affair with.

In August 1947, Graham was naturalized as an American citizen, and on February 14, 1953 married her third

husband, Stanley Thomas Wojtkiewicz (February 1st, 1917, USA-November 15, 1997, California)

.

They divorced on February 17, 1956 (

;

).

Neither her foray into the world of foreign correspondance, nor even motherhood prevented Graham from achieving her ambition to reach the top of her career. She demanded a salary of 5000$ a week to resume her column, and amount comparable to that of the stars she was covering. In addition she was a regular contributor to Photoplay and had her own radio program, moving to television in 1951, where she delivered commentary and celebrity interviews, a forerunner to the talk show.
In April 1969 Graham changed the name and format of her syndicated column, citing waning public interest in Hollywood gossip. Retitled "Hollywood Everywhere" the scope was broadened to include celebrities and public figures outside of the entertainment world, and would include more diverse commentary.
In 1971 she wrote her last syndicated column, and moved to Palm Beach, Florida, where she continued for several years to make celebrity appearances on television, and wrote a freelance basis for magazines, and authored no fewer than 9 more books.

Link with Marilyn

On February 14, 1953, Sheilah Graham married Wojtkiewkz, in a civil ceremony.

A reception followed on March 5, 1953, to which Marilyn attended with Sidney Skolsky.

with Sheila Graham

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