Biography
Susan Hayward (June 30, 1917 – March 14, 1975) was an American actress. After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone With the Wind (1939). Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting roles over the next few years. By the late 1940s the quality of her film roles had improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first o...
Known For
Complete Filmography

The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout
2024
as Self (archive footage)
The story of one of the great environmental disasters to befall the United States, and the terrible movie that helped bring the catastrophe to light.
Storm in My Heart
2018
as Self (archive footage)
Despite the many curious similarities between Susan Hayward and Lena Horne-both were born in Brooklyn on exactly the same day, for example-one detail ...

Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical History - The 1950s: The Golden Era of the Musical
2009
as Self (archive)
During the 1950s, musical masterpieces that have yet to be equaled were produced in Cinemascope with stereophonic sound. These two episodes explore ho...

Gotta Get Off This Merry-Go-Round: 'Valley of the Dolls'
2006
as Helen Lawson (archive footage)
We look at why Valley of the Dolls is so beloved and appreciated, both for its "badness" and hidden merits. Valley Of The Dolls is considered either a...
Bride of Trailer Camp
2001
as (Archival)
A compilation of "coming attractions" from bad '50s melodrama through the greatest disaster movies of the '70s. Features a chain of your divas includi...

The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind
1988
as Self (archive footage)
This documentary revisits the making of Gone with the Wind via archival footage, screen tests, insightful interviews and rare film footage.

Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole
1972
as Dr. Maggie Cole
Maggie Cole is a research scientist who, after the sudden death of her husband, takes a position as an on-call doctor in an inner-city clinic. There, ...

The Revengers
1972
as Elizabeth Reilly
The life of peaceful rancher John Benedict is torn apart when his family is massacred by a gang of marauding outlaws and his farm is destroyed. He ass...

Heat of Anger
1972
as Jessie Fitzgerald
A woman attorney and her young associate defend a wealthy contractor accused of murdering an ironworker who was having an affair with the contractor's...

Valley of the Dolls
1967
as Helen Lawson
Lured by their dreams of fame and fortune, three ambitious young women enter the world of show business and discover how easy it is to sink into a cel...

Valley of the Dolls: A World Premiere Voyage
1967
as Herself
The maiden cruise of the ocean liner Italia travels from Italy to California for the premiere of the motion picture "Valley of the Dolls."

The Honey Pot
1967
as Mrs. Sheridan
A millionaire fakes a terminal illness to fleece his former girlfriends.

Uncertain Verification
1965
as (archive footage)
A short film containing a collection of clips from various Hollywood movies.

Where Love Has Gone
1964
as Valerie Hayden Miller
A divorced couple's teen-age daughter stands trial for stabbing her mother's latest lover.

Stolen Hours
1963
as Laura Pember
A woman diagnosed with a brain tumor falls in love with her doctor.

I Thank a Fool
1962
as Christine Allison
After mercifully killing her terminally ill lover, Dr. Christine Allison loses her medical license and spends two years in prison. Once she has comple...

Hollywood: The Selznick Years
1961
as 'Gone with the Wind' screen test (archive footage) (uncredited)
Henry Fonda hosts this retrospective on the career and films of iconic filmmaker David O. Selznick, who epitomized the era of the auteur producer in t...

Back Street
1961
as Rae Smith
Ambitious but thwarted, Rae Smith meets handsome Marine Paul Saxon, (of the Saxon department store chain), as he passes through Lincoln, Nebraska, on ...

Ada
1961
as Ada Gillis
A popular but naive country singer is elected governor of a southern state and, once in office, decides to dismantle the corrupt political machine tha...

The Marriage-Go-Round
1961
as Content Delville
An anthropology professor and his professor wife have the perfect marriage--until a Swedish colleague's daughter comes to visit. Not only is the litt...

Woman Obsessed
1959
as Mary Sharron
After her husband dies in a fire, a woman (Susan Hayward) is left to tend for her young son and the family farm on her own. Soon, she takes in a drift...

Thunder in the Sun
1959
as Gabrielle Dauphin
A band of Basque immigrants treks through the Old West toward California, where they hope to put down roots and open wineries. When the group's leader...

I Want to Live!
1958
as Barbara Graham
Brazen perpetual offender Barbara Graham tries to go straight but she finds herself implicated in a murder and sent to death row.

Top Secret Affair
1957
as Dorothy 'Dottie' Peale
A publisher uses her magazine and charm to derail a general on the Washington fast track.

The Conqueror
1956
as Bortai
Mongol chief Temujin battles against Tartar armies and for the love of the Tartar princess Bortai. Temujin becomes the emperor Genghis Khan.

I'll Cry Tomorrow
1955
as Lillian Roth
Deprived of a normal childhood by her ambitious mother, Lillian Roth becomes a star of Broadway and Hollywood before she is twenty. Shortly before her...

Soldier of Fortune
1955
as Mrs. Jane Hoyt
An American woman arrives in Hong Kong to unravel the mystery of her missing photographer husband. After getting nowhere with the authorities, she is ...

Untamed
1955
as Katie O'Neill
When the great potato famine hits Ireland, the diaspora begins as thousands emigrate. Among those leaving the Emerald Isle is Katie O'Neill and her hu...

Garden of Evil
1954
as Leah Fuller
A trio of American adventurers marooned in rural Mexico are recruited by a beautiful woman to rescue her husband from Apaches.

Demetrius and the Gladiators
1954
as Messalina
The story picks up at the point where "The Robe" ends, following the martyrdom of Diana and Marcellus. Christ's robe is conveyed to Peter for safe-kee...

White Witch Doctor
1953
as Ellen Burton
Ellen Burton arrives in Africa to join Dr. Mary as her nurse, bringing modern medicine to the native peoples. Lonni Douglas, an animal wrangler and fo...

The President's Lady
1953
as Rachel Donaldson
The story of president Andrew Jackson from his early years, through his meeting with and subsequent marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards. The plot conc...

The Lusty Men
1952
as Louise Merritt
Retired rodeo champion Jeff McCloud agrees to mentor novice rodeo contestant Wes Merritt against the wishes of Merritt's wife who fears the dangers of...

The Snows of Kilimanjaro
1952
as Helen Street
Writer Harry Street reflects on his life as he lies dying from an infection while on safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

With a Song in My Heart
1952
as Jane Froman
Jane Froman (Susan Hayward), an aspiring songstress, lands a job in radio with help from pianist Don Ross (David Wayne), whom she later marries. Jane'...

David and Bathsheba
1951
as Bathsheba
King David enters into an adulterous affair with the beautiful Bathsheba, which has tragic consequences for his family and Israel.

I Can Get It for You Wholesale
1951
as Harriet Boyd
A ruthless fashion designer steps on everyone in her way in order to reach the top of her profession. Eventually she is forced to choose between her a...

Rawhide
1951
as Vinnie Holt
At a desolate relay station in the west, a stagecoach attendant and a stranded woman traveller are held captive by a band of escaped convicts.

I'd Climb the Highest Mountain
1951
as Mary Elizabeth Eden Thompson
A minister from the Deep South is assigned a new parish and moves with his wife to a town in Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains, where he tends to the spi...

My Foolish Heart
1950
as Eloise Winters
After a long absence, Mary Jane visits her schoolfriend Eloise, and Eloise's daughter Ramona. Eloise drinks too much and is unhappily married to Lew W...

House of Strangers
1949
as Irene Bennett
Gino Monetti is a ruthless Italian-American banker who is engaged in a number of criminal activities. Three of his four grown sons refuse to help thei...

Tulsa
1949
as Cherokee Lansing
It's Tulsa, Oklahoma at the start of the oil boom and Cherokee Lansing's rancher father is killed in a fight with the Tanner Oil Company. Cherokee pla...

The Saxon Charm
1948
as Janet Busch
In order to get his way, New York producer Matt Saxon manipulates and controls everyone around him but his latest protégé, novelist Eric Busch, finall...

Tap Roots
1948
as Morna Dabney
Set at the beginning of the Civil War, Tap Roots is all about a county in Mississippi which chooses to secede from the state rather than enter the con...

The Lost Moment
1947
as Tina Bordereau
In a long flashback, a New York publisher is in Venice pursuing the lost love letters of an early-19th-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, who disappeared m...

They Won't Believe Me
1947
as Verna Carlson
On trial for murdering his girlfriend, philandering stockbroker Larry Ballentine takes the stand to claim his innocence and describe the actual, but i...

Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman
1947
as Angie Evans
A nightclub singer uses alcohol in excess to sooth her painful life.

Canyon Passage
1946
as Lucy Overmire
In 1850s Oregon, a businessman is torn between his love of two very different women and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the l...

Deadline at Dawn
1946
as June Goffe
A young Navy sailor has one night to find out why a woman was killed and he ended up with a bag of money after a drinking blackout.

And Now Tomorrow
1944
as Janice Blair
Emily Blair is rich and deaf. Doctor Vance, who grew up poor in Blairtown, is working on a serum to cure deafness which he tries on Emily. It doesn't ...

The Hairy Ape
1944
as Mildred Douglas
Aboard ship, a spoiled woman (Susan Hayward) insults the brutish stoker (William Bendix) while watching him work.

Skirmish on the Home Front
1944
as Molly Miller
Promotional short extolling the virtues of the American government's wartime Economic Stabilization Plan.

The Fighting Seabees
1944
as Constance Chesley
Construction workers in World War II in the Pacific are needed to build military sites, but the work is dangerous and they doubt the ability of the Na...

Jack London
1943
as Charmian Kittredge
The adventurous and remarkable life of the US writer Jack London (1876-1916).

Hit Parade of 1943
1943
as Jill Wright
When amateur songwriter Jill Wright moves from the Midwest to New York City, she is dismayed to discover that Rick Farrell, the owner of Miracle Publi...

Young and Willing
1943
as Kate Benson
For those, if any, who have wondered why so many Paramount contractees appeared in United Artists' films during the war years, this is another one of ...

I Married a Witch
1942
as Estelle Masterson
A 17th-century witch returns to wreak havoc in the life of a descendant of the Puritan witch hunter who burned her.

The Forest Rangers
1942
as Tana 'Butch' Mason
Ranger Don Stuart fights a forest fire with timber boss friend Tana 'Butch' Mason, and finds evidence of arson. He suspects Twig Dawson but can't prov...

A Letter From Bataan
1942
as Mrs. Mary Lewis
An American soldier pleads to the folks at home to conserve scarce wartime resources.

Reap the Wild Wind
1942
as Drusilla Alston
The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Lo...

Star Spangled Rhythm
1942
as Genevieve in Priorities Skit
Pop, a security guard at Paramount has told his son that he's the head of the studio. When his son arrives in Hollywood on shore leave with his buddie...

Among the Living
1941
as Millie Pickens
A mentally unstable man, who has been kept in isolation for years, escapes and causes trouble for his identical twin brother.

Sis Hopkins
1941
as Carol Hopkins
An unsophisticated farm girl enrolls in college and stars in the campus musical.

Adam Had Four Sons
1941
as Hester Stoddard
Emilie has been hired to care for the four sons of wealthy Adam Stoddard and his wife, Molly. After Molly dies, Adam and the boys grow to depend on Em...

$1,000 a Touchdown
1939
as Betty McGlen
A couple inherits a college and to generate revenue offers a thousand dollars to players for each touchdown they score.

Our Leading Citizen
1939
as Judith Schofield
Lem Schofield, a lawyer in a one-time small-town turned industrialized big city, runs his firm on examples set by Abraham Lincoln and is a friend to t...

Beau Geste
1939
as Isobel Rivers
When three brothers join the Foreign Legion to escape a troubled past, they find themselves trapped under the command of a sadistic sergeant deep in t...

Comet Over Broadway
1938
as Amateur Actress (uncredited)
Story of a rising stage star and the trouble she causes by her ambition.

Girls on Probation
1938
as Gloria Adams
A dizzy young girl falls into crime but wins her lawyer's heart.

The Sisters
1938
as Telephone operator
Three daughters of a small down pharmacist undergo trials and tribulations in their problematic marriages between 1904 and 1908.

Hollywood Hotel
1938
as Starlet at Table (uncredited)
After losing a coveted role in an upcoming film to another actress, screen queen Mona Marshall (Lola Lane) protests by refusing to appear at her curre...