How an Oscar and a sex scandal rattled Gloria Grahame's career

Gloria Grahame arrived at the 25th Academy Awards on the verge of superstardom. It was March 19, 1953, and the 29-year-old had spent the previous year melting away a tart-with-a-heart image that took root with the 1944 sex comedy Blonde Fever and crystallized with her sultry turn as Violet in It's a Wonderful Life with James Stewart. She'd appeared in four major releases in 1952, including a reunion with Stewart in Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth—which ultimately won Best Picture. Her Hollywood peers recognized her arrival as a serious actress, nominating her performance in The Bad and the Beautiful for a Supporting Actress Oscar, her second career nod following 1947's Crossfire.

When presenter Edmund Gwenn called Grahame's name as the winner, however, she carried herself to the stage atop quivering heels, with a deer-in-the-headlights expression plastered on her face. She accepted with four words, "Thank you very much," before rushing out of sight to a collective affectionate chuckle from the audience. But this was no false modesty. "Gloria was one of the most insecure girls I've ever met," says Terry Moore, Grahame's friend and fellow Supporting Actress nominee. "I thought Supporting was the kind of [award] you win when you're older. I felt unqualified then, [but] Gloria always felt unqualified."

What read in the room as a bashful star's brief (but no less endearing) display of humility quickly snowballed into a scandal for Grahame. Rumors circulated that she rebuked the honor after getting drunk at the event, which caused her to trip and curse en route to claim the prize—none of which was true. She did, however, decline to sit for post-victory interviews, a move that didn't court new fans among Tinseltown's ruthless band of gossip columnists.

Sadly, following her Oscar victory, the beauty Grahame embodied so artfully on screen never reflected the personal turmoil festering under the surface. At 29, she was already two divorces deep into a turbulent romantic life: one from allegedly abusive actor Stanley Clements, the other from boozy Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray, with whom she had a son, Timothy. Her crippling self-doubt had long served as fodder for journalists. Hedda Hopper pegged her "a shy little introvert [who's] so self-conscious it hurts," while an April 1952 Los Angeles Times profile painted her as a helpless worrywart who begged crew members to lambaste her performative flaws on set.

"I…. suffered from a really bad attack of 'Oscar Fright,' and I don't think I've recovered from it yet," Grahame told Silver Screen magazine the summer after she won the coveted award. She claimed to appreciate the accolade but admitted her son had appropriated the statuette for himself: "I practically haven't seen my Oscar since I won it. Timmy plays with it in his room…. and takes it to bed with him when he goes to sleep. As for what I think of my cherished Oscar, all I can say is that no fond mother takes away her child's favorite plaything!"

In subsequent years, her image hardened as the mysterious bad girl of noir cinema in films like The Big Heat and Human Desire—until, in 1954, she began filming the adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's musical Oklahoma! as the "girl who can't say no," Ado Annie, the same year she married writer-producer Cy Howard.

She was pushed and belittled [by the crew] and stumbled her way through because she felt so inadequate doing a musical," remembers Grahame's niece Vicky Mitchum, claiming it was her aunt's Oklahoma! colleagues who instigated a hostile working environment after learning Grahame couldn't carry a tune despite her Academy-verified status. "Everybody told her how horrible she was."

Grahame herself may not have been an innocent party. She allegedly assaulted costars Charlotte Greenwood and Gene Nelson on separate occasions, and purposely stepped on scene partners' lines. Scarred by her Oklahoma! experience, Grahame scaled back her work to care for her children in 1955, divorced Howard in 1957, and married former stepson Tony Ray (son of Nicholas) in 1960. Later, when she battled Howard for custody of their daughter, Marianna Paulette, rumors circulated that Grahame had initially seduced Tony when he was just 13—news that, along with her tarnished professional reputation, made her a Hollywood outcast.