Background
Nancy Carroll was born on 19 November 1904 in New York, New York, United States. Her family had theatrical connections, hut—according to her—her ambition was to become a teacher. She had to go to work, though (she was one of eleven children), and with her winning personality, vivid red hair, Cupid’s-bow mouth, and bounce, she was soon a chorus girl on Broadway.
Career
She came in at the tail end of the silents—her first big role was the Irish Rose herself in the film of Anne Nichols’s Abie’s Irish Rose (28, Victor Fleming), opposite Buddy Rogers's Abie. They added some music and a song for her, proving that she could handle sound. Within two years she was Paramount’s most popular star.
Her real breakthrough was the quintessential weeper Shopworn Angel (29, Richard Wallace), opposite Gary Cooper. But Carroll sang and danced—Sweetie (29, Frank Tuttle); Honey (30, Wesley Ruggles); Follow Thru (31, Lawrence Schwab and Lloyd Corrigan)—and did both romantic comedy and heavy drama. One of the problems was that no one seemed able to decide just what she was; another was that her behavior alienated colleagues and the studio—she was known as “the Firebrand of Hollywood. ” Apparently she had a violent temper and was suspicious of everyone. (“Because you think differently, you're considered disagreeable, and upstage, and difficult. An original thinker always has to fight.”) By 1934 her career was on the rocks, with only a few films to come. But she went on to years of theater work, mostly on the road, in summer stock, etc., and often with her daughter, Patricia Kirkland. She also appeared in a TV series, The Aldrich Family, in the early fifties and went through another marriage or two. Long before her death, her real stardom had been forgotten.
Still, at least four movies deserve serious attention: The Shopworn Angel; Laughter (30, Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast), opposite Fredric March in a romantic comedy that proves that love and laughter (cavorting under a couple of polar bear rugs) and the carefree Bohemian life count more than money and respectability and marriage to stuf fy old Frank Morgan; The Devil's Holiday (30, Edmund Colliding), very convincing as a gold digger turned fine through love of Phillips Holmes, and apparently a close second to Norma Shearer for that year’s Oscar; and, best of all, the 1929 The Dance of Life (John Cromwell and A. Edward Sutherland), based on the Broadway play Burlesque (it had made a star out of Barbara Stanwyck) and starring the play’s leading man, the extraordinary Hal Skelly. This may be the most moving version of that old chestnut, the bur- lesque/vaudeville couple who suffer ups and downs—she leaves him when he gives way to alcohol, comes back when lie needs her, and there’s a tear in every eye. But she was also involved in disasters like Gouldings Night Angel (31) and a mismatch with Lubitsch in The Man I Killed. The roles and the movies got worse and worse, and she was gone, her place at Paramount superseded by Claudette Colbert, who could also do everything, but who also knew how to control herself and her career. Of course, she was French, not Irish.
Among her more respectable films: Manhattan Cocktail (28, Dorothy Arzner)— romance/melodrama, opposite Richard Aden; Scarlet Dawn (32, William Dieterle)—revolutionary Russia, opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; Hot Saturday (31, William A. Seiter)—charming as a small-town girl choosing between the very young Cary Grant and Randolph Scott; Child of Manhattan (33, Eddie Buzzell)—dance-hall girl wins, gives up, rewins rich guy John Boles; Springtime for Henry (34, Tuttle)—an amusing farce, with Carroll second-billed behind Otto Kruger. Her final film was That Certain Age (38, Edward Ludwig), sixth-billed in a Deanna Durbin vehicle. It had come to that.
Personality
The pretty, talented, and versatile Nancy Carroll is a textbook case of a mismanaged career.
One show led to another, and to marriage with reporter Jack Kirkland (he wrote the record-shattering dramatization of Tobacco Road). They moved to Los Angeles and soon she was on the stage there, and taking screen tests—more than a dozen of them, all of which failed: her face was too round.
Quotes from others about the person
Her costar (twice) George Murphy tactfully put it, “Nancy herself wasn’t too easy to work with. She was potentially one of the great stars, but she never quite made it—maybe because she used stage tricks instead of her God-given talents . . . She seemed to enjoy making others uncomfortable." Still photographer John Engstead was less tactful: “Nancy Carroll was a little bit of a bitch. She was a very talented woman . . . But she always went around with a chip on her shoulder like someone was going to do her in . . . she approached even/- tliing that way.” Clearly, the person who did her in was herself.