Canadian-born Edith Norma Shearer was the Queen of MGM in the late 20s and throughout the 30s. This was undeniably owing in part to her status as the wife of Irving Thalberg, the studio’s presiding genius for most of that period. But she was also a talented actor who came into her own during the pre-code era playing sexually liberated women.
Shearer’s Technicolor appearance as herself in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, rehearsing the balcony scene with John Gilbert, was by way of being a warm-up for her 1936 film of Romeo and Juliet, which paired her with Leslie Howard.
