Sheilah Graham

Stage Door Johnnies wait for the lady performers at the stage door after Edwardian musical comedies

Upon her mother's death, the 16-year-old took a job in a department store demonstrating a speciality toothbrush and moved into a tiny flat in London's West End. In 1925, at the age of 20, she married Major John Graham Gillam (1884-1965), a decorated WWI officer,[4] published author and eye-witness to the Gallipoli campaign of 1915-1916. Gillam travelled to New York in 1933; his wife followed in 1934 as indicated in her subsequent application for US citizenship. Sheila's daughter describes Gillam as "a kindly older man who proved impotent, went bankrupt, and looked the other way when she went out with other men."[1] 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 Art, changed her name, and became a music hall dancer as a "Cochran's girl."[1]

It was during her time in the British musical theater that Graham began to write professionally, anecdotally receiving two guineas (£2.10) from the Daily Express for an article entitled "The Stage Door Johnnies, by a Chorus Girl," which she wrote on a challenge by her husband. While still in Britain, she attained some success as a freelance writer and published two novels, both of which sold poorly.[1]

Although marked by an inauspicious start, Graham quickly rose to fame through her column, "Hollywood Today," which she wrote daily for over 35 years, interrupted only by serving as a war correspondent during World War II. The column at its peak was carried in 178 papers in 1966, compared to 100 papers for rival Louella Parsons and 68 for Hedda Hopper.[6] Along with these two rivals, Graham came to wield sufficient power to make or break Hollywood careers—prompting her to describe herself as "the last of the unholy trio."[7]

She divorced John Gillam in June 1937 to become engaged to the Marquess of Donegall (Dermot Chichester). A month later, she met F. Scott Fitzgerald, with whom she relates having immediately fallen in love, and the engagement with Chichester was broken soon thereafter.[8] Ruthe Stein quotes her as saying, "I'll only be remembered, if I'm remembered at all, because of Scott Fitzgerald."

They shared a home and were constant companions while Fitzgerald was still married to his wife Zelda, who was institutionalized in an asylum.[8] Nonetheless, Graham protested at being described as his "mistress" in her book The Rest of the Story on the basis that she was "a woman who loved Scott Fitzgerald for better or worse until he died." It was she who found his body in 1940 in the living room of her West Hollywood, California, apartment, where he had died of a heart attack.[8] They had been together only three and a half years, but her daughter reports that Graham "never really got over him."[1] During those three years, Scott outlined an educational "curriculum" for her and guided her through it, which she later wrote about in detail in A College of One.[5] Graham also later wrote of her years spent with Fitzgerald in the 1958 book Beloved Infidel,[8][9] which was later adapted as a movie. Upon Fitzgerald's death, seeking a respite from the social demands and frantic pace of her life, Graham arranged for an assignment as a foreign correspondent in NANA's London bureau.[8] This afforded her the opportunity to demonstrate her abilities as a serious journalist. Her first major story from the UK was an in-depth interview with George Bernard Shaw, and she later filed another with Winston Churchill. Her brief respite from Hollywood lasted until the conclusion of World War II.[8]

In the UK, she met Trevor Cresswell Lawrence Westbrook, whose company manufactured Spitfire fighter planes for the Royal Air Force. After her return to the United States in late 1941, they married. Graham's two children, Wendy and Robert, were born during this marriage, which ended in divorce in 1946. Wendy, in her autobiographical book One of the Family, writes of discovering as an adult that her father was, in fact, British philosopher A. J. Ayer; Ayer reportedly suggested that Robert Westbrook's biological father was probably actor Robert Taylor.[1]

In August 1947, Graham was naturalized under the name Sheila Westbrook with her arrival in US dated 1934, as a United States citizen, and in February 1953, married her third husband, Wojciechowicz Stanislavovich [10] (W.S.) Wojtkiewicz,[11] known in Hollywood circles as "Bow Wow". During their divorce proceedings, she accused him of, among other things, running a restaurant out of their home, which he denied.[12] In her autobiography, Graham dismissed Wojtkiewicz as "that nut whose name you can't pronounce". He would later gain infamy for mounting Chill Wills's notorious Oscar campaign [13]

Neither her foreign correspondence nor motherhood prevented Graham from achieving her ambitions. She demanded $5,000 per week to resume her column, an 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, which moved to television in 1951, whereon she delivered commentary and celebrity interviews—a forerunner to the talk show. From 1952 to 1953, Daily Variety carried a separate daily gossip column by Graham that differed in content, style, and attention to precise accuracy, from that which she wrote for the general public.[14] Army Archerd took over writing the Just For Variety column from her.