Gene Tierney Day !

Gene Tierney, March 11, 1946

Gene Tierney (1920–1991) was born in Brooklyn, NY on November 19, 1920. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944).

Her first daughter, Daria, was born mentally retarded because Gene had contracted measles when pregnant during a USO. show. A woman told her later that she was so eager to see Tierney at the show that she broke quarantine).

During her first film she discovered that her voice was too high and it was suggested that she take up smoking to lower her voice. It worked, but she eventually died of emphysema.

She had her share of love affairs during her Hollywood reign, including a notorious one with John F. Kennedy before his marriage, whom she met while filming Dragonwyck (1946).

Tierney was in the throes of suicidal depression and was admitted to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, on Christmas Day in 1957, after police talked her down from a building ledge. There she underwent the first of several lengthy treatments for chronic depression, from which she never fully recovered.

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