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A girl's got to breathe
The actress Teresa Wright (1918-2005) lived a rich, complex, magnificent life against the backdrop of golden-age Hollywood, Broadway and television. There was no indication, from her astonishingly difficult--indeed, horrifying--childhood, of the success that would follow, nor of the universal acclaim and admiration that accompanied her everywhere. Her two marriages--to the writers Niven Busch and Robert Anderson--provide a good deal of the drama, warmth, poignancy and heartbreak of her life story. "I never wanted to be a star," she told biographer Donald Spoto in 1978, "I wanted only to be an actress." She began acting in summer stock and repertory at 18. When Thornton Wilder and Jed Harris saw her in an ingénue role, she was chosen to understudy the part of Emily in the original production of Our Town (1938), which she then played in touring productions. Samuel Goldwyn saw her first...
