GENE TIERNEY - Her Long Road to HAPPINESS

AFTER YEARS OF SUFFERING, THE GOLDEN AGE ACTRESS FINALLY RECEIVED THE HELP SHE NEEDED

- Katie Bruno

In 1959, a reporter found Laura actress Gene Tierney working in a dress shop in Topeka, Kansas. She had taken the job to quietly reenter society after being hospitalized and treated for bipolar disorder. Gene blamed her illness on “my lack of understanding of what I could cope with and what I could not.”

A stunningly beautiful woman born into a wealthy New York family, Gene had every advantage in life, yet anxiety and misfortune pushed her to the brink. “She talked about having nervous stomach pains in childhood,” says Will Scheibel, author of Gene Tierney: Star of Hollywood’s Home Front. “These events of her life — the disability of her daughter, the breakup of her marriage — they just exacerbated problems that she already had.”