American actress Janet Gaynor was BOTD in 1906. Born Laura Gainor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she moved to Los Angeles in her teens to pursue a showbiz career. After years of bit parts in silent films, she was cast in 1926’s The Johnstown Flood, and named one of that year’s “Baby Stars” alongside Joan Crawford and Mary Astor. In 1929, she became the first winner of the Best Actress Oscar for three films: the romance 7th Heaven, that year’s biggest box office success; W. G. Murnau’s existential drama Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans; and Street Angel, as a woman forced into prostitution to pay her mother’s medical bills. She transitioned successfully into sound cinema, scoring huge successes with a 1931 remake of Daddy Long Legs and the original 1937 version of A Star is Born, playing a rising actress dealing with her alcoholic husband. She retired from filmmaking in 1939 at the peak of her popularity, appearing sporadically in theatre and television. Gaynor was married three times, most notably to Hollywood costume designer Adrian: their relationship was widely considered a “lavender marriage”, allowing each of them to pursue same-sex affairs, though somehow they managed to produce a son. Her close friendships with actresses Margaret Lindsay and Mary Martin, have provoked extensive speculation, with many biographers arguing that she was bisexual. She died in 1982, aged 77, following injuries sustained in a car accident two years earlier.