Janet Gaynor was the first person to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won for 7th Heaven (1927), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), and Street Angel (1928).
Gaynor's career success continued into the sound film era, and she achieved a notable success in the original version of A Star Is Born (1937), for which she received a second Best Actress Academy Award nomination.
She was often cast as a pure and innocent young woman and her image was incredibly important. She had a secret relationship with costar Charles Farrell for a number of years. Their mutual friend Douglas Fairbanks would help them keep the relationship a secret. He remembered,
We three were so chummy that I became their 'beard,' the cover-up for their secret romance. I would drive them out to a little rundown, wooden house well south of Los Angeles, near the sea. I'd leave them there and go sailing or swimming until [it was] time to collect them and then we'd all have a bit of dinner.[1]
She was married three times and had one child. Her second husband, Adrian, was a costume designer for MGM and was widely known to be gay. There were also rumors at the time that Gaynor had relationships with women.
She had relationships with at least two of her female costars, Margaret Livingston and Mary Martin.