NORMA SHEARER’S WEALTH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 April 1939, Page 5

NORMA SHEARER’S WEALTH

EFFORT TO EXPLODE MYTH. In an effort to explode the myth that she is one of the world’s wealthiest women, Norma Shearer explained to newspaper men recently her financial position. Her husband, the late Irving Thalberg, who was production chief af M.G.M., left a fortune of some five million dollars, half of which was eaten up’ by death taxes. The remainder was split into three equal shares. Her two children get a share each, and she draws only the interest on the remaining share. This amounts to about 15,000 dollars a year. She didn’t get a penny of the principal, which can’t be touched until the children are 35 years old. The 900,000 dollars paid into the Thalberg estate by M.G.M. some months ago did not go to her, but was again split like the original estate, and she gets one-third of the interest on that, so Norma explains. If she didn’t work she would have an income of about £lOO a week. That’s a tidy sum. but by no means great wealth. Of course she draws down a huge salary while she works, but the moment she is through in pictures that income will stop. However, Norma is nowhere near the breadline yet, nor is she the richest woman in the world or in Hollywood for that matter, but she is still better off than she was as a photographer’s model.