Dorothy McGuire

Dorothy Hackett McGuire was born on June 14, 1918, in Omaha, Neb., the daughter of Thomas Johnson McGuire, a lawyer, and Isabelle Flaherty McGuire. She showed an early talent for the stage and began to act in the Omaha Little Theater. Her parents' marriage failed, and after her father's death when she was 14, she was sent to a convent school in Indianapolis, where she pursued her interest in acting and played the role of the Virgin Mary in one production. (Years later, she was cast again as the Virgin Mary in George Stevens's 1965 film, ''The Greatest Story Ever Told.'') After leaving the convent school, she went to Pine Manor Junior College in Wellesley, Mass., where she was president of the Mimes and Masks drama club.