Ona Munson was born Owena Elizabeth Wolcott on June 16, 1903, in Portland, Oregon, where she began taking singing and dancing lessons as a child. At the tender age of fourteen, Ona made the bold decision to move to New York City with her mother, marking the beginning of her journey into the world of performing arts.
As a young woman, Ona's career took off, with her making her Broadway debut in George White's Scandals in 1919. She went on to appear in numerous hit shows, including No, No, Nanette and Hold Everything, solidifying her position as a talented and sought-after performer.
In 1926, Ona married stage actor Edward Buzzell, but the marriage was short-lived, and she soon found herself in Hollywood, starring in the comedy Going Wild (1930). Following her divorce, Ona began a romantic relationship with director Ernst Lubitsch, and she went on to star in The Hot Heiress (1931) alongside Ben Lyon and Broadminded (1931) with Joe E. Brown.
Ona's Broadway career was rekindled in 1933 with a production of Hold Your Horses, and she also appeared in a production of Ghosts, during which she had a brief romance with actress Alla Nazimova. Her personal life was marked by relationships with other notable women, including Greta Garbo, Tallulah Bankhead, and director Dorothy Arzner.
In 1939, Ona was cast as Belle Watling, a Southern madam, in the iconic film Gone with the Wind (1939),which was a massive success. However, Ona's subsequent roles were often typecast, and she struggled to break free from this image. She did receive rave reviews for her performance in The Shanghai Gesture (1941),playing another madam.
Ona's personal life was marked by a passionate love affair with playwright Mercedes de Acosta, with whom she shared a deep spiritual connection. However, worried about being outed as a lesbian, Ona ended the relationship and married Stewart McDonald, a loan administrator, in 1941. This marriage was an arrangement, as Stewart was also gay.
During World War II, Ona was chosen to be "Hollywood's official hostess" and acted as a godmother to hundreds of soldiers. She continued to work in film, making movies at Warner Brothers, although her career began to stall. Her final film was the thriller The Red House (1947).
Ona's personal life was marked by a series of lavender marriages, with her final marriage being to French painter Eugene Berman in 1950. The couple moved to an apartment in The Belnord on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where Ona appeared in a few television shows during the early 1950s.
Unfortunately, Ona's life was plagued by health problems and depression, and on February 1955, she took an overdose of sleeping pills, ending her life at the age of fifty-one. In a poignant note, Ona wrote, "This is the only way I know to be free again... Please don't follow me." She is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
