Andy Shearer – Montreal Victorias captain and estranged Hollywood dad

Andrew “Andy” Shearer was born on January 26, 1864 in Montreal, Quebec to James Traill Shearer and Eliza Shearer (née Graham). His father, who was a carpenter and a lumber manufacturer by trade, was an immigrant from Caithness in northern Scotland, whereas his mother was born in Montreal.

As an adult Andrew Shearer would also work as a lumber manufacturer, alongside his older brother James Jr., in the James Shearer Company and the Shearer Brown Company.[1] He had also a keen interest in outdoor activities, and as a young adult in 1883–84 he became a member of the Victoria Hockey Club, colloquially known as the Montreal Victorias, one of the earliest organized ice hockey clubs in Canada.

No formal league play had yet been organized, but over the course of the 1883–84 season the Montreal Victorias would instead go on to win the annual Montreal Winter Carnival ice hockey tournament, where they competed against McGill University, Montreal Crystals, Montreal Wanderers (not the same team as the one from the early 1900s) and the Ottawa Hockey Club.

For the 1886–87 season the new Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC) was formed, with the Montreal Victorias, McGill University, Montreal Crystals, Montreal AAA and Ottawa Hockey Club as participants, and 23-year old Andrew Shearer found himself holding down one of the forward spots on the Victorias.

The AHAC in 1886–87 ran a challenge format instead of a straight series, so even though the Victorias managed to hold the best overall record at the end of the season among the participating teams, they still managed to lose the final championship deciding game on March 11, 3 goals to 2 against the Montreal Crystals at the Victoria Rink in Montreal, with Jack Arnton scoring twice for the Vics.[2] Other notable players on the Montreal Victorias during the 1886–87 season were forward “Dolly” Swift (loaned from the Quebec Hockey Club), cover point Jack Campbell and goalkeeper Tom Arnton.

Andrew Shearer finished the inaugural AHAC season with 2 goals in 6 games.

For the 1887–88 AHAC season the Ottawa men were no longer to be seen, which made the league an entirely Montreal based experience. The championship race turned out a contest between the Montreal Victorias and the Montreal AAA, with both teams finishing with five wins and one loss each in the standing, forcing a deciding playoff game between the two teams on March 15 at the Crystal Rink in Montreal.

The Montreal Victorias had to play the championship deciding game without two of their best players, Jack Arnton and Frederick Ashe, as they were both injured, but they still managed to give the Montreal AAA a good run for their money, eventually losing out 1-2, with cover point Jack Campbell scoring the lone tally for the Vics.[3] The loss marked the second consecutive season with the Vics just falling short of the AHAC championship.

In 1893 the nucleus of the 1887–88 Montreal AAA team would carry off the first ever Stanley Cup championship, then known as the Dominion Challenge Cup.

Andrew Shearer scored a total amount of 4 goals in 7 games over the course of the 1887–88 AHAC season, which would stand as his last season until he came back for a brief two game stint with the Montreal Victorias in 1890–91. Over the course of both the 1886–87 and 1887–88 AHAC campaigns, Shearer would take turns captaining the team.

In the 1890s a new generation of Montreal Victorias players took over the reins from the older one, including players such as Mike Grant, Graham Drinkwater, Bob MacDougall, brothers Shirley and Cam Davidson, and Russell Bowie. And during the latter half of the decade the team experienced its glory days, winning the Stanley Cup in 1895, 1897, 1898 and 1899, often competing for the prize against the Winnipeg Victorias of the Manitoba Hockey Association.

During the mid 1890s Andrew Shearer didn’t seem to have an overly active role with the Montreal Victorias, but he did figure as an umpire in the AHAC during the 1895–96 season, and he was also an umpire when the Vics successfully claimed the Stanley Cup on December 30, 1896, winning 6 goals to 5 against the Winnipeg Victorias at the Granite Rink in Winnipeg.[4]

In 1899 Andrew Shearer married Toronto native Edith Mary Fisher with whom he had three children: Douglas (b. 1899), Athole (b. 1900) and Norma (b. 1902). But the couple had wildly different personalities, which came to strain the relationship, with Andrew being the calm and reserved one whereas Edith had a tough and outgoing personality:
During the early 1900s, the Shearer family lived in a nice two-story house at Grosvenor Avenue in a well-to-do neighborhood in Westmount, Montreal. But in 1919, at the tail end of World War I, the Canadian economy fell into a temporary slump and Andrew felt he had to sell the family lumber business, losing most of the family money in the deal. And when Andrew had to move his family to a more modest part of Montreal, as a result of their financial situation, his flamboyant wife Edith had finally had enough and promptly took her two daughters with her to New York, to find work for them in the film and modeling industries, leaving Andrew and Douglas behind in Montreal.

Edith and her youngest daughter Norma eventually found their way from New York to Hollywood, with the help of producers Irving Thalberg (who Norma would later marry) and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) co-founder Louis B. Mayer. Under the guidance of Thalberg Norma Shearer soon found her niche in the Hollywood pre-Code era playing roles of sexually liberated ingénues, and in 1930 she won an Academy Award for Best Actress in Robert Z. Leonard’s drama film The Divorcee.[6]

Norma’s older siblings Douglas and Athole eventually joined their younger sister in Hollywood, Athole also as an actress whereas Douglas instead would work himself up as a sound engineer and recording director with MGM. Douglas Shearer, much like his sister Norma, enjoyed a highly successful career in the film industry, and he would go on to win a total amount of seven Academy Awards over the span of his career for his pioneering sound work, working on films such as Tarzan the Ape Man and The Wizard of Oz.

Athole Shearer on the other hand struggled professionally, and her career on the big screen never really took off, a contributing factor being her long-standing struggle with bipolar disorder, a disorder her previously hockey playing father Andrew quite possibly also could have suffered from. According to Norma Shearer: A Life, a biography on Norma Shearer written by Gavin Lambert and published in 1990, Andrew Shearer was prone to manic depression and Norma described how her father “moved like a shadow or a ghost around the house.”[5]

Andrew Shearer would eventually join his family in California, although his marriage to Edith was never repaired. He died in Los Angeles on February 6, 1944, at an age of 80.
Sources:

[1] Men of Canada. Cooper, John Alexander (1901–1902)
[2] Montreal Gazette, Mar. 12, 1887
[3] Montreal Gazette, Mar. 16, 1888
[4] Montreal Gazette, Dec. 31, 1896
[5] Norma Shearer: A Life. Lambert, Gavin (1990)
[6] Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World. Shen, Ann (2016)


Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)