Gloria Swanson
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Gloria Swanson (March 27, 1897 - April 4, 1983), an American Hollywood actress, was prolific during the silent film era, but saw her career go into decline with the advent of "talkies". She is now best known for her comeback role in the 1950 film Sunset Blvd., in which -- mirroring her own life -- she portrayed a former silent movie star largely forgotten by audiences of the day.
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[edit] Early life
She was born Gloria May Josephine Swanson (or Svensson) in a small house in Chicago, Illinois to a Swedish American father, Joseph, who was a soldier, and a Polish American mother, Adelaide (née Klanoski), but she grew up mainly in Puerto Rico, Chicago, and Key West, Florida. Gloria didn't intend on going into show business. After her formal education in the Chicago school system and elsewhere, she began work in a department store as a sales clerk.
[edit] Silent films
Her film debut was in 1914 as an extra in The Song of Soul for Uptown Chicago's Essanay Studios. While on a tour of the studio, a young Gloria asked to be in the movie just for fun. Seeing her star quality, Essanay Studios hired her to star in several movies, including "His New Job," which also starred Charlie Chaplin. By four years later she was a star in Teddy at the Throttle.
She played in many Mack Sennett slapstick comedies, and in 1919 she signed with Cecil B. DeMille, who turned her into a romantic lead in such films as Don't Change Your Husband, Male and Female, The Affairs of Anatol, and Why Change Your Wife?. Swanson later appeared in a series of films directed by Sam Wood. In 1922 she starred in the silent film Beyond the Rocks with Rudolph Valentino (this film had been believed lost but was rediscovered in 2004 in a private collection in The Netherlands.)
In her heyday, audiences flocked to her films not only for her emotional portrayals in lurid romances, but to see her wardrobe. Frequently decked out in beads, jewels, peacock and ostrich feathers, haute couture of the day or extravagant period pieces, one would hardly suspect that Gloria was barely five feet tall (1,52 m).
She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Sadie Thompson in the 1928 film, costarring and directed by Raoul Walsh, of the same title that was based on Somerset Maugham's novel, Rain. Her first independent production The Love of Sunya, in which she costarred with John Boles and Pauline Garon, opened the Roxy Theater in New York City on March 11, 1927. (Swanson was pictured in the ruins of the Roxy on October 14, 1960 in a famous photo taken by Time-Life photographer Eliot Elisofon.)
Swanson's unfinished 1928 film Queen Kelly was directed by Erich von Stroheim and produced by Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., father of President John F. Kennedy. She was romantically linked to the elder Kennedy at the time.
Swanson ultimately made "talkies" even singing in The Trespasser (1929), Indiscreet (1931), and Music in the Air (1934). Even though she managed to make the transition into talkies, her career began to decline.
[edit] Comeback in Sunset Boulevard
After several other former silent screen actresses (including Mary Pickford, Pola Negri and Mae West) were rejected or turned down the role, Swanson, gamely acknowledging reality, starred in 1950's Sunset Boulevard, and made celluloid history with her still remarkable, if short-lived, comeback.
It is scenes from Swanson's silent film Queen Kelly that her character Norma Desmond watches with her co-stars, William Holden and Erich von Stroheim.
Swanson was nominated for her 3rd Best Actress Oscar but lost to Judy Holliday (who was photographed sitting next to Swanson and Jose Ferrer in New York during the telecast), but Swanson was gracious in defeat.
She received several subsequent acting offers but turned most of them down, saying they tended to be pale imitations of Norma Desmond.
Her last serious, respectable Hollywood motion picture was Three for Bedroom C (her first color film) in 1952. Swanson played an aging movie star who, along with her precocious daughter, hides out in the compartment of a scientist (Warren) during a cross-country rail journey from New York to Los Angeles. Shot exclusively aboard Super Chief passenger cars loaned to the production company by the Santa Fe Railway, the film met with lukewarm reviews and did not, as had been hoped, revitalize Swanson's career.
[edit] Television
Swanson hosted a television anthology series, Crown Theatre with Gloria Swanson, in which she occasionally acted. Her last acting role was in the television horror film Killer Bees in 1974, though she also appeared as herself in the movie Airport 1975, the same year. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, Swanson appeared on various talk and variety shows such as The Carol Burnett Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to recollect on her films and to lampoon them as well. Her most famous television appearance is a 1966 episode of The Beverly Hillbillies titled "The Gloria Swanson Story" in which she plays herself. In the episode, the Clampetts mistakenly believe Swanson is destitute so they finance a comeback movie for her - in a silent film.
[edit] Marriages and Relationships
- She married actor Wallace Beery (1885-1949) in 1916. They divorced in 1919 with no children but according to Swanson she miscarried after Beery, encouraged by his mother, secretly gave her a poison intended to induce an abortion.
- She married Herbert K. Somborn (1881-1934), then president of Equity Pictures Corporation and later the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant, in 1919. Their daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn, was born in 1920. Their divorce, finalized in January 1925, was sensational. Somborn accused her of adultery with 13 men including Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino and Marshall Neilan. During this divorce in 1923 Swanson adopted a baby boy named Sonny Smith (1922-1975). She renamed him Joseph Patrick Swanson in tribute to her then lover, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr., the Kennedy family patriarch.
- Her third husband was French aristocrat Henry de la Falaise, Marquis de la Falaise whom she married in 1925 after the Somborn divorce was finalized. He became a film executive representing Pathé in the United States. She conceived a child with him but had an abortion which she said (in her autobiography, Swanson on Swanson) she regretted. This marriage ended in divorce in 1931.
- In August 1931, Swanson married Michael Farmer (1902-1975). Although frequently described as a sportsman the only evidence of the Irishman's prowess was his frequent betrothals. Unfortunately Swanson's divorce from La Falaise had not been finalized at the time, making the actress technically a bigamist. She was forced to remarry Farmer the following November, by which time she was four months pregnant with Michelle Bridget Farmer, who was born in 1932. The Farmers were divorced in 1934.
- In 1945 Swanson married William N. Davey and they divorced in 1946. Little is known of Davey except that single mother Gloria married this rich man because young Michelle had been nagging her about wanting a father. According to Swanson, she and Davey actually cohabited forty-five days.
- Swanson's final marriage was in 1976 and lasted until her death. Her sixth husband, writer William Dufty (1916-2002), was the co-author of Billie Holiday's autobiography Lady Sings the Blues and the author of Sugar Blues, a best-selling health book. Swanson shared her husband's enthusiasm for macrobiotic diets.
To understand the Swanson at the height of her fame and popularity, one only needs to read this oft-repeated telegram she sent to her studio from Paris: "Arriving in New York Tuesday. Arrange ovation."
Gloria Swanson died in New York City of a heart ailment (she was believed to be 84); she was cremated and her ashes were buried at the Episcopal Church of Heavenly Rest in New York City.
She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6748 Hollywood Boulevard and another for television at 6301 Hollywood Boulevard.
[edit] Academy Award nominations
- 1951 - Best Actress in a Leading Role — Sunset Boulevard
- 1930 - Best Actress in a Leading Role — The Trespasser
- 1929 - Best Actress in a Leading Role — Sadie Thompson
[edit] Trivia
- Gloria Swanson was the favorite actor of the character Granny in The Beverly Hillbillies and appeared in one episode as herself. In this episode, all the members of the Clampett family get parts in Gloria's new silent movie, "Passion's Plaything," which gently pokes fun at the Swanson legend.
- She was a long-time vegetarian and early health food advocate who was known for bringing her own meals to public functions in a paper bag.
- Swanson told actor Dirk Benedict about macrobiotic diets when he was battling prostate cancer at a very young age. He had refused conventional therapies and credited this kind of diet and healthy eating with his recovery.
- Had a reputation as a difficult and often unpleasant character, albeit a fascinating one. This is referenced in the TV movie, White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd (1991), where Swanson is portrayed in that light and is rebuked by the actress playing Patsy Kelly, Todd's comedy partner.
- Swanson auditioned for the leading female role in His New Job, a Charlie Chaplin short, but Chaplin did not see her as leading lady material and cast her in the brief role of a stenographer. She later admitted that she hated slapstick comedy and had been deliberately uncooperative.
[edit] Filmography
- The Song of Soul (1914) (short subject)
- Sweedie Goes to College (1915) (short subject)
- The Romance of an American Duchess (1915) (short subject)
- At the End of a Perfect Day (1915) (short subject)
- The Ambition of the Baron (1915)
- The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket (1915) (short subject)
- His New Job (1915) (short subject)
- The Broken Pledge (1915) (short subject)
- A Social Club (1916) (short subject)
- The Nick of Time Baby (1916) (short subject)
- A Dash of Courage (1916) (short subject)
- Hearts and Sparks (1916) (short subject)
- The Danger Girl (1916) (short subject)
- Haystacks and Steeples (1916) (short subject)
- The Pullman Bride (1917) (short subject)
- Teddy at the Throttle (1917) (short subject)
- Baseball Madness (1917) (short subject)
- Dangers of a Bride (1917) (short subject)
- Whose Baby? (1917) (short subject)
- The Sultan's Wife (1917) (short subject)
- You Can't Believe Everything (1918)
- Station Content (1918)
- Shifting Sands (1918)
- Her Decision (1918)
- Society for Sale (1918)
- Everywoman's Husband (1918)
- Till I Come Back to You (1918)
- The Secret Code (1918)
- Wife or Country (1918) (short subject)
- Don't Change Your Husband (1919)
- For Better, for Worse (1919)
- Male and Female (1919)
- Why Change Your Wife? (1920)
- Something to Think About (1920)
- The Great Moment (1921)
- The Affairs of Anatol (1921)
- Under the Lash (1921)
- Don't Tell Everything (1921)
- Her Husband's Trademark (1922)
- Her Gilded Cage (1922)
- Beyond the Rocks (1922)
- The Impossible Mrs. Bellew (1922)
- My American Wife (1922)
- Prodigal Daughters (1923)
- Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1923)
- Hollywood (1923) (Cameo)
- Zaza (1923)
- The Humming Bird (1924)
- A Society Scandal (1924)
- Manhandled (1924)
- Her Love Story (1924)
- Wages of Virtue (1924)
- Madame Sans-Gêne (1925)
- The Coast of Folly (1925)
- Stage Struck (1925)
- The Untamed Lady (1926)
- Fine Manners (1926)
- The Love of Sunya (1927) (also producer)
- Sadie Thompson (1928) (also producer)
- Queen Kelly (1929) (also producer) (unfinished)
- The Trespasser (1929)
- What a Widow! (1930) (also producer)
- Indiscreet (1931)
- Tonight or Never (1931)
- Perfect Understanding (1933) (also producer)
- Music in the Air (1934)
- Father Takes a Wife (1941)
- Sunset Boulevard (1950)
- Three for Bedroom C (1952)
- Nero's Mistress (1956)
- Killer Bees (1974)
- Airport 1975 (1974)
[edit] Further reading
- Swanson, Gloria, Swanson on Swanson, 1980. An autobiography.
- Kessler, Ronald , The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, Warner, 1996, ISBN 0446-603848, chapter 6.
