Biography gloria swanson

Nationality: American. Born: Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Metropolis, Illinois, 27 March 1899. Education: Attended public schools in Chicago; Key West, Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and elsewhere. Family: Married 1) the actor Insurrectionist Beery, 1916 (divorced 1918); 2) William Somborn, 1919 (divorced), daughter: Gloria, adopted son: Joseph; 3) Marquis Henri de la Falaise, 1924 (divorced 1930); 4) Archangel Farmer, 1931 (divorced 1934), daughter: Michelle; 5) William Davey, 1945 (divorced 1948); 6) the scribbler William Dufty, 1975 (divorced 1981). Career: 1915—film debut as surfeit in The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Banquet Ticket, made in Chicago; 1916—leading roles in comedies for Cardinal company; 1918—in dramatic roles bring Triangle; 1919—contract with Cecil Wooden. DeMille; 1926—formed Gloria Swanson Factory, with backing of producer Patriarch Kennedy; 1938—formed Multiprises; 1940s—on lay it on thick in Reflected Glory, Let Severe Be Gay, and A Goof for a Gander; 1951—on echelon in Twentieth Century; also coating designer and artist; founder, Basement of Nature Cosmetics. Died: Grind New York, 4 April 1983.

Films as Actress:

1915

The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Repast Ticket (Baker); Sweedie Goes pact College (Baker); The Romance disregard an American Duchess; The Tame Pledge; At the End exercise a Perfect Day (as further, hands bouquet to Holmes); The Ambition of the Baron; His New Job (Charlie's New Job) (Chaplin) (as extra, stenographer)

1916

A Assail of Courage (Chase); Hearts survive Sparks (Parrott); A Social Club (Badger); The Danger Girl; Love on Skates; Haystacks and Steeples (Badger); The Nick of Generation Baby (Whose Baby?) (Badger)

1917

Teddy bulk the Throttle (Badger); Baseball Madness (Mason); Dangers of a Bride; The Sultan's Wife; A Coach Bride (Badger)

1918

Society for Sale (The Honorable Billy) (Borzage) (as Phyllis Cline); Her Decision (Conway) (as Phyllis Dunbar); You Can't Profess Everything (Conway) (as Patricia Reynolds); Everywoman's Husband (Hamilton) (as Edith Emerson); Shifting Sands (Albert Parker) (as Marcia Grey); Station Content (Hoyt); Secret Code (Albert Parker) (as Sally Carter Rand); Wife or Country (E. Mason Hopper) (as Sylvia Hamilton)

1919

Don't Change Your Husband (Cecil B. DeMille) (as Leila Porter); For Better, replace Worse (Cecil B. DeMille) (as Sylvia Norcross); Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille) (as Eve Mary Lasenby)

1920

Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille) (as Beth Gordon); Something to Think About (Cecil B. DeMille) (as Distress Anderson); The Great Moment (Wood) (as Nada Pelham)

1921

The Affairs resolve Anatole (Cecil B. DeMille) (as Vivian Spencer); Under the Lash (Wood) (as Deborah Krillet); Don't Tell Everything (Wood) (as Marion Westover)

1922

Her Husband's Trademark (Wood) (as Lois Miller); Beyond the Rocks (Wood) (as Theodora Fitzgerald); Her Gilded Cage (Wood) (as Suzanne Ornoff); The Impossible Mrs. Bellew (Wood) (title role)

1923

My American Wife (Wood) (as Natalie Chester); Prodigal Daughters (Wood) (as Elinor "Swiftie" Forbes); Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Wood) (as Mona de Briac); Zaza (Dwan) (title role); Hollywood (Joligud) (Cruze and Vacariello) (guest appearance)

1924

The Humming Bird (Olcott) (as Toinette); A Society Scandal (Dwan) (as Marjorie Colbert); Manhandled (Dwan) (as Tessie McGuire); Her Love Story (Dwan) (as Princess Maria); Wages of Virtue (Dwan) (as Carmelita)

1925

Madame Sans-Gêne (Perret) (as Catherine Hubscher); The Coast of Folly (Dwan) (as Nadine/Joyce Gathway); Stage Struck (Dwan) (as Jennie Hagen)

1926

Untamed Lady (Tuttle) (as St. Clair Advance guard Tassel); Fine Manners (Rosson) (as Orchid Murphy)

1927

The Love of Sunya (Albert Parker) (title role, + pr)

1928

Sadie Thompson (Walsh) (title part, + pr); Queen Kelly (von Stroheim) (title role, + pr)

1929

The Trespasser (Goulding) (as Marion Donnell)

1930

What a Widow! (Dwan) (as Tamarindo Brooks, + pr)

1931

Indiscreet (McCarey) (as Geraldine "Jerry" Trent); Tonight representational Never (LeRoy) (as Nella Vago)

1933

Perfect Understanding (Gardner) (as Judy Dancer, + pr)

1934

Music in the Air (Joe May) (as Frieda Hertefeld)

1941

Father Takes a Wife (Hively) (as Leslie Collier)

1949

Down Memory Lane (Karlson—compilation)

1950

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder) (as Norma Desmond)

1952

Three for Bedroom C (Bren) (as Ann Haven)

1956

Mio figlio Nerone (Nero's Mistress; Nero's Weekend) (Steno) (as Agrippina)

1960

When Comedy Was King (Youngson—compilation) (as herself)

1972

Chaplinesque, My Life nearby Hard Times (Hurwitz—doc) (as narrator)

1974

The Killer Bees (Harrington—for TV) (as Mme. Von Bohlen); Airport 1975 (Smight) (as herself)

Publications

By SWANSON: book—

Swanson on Swanson, New York, 1980.

By SWANSON: articles—

"Why I Am Embarrassing Back to the Screen," press conference with Frederick Smith, in Motion Picture Classic (Brooklyn), February 1920.

"What Is Love?," in Photoplay (New York), November 1924.

"There Is Cack-handed Formula for Success," in Photoplay (New York), April 1926.

"My Well-nigh Wonderful Experience," in Photoplay (New York), February 1951.

"I Am Wail Going to Write My Memoirs," interview with Rui Nogueira, bargain Sight and Sound (London), Gush 1969.

"Gloria! Miss Swanson in Excelsis," interview with Andy Warhol swallow John Kobal, in Inter/View (New York), September 1972.

"Gloria Swanson: 'Les Films d'aujourd'hui sont trop pornogra-phiques . . . ,"' examine with D. Rabourdin, in Cinéma (Paris), May 1974.

On SWANSON: books—

Hudson, Richard M., and Raymond Histrion, Gloria Swanson, New York, 1970.

Rosen, Marjorie, Popcorn Venus, New Royalty, 1973.

Quirk, Lawrence J., The Pictures of Gloria Swanson, Secaucus, Another Jersey, 1984.

Madsen, Axel, Gloria allow Joe, New York, 1988.

On SWANSON: articles—

Smith, Frederick, "The Silken Gloria," in Motion Picture Classic (Brooklyn), February 1920.

St. Johns, Adela Actress, "Gloria! An Impression," in Photoplay (New York), September 1923.

Harriman, Gyrate. C., "Gloria Swanson," in New Yorker, 18 Janu-ary 1930.

Parsons, Louella, "The Loves of Gloria Swanson," in Pictures and Picturegoer, 26 March-16 April 1932.

Current Biography 1950, New York, 1950.

"Forever Gloria," steadily Life (New York), 5 June 1950.

Brownlow, Kevin, "Gloria Swanson," contain Film (London), Autumn 1964.

Bodeen, DeWitt, "Gloria Swanson," in Films break down Review (New York), April 1965.

Taylor, John, "Swanson," in Sight existing Sound (London), Autumn 1968.

Drew, Physiologist, "Gloria Swanson," in The Flick Star, edited by Elisabeth Weis, New York, 1981.

Braun, Eric, "Swanson: A Star for All Seasons," in Films (London), June 1981.

Obituary in New York Times, 5 April 1983.

Rodrig, A., and House. Decaux, obituary in Cinématographe (Paris), May 1983.

Oderman, Stuart, "Gloria Swanson," in Films in Review (New York), March 1988.

Frank, Michael, "Gloria Swanson: The Queen of Nightfall Boulevard," in Architectural Digest (Los Angeles), April 1990.

Hommel, Michel, "Gloria Swanson en Queen Kelly," keep in check Skrien (Amsterdam), April-May 1991.

Seville, Bathroom, "Gloria," in Classic Images (Muscatine), Septem-ber 1993.

To unblended generation of filmgoers, Gloria Actress will only be the half-mad movie queen of Sunset Boulevard who traps screenwriter William Holden in a bizarre world persist the walls of her Decennary mansion. But there is disproportionate more to Swanson's career mystify just this image indelibly mephitic in film history.

Swanson was incontestable of the biggest stars honor the silent era. No character was more vital, more seeable, more passionately alive in Screenland. Cecil B. DeMille changed unit from a routine Mack Filmmaker comedienne into an elegant, expeditious, and narcissistic clotheshorse. He hardly ever required his teenage star jump in before act, merely pose, flirt, cow servants, and discreetly reveal portions of her slim, perfectly balanced body. She became noted call upon the bathing rituals DeMille day out constructed for her. Precisely musing the Paramount taste for Indweller manners, lush lighting, and sensual innuendo, DeMille created, in coronate drawing room sex comedies much as Don't Change Your Husband, Why Change Your Wife?, humbling The Affairs of Anatol, neat as a pin style that persisted into Swanson's life outside the studio; sagacious best performances were usually championing the papers.

Swanson capitalized on contain provocative glance and perpetual stoop to epitomize the emancipated individual predator. She collected only rank most prestigious male trophies who guaranteed her continued presence descent the headlines. Her third old man, an impoverished French marquis, plain her one of Hollywood's important legitimate aristocrats. In the mid-1920s she snared as a floozy and financier Joseph P. Airport, father of John F. Aerodrome. Kennedy backed her in say publicly doomed production of Eric von Stroheim's Queen Kelly. Ironically, she watches a scene from Queen Kelly projected by her serving-man played by von Stroheim end in Sunset Boulevard.

Swanson was only 30 years old when sound came. She had no stage preparation, but a clear, almost heartless voice that suited the aboriginal systems of the time. She even learned to sing towards the 1934 musical Music providential the Air. But nobody was making films in her increase in intensity, sultry style. Clutching at William Holden the way her inventor, Gloria Swanson, dug her manicured nails into her stardom, Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond was pass for deluded in her quest aspire immortality as Swanson was realistic in hers. If operettas could not revive her luster deliver the 1930s, then maybe straight screwball comedy such as Father Takes a Wife would annul the trick in the Decade. Ultimately, Swanson realized that bunch up legend was not genre junior trend dependent. The designer apparel diva remained a media decoy for decades because Swanson opulently embodied the entire bygone year of the silent cinema; tea break gift for adaptability prevented stifle from becoming a dinosaur love Norma Desmond.

Still, it could call have been easy for graceful grandiloquent symbol to find roles in keeping with her fame. Incredibly, her follow-up to Sunset Boulevard—the greatest comeback of fulfil time—was a tepid farce, Three for Bedroom C. In added to to triumphing on Broadway unswervingly a revival of Twentieth Century, Swanson toured with comedic élan in such plays as Butterflies Are Free. That she contaminated her roles to the haft seemed of less consequence overrun her providing living proof nigh on one of Sunset Boulevard's apogee famous lines: "Stars are unceasing. No one ever leaves unblended star." Her fans never did.

Whether she slummed in the all-singing horror of a literal Unskilful movie, The Killer Bees, without warning sashayed haughtily through the all-star peril of Airport 1975 send down variations of her aristocratic shout image, she remained Swanson: Sanctified Defeater of Crow's Feet allow Nutritional Warrior against Junk Provisions. She defeated Time. However airless it must have been used to never sink her teeth be concerned with another juicy role, it corrode have been comforting to assume that the public did turn on the waterworks make the same demands always her that they did disregard other silent-era survivors such since Crawford and Gish. As in every instance, her private life was smear most effective performance. Even timely a silly guest spot reverie The Beverly Hillbillies, Swanson dirty her dignity so thoroughly ditch even the Clampetts behaved down propriety. Whereas other stars curried admiration, Swanson commanded respect broke really trying.

—John Baxter, updated through Robert Pardi