Film actress, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Of Swedish-Italian descent, she was hired as an extra in a Chicago film studio (1915), and there she met film actor Wallace Beery, whom she married (1916) and accompanied to Hollywood. She made many short romantic films for Mack Sennett, and then a series of sentimental dramas for Triangle Productions, before being hired by Cecil B De Mille. By the mid-1920s she had become the most popular and glamorous of Hollywood actresses (and was on her third husband). Backed by Joseph Kennedy, father of the later president, she began producing her own films, but lost heavily on von Stroheim's Queen Kelly (1938). She made a few sound films, then retired (1934), made a single film in 1941, Father Takes a Wife, and then made a sensational comeback in Sunset Boulevard (1950), where she played an evocation of her actual self. She made a few more films, promoted cosmetics, fashions, and health foods, starred on Broadway in Butterflies are Free (1971), and took a sixth husband (1976), but was never able to recapture what Sunset Boulevard had so vividly portrayed.
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".
Silent films
Her film debut was in 1914 as an extra in The Song of Soul for Uptown Chicago's Essanay Studios. 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. (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.
Swanson ultimately made "talkies" even singing in The Trespasser (1929), Indiscreet (1931), and Music in the Air (1934).
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. 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.
Television
Swanson hosted a television anthology series, Crown Theatre with Gloria Swanson, in which she occasionally acted. 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. 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. Their daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn, was born in 1920. During this divorce in 1923 Swanson adopted a baby boy named Sonny Smith (1922-1975). In August 1931, Swanson married Michael Farmer (1902-1975). Unfortunately Swanson's divorce from La Falaise had not been finalized at the time, making the actress technically a bigamist. In 1945 Swanson married William N. According to Swanson, she and Davey actually cohabited forty-five days. Swanson's final marriage was in 1976 and lasted until her death. 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.
Gloria Swanson died in New York City of a heart ailment (she was believed to be 84);
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