Promotional photos for "Sunset Boulevard" (1950)
Gloria Swanson in a frame or production still from the 1919 film Don't Change Your Husband.
loria Swanson in a production still from the 1920 film Why Change Your Wife?
Gloria Swanson, 1921
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Ethnicity:
Her father was from a strict Lutheran Swedish American family, and her mother was of German, French, and Polish ancestry.
Swanson was the only child of a civilian official of the U.S. Army transport service, whose work during Swanson’s childhood took the family to Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico. She was born on 27 March, 1899.
While touring the Essanay film studio during a visit to an aunt in Chicago when she was 14 years old, she asked if she could appear in a crowd scene. She enjoyed the work, stayed on as an extra, and was soon playing bit roles in two-reel comedies. Her parents separated in 1916, and she and her mother moved to Hollywood, where Swanson got a job at the Mack Sennett studio.
She had not intended to pursue a career in acting but at the age of 18 she visited a Chicago movie studio to see how they were made. Swanson was picked from the audience because of her beauty and was asked to be a bit player in the 1915 film 'The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket'.
Swanson also appeared as an extra in 'At The End Of A Perfect Day' (1915) and got a more substantial role in the 1916 film 'Sweedie Goes To College'.
In 1919, she joined Cecil B. DeMille's team, and soon rose to major stardom in euphemism-laden bedroom farces. She was turned into a romantic lead starring in 'Don't Change Your Husband' (1919), ''Why Change Your Wife?' (1920) and 'The Affairs of Anatol' (1921), to name but a few.
By the mid 1920s, now specialising in drama, she was a reigning Queen of Hollywood, expertly handling the film world's publicity machine to increase her own glamour. She was also one of the best paid actresses in Hollywood by this time.
She continued starring in period dramas including 'Beyond The Rocks' with Rudolph Valentino in 1922, which was lost until 2004. Audiences gravitated to her movies as much for her fashion as for her acting. Swanson was known for wearing beads, jewels, peacock and ostrich feathers and extravagant period pieces.
In 1927, she began producing her own films with her debut being 'The Love of Sunya'; a year later she was nearly bankrupted by the costs of Erich von Stroheim's production of 'Queen Kelly'. In 1929 she produced and starred in 'Sadie Thompson'. She received her first Best Actress Oscar for this role.
Other productions included 'What A Widow' in 1930 and 'Perfect Understanding' (1933). She starred in 'The Trespasser' in 1929 and was once again nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
She proved herself capable of both speaking and singing well in the sound era, but her talkies were mostly unsuccessful, and she retired from the screen in 1934.
Throughout the next four decades she appeared in five additional films, the most important of which was 'Sunset Boulevard', in 1950, for which she received her third Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Her last major Hollywood film was the poorly received 'Three for Bedroom C' in 1952 and Swanson made her final screen appearance as herself in 'Airport 1975' in 1974.
Later, she occasionally appeared on TV talk shows, often promoting health food. In 1971, she starred on Broadway in 'Butterflies Are Free'.
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Swanson was a long-time member of the Lutheran church; her father was of Swedish Lutheran descent. In 1964, Swanson spoke at a "Project Prayer" rally attended by 2,500 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The gathering, which was hosted by Anthony Eisley, a star of ABC's Hawaiian Eye series, sought to flood the United States Congress with letters in support of school prayer, following two decisions in 1962 and 1963 of the United States Supreme Court, which struck down the practice as in conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Joining Swanson and Eisley at the Project Prayer rally were Walter Brennan, Lloyd Nolan, Rhonda Fleming, Pat Boone, and Dale Evans. Swanson declared, "Under God we became the freest, strongest, wealthiest nation on earth, should we change that?"
Swanson was a Republican and supported the 1940 and 1944 campaigns for president of Wendell Willkie, and the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. In 1980, she chaired the New York chapter of Seniors for Reagan-Bush.
Swanson became a vegetarian around 1928 and was an 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 early age. He had refused conventional therapies and credited this kind of diet and healthy eating with his recovery. In 1975, Swanson traveled the United States and helped to promote the book Sugar Blues written by her husband, William Dufty.
In early 1980, Swanson's 520-page autobiography, Swanson on Swanson, was published by Random House and became a national best-seller. It was translated into French, Italian and Swedish editions. That same year, she also designed a stamp cachet for the United Nations Postal Administration.
Throughout her life and her many marriages, Swanson was always known as Miss Swanson. Though she legally took the names of her husbands, her own personality and fame always overshadowed them. Her first husband was the actor Wallace Beery, whom she married on her with 17th birthday. In her autobiography Swanson on Swanson, Swanson wrote that Beery raped her on their wedding night. He also impregnated her in 1917. Not wanting her to have the child, he reportedly tricked her into drinking a concoction that induced an abortion and although they still worked together at Sennett, they separated and finally divorced two years later. Beery was a major star during their marriage but would reach his height in the early 1930s when he became MGM's highest paid actor for several years.
She married Herbert K. Somborn (1919–1925), then president of Equity Pictures Corporation and later the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant, in 1919; they had a daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn (October 7, 1920 – December 28, 2000). Their divorce, finalized in January 1925, was sensational and led to Swanson having a "morals clause" added to her studio contract. Somborn accused her of adultery with thirteen men including Cecil B. DeMille; Rudolph Valentino; the Super Publicist, Steve Hannagan; and Marshall Neilan. During their divorce Swanson wanted another child and in 1923 she adopted a baby boy, Sonny Smith (1922–1975), whom she renamed Joseph Patrick Swanson.
Swanson's third husband was the French aristocrat Henri, Marquis de la Falaise de la Coudraye, whom she married on January 28, 1925, after the Somborn divorce was finalized. Though Henri was a Marquis and the grandson of Richard and Martha Lucy Hennessy from the famous Hennessy Cognac family, he was not rich and had to work for a living. He was originally hired to be her assistant and interpreter in France while she was filming Madame Sans-Gêne (1925). Swanson was the first film star to marry European nobility, and the marriage became a global sensation. She conceived a child with him, but had an abortion, which, in her autobiography, she said she regretted.
Later, Henri became a film executive representing Pathé (USA) in France through Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., who was running the studio. Many now assume he was given the position, which kept him in France for ten months a year, to simply keep him out of the way. This marriage ended in divorce in 1930 Soon after, Henri remarried, to actress Constance Bennett.
While still married to Henri, Swanson had an affair with the married Joseph P. Kennedy, father of future President John F. Kennedy, for a number of years. He became her business partner and their relationship was an open secret in Hollywood. He took over all of her personal and business affairs and was supposed to make her millions. Unfortunately, Kennedy left her after the disastrous Queen Kelly and her finances were in worse shape than when he came into her life. Two books have been written about the affair.
After the marriage to Henri and her affair with Kennedy were over, Swanson married Michael Farmer (1902–1975) in August 1931. Because of the possibility that Swanson's divorce from La Falaise had not been final at the time of the wedding, she was forced to remarry Farmer the following November, by which time she was four months pregnant with Michelle Bridget Farmer, who was born on April 5, 1932. Swanson and Farmer divorced in 1934, after she became involved with married British actor Herbert Marshall. The media reported widely on her affair with Marshall. After almost three years with the actor, Swanson left him once she realized he would never divorce his wife, Edna Best, for her. In an early manuscript of her autobiography written in her own hand decades later, Swanson recalled: "I was never so convincingly and thoroughly loved as I was by Herbert Marshall."
In 1945, Swanson married William N. Davey and according to her after discovering Davey in a drunken stupor, she and daughter Michelle, believing they were being helpful, left a trail of Alcoholics Anonymous literature around the apartment. Davey quickly packed up and left. Swanson-Davey divorce was finalized in 1946. For the next thirty years Swanson would remain unmarried and able to pursue her own interests.
Swanson's final marriage occurred in 1976 and lasted until her death. Her sixth husband and widower, writer William Dufty (1916–2002), was the co-author of Billie Holiday's autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, the author of Sugar Blues, a 1975 best-selling health book still in print, and the author of the English version of Georges Ohsawa's You Are All Sanpaku.
