In her later years, the still-glamorous star, a beautiful relic from the early days of film wrote ' ...
all the puritanical hypocrisy of the 1920's even cost me a baby's life, when I had to abort my
child by the Marquis in 1925 to avoid scandal and save my career.'
Gloria May Josephine Svensson was born in Chicago March 27, 1899, and grew up on Grace
Street. After her parents divorced, Gloria's mother enrolled her in singing lessons, and for a
time she attended the Chicago Art Institute. One day in 1914, an aunt took Gloria to visit the
Essanay Studios on Argyle Street. While there, she asked if she could be an extra in a scene
'just for the heck of it.' The director thought Gloria was vibrant and pretty, and expanded her
role in the short film The End of a Perfect Day. Thus her career began. Later that year,
Essanay hired the young girl as a stock player—four days work at $3.25 a week. Her fortune
lay ahead.
In the tradition of movie stars, Svensson dubbed herself Swanson, and became what was
known as a 'guaranteed player'—someone on call for any role at any time. She appeared in
dozens of short films before her first full-length role in 1915, the awkwardly titled The Fable of
Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket.
In her next film at Essanay, Swedie Goes To College (1915), Gloria met Wallace Beery, a gruff
but accomplished actor who first won fame playing a transvestite comedy maid. In 1916 Beery
became her first husband, and she travelled with him to California. Wallace brutally raped
Gloria on their honeymoon. Later, he gave her a medicine that made her so nauseated and sick
that it aborted her child and nearly killed her. They separated within a month.
Beery and Swanson both began working in Mack Sennett comedies. Though she realized later
that the split-second timing of these comedies improved many of her skills, she found them
degrading and vulgar. Amid her loud complaints, Sennett tore up her contract.
Gloria divorced Wallace, and signed with Triangle Pictures. In 1919, after a year of feeling
bogged down in silly love stories, she signed with Paramount. That same year she married her
second husband, Herbert Somborn, owner of the famed Brown Derby restaurant, with whom
she had a daughter, also named Gloria. Soon, Swanson was rising to fame in Cecil B. Demille
epics. Always dressed in spectacular gowns and jewels, millions of fans could not get
enough of Gloria Swanson. In Male and Female (1919), fearless Gloria allowed herself to be
pawed at by a live lion. In You Can't Believe Everything (1921), the non-swimmer jumped off a
pier into deep water to 'save' her co-star. Her willingness to risk life and limb for the movies
earned her great respect from directors.
In 1922, the stunning Swanson stated, 'I have gone through a long apprenticeship. I have gone
through enough of being a nobody. I have decided that when I am a star, I will be every inch
and every moment the star! Everybody from the studio gateman to the highest executive will
know it.'
Bored with Herbert, Swanson divorced him in 1923. She titillated her fans with statements like
'I not only believe in divorce, I sometimes think I don't believe in marriage at all.' She moved to
New York for a year and worked at the Astoria Studios, where her reputation grew as a good
actress ... as well as a clotheshorse.
Gloria married her third husband, the handsome Marqui Henri de la Falaise, and she became
'Madame La Marquise.' However, it was only the name she acquired. The Marqui had no
money, and Gloria put him on her payroll. She soon embarked on an affair with Joseph
Kennedy, father of the future president. Joseph became her financial partner, producing the
successful Sadie Thompson (1928) and a few ill-fated vehicles which included the famed,
never finished, severely over-budget Queen Kelly (1928), directed by Erich Stroheim. Probably
due to family pressure, Kennedy severed their ties by 1930.
In 1931 Swanson married for the fourth time to Michael Farmer, divorcing him in 1934. She
adapted easily to the coming of sound in movies, making her first talkie, The Trespasser, in
1929. Yet her greatest film triumphs were behind her. She made only five films in the 1930s,
and it was six years before her 'comeback' in the disastrous 1941 comedy Father Takes A
Wife. In 1946, she married her fifth husband, George W. Davey, a union that lasted just 44
days.
In 1950, nine years after her last film, she made a triumphant return to the screen as Norma
Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, the story of a faded silent movie queen who murders her much
younger lover, played by William Holden. Gloria was perfectly cast, still beautiful, and
sensational in the part. Her next role in Three For Bedroom C (1952) was a dismal failure.
Swanson worked in stage and television throughout the rest of her life. In 1960, the fantastic
Eliot Elisofon photo published in Life Magazine of Swanson elegantly gowned and bejeweled,
standing dramatically with arms outstretched amid the rubble of the demolished Roxy Theatre
in New York, was the inspiration for the story of the 1971 Stephen Sondheim musical Follies.
The Roxy had opened in 1928 with the film The Loves of Sunya, which starred Swanson. In
1975, she played herself in Airport 1975.
In 1976 she married for the sixth and final time, to William Duffy.
Gloria never tired of promoting her dietary ideas while traveling with her own pressure cooker
and assortment of natural bread, herbs, and teas. In 1980-1981 she embarked on a grueling
cross-country promotional tour for her autobiography Swanson On Swanson. Her book
received phenomenal reviews—'Sparkling ... . Movie stars' memoirs don't get any better,' and
'the most revealing book ever written by a movie queen.' Swanson said of herself and other
Hollywood royalty: 'We lived like kings and queens, and why not?'
Gloria Swanson died in her sleep April 4, 1983. The New York Times honored her with an
editorial entitled 'THE GREATEST STAR OF THEM ALL. '
Sources: The Films Of Gloria Swanson by Lawrence J Quirk; The New York Times Directory
of the Film; Gloria Swanson Web sites.
Steve Starr is the author of Picture Perfect—Art Deco Photo Frames 1926-1946, published by
Rizzoli International Publications.
A designer and an artist, he is the owner of Steve Starr Studios, specializing in original Art
Deco photo frames and furnishings and jewelry, and celebrating its 36th anniversary in 2003.
Visit the studio at 2779 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago where adorning the walls is Steve Starr's
personal collection of more than 950 gorgeous frames filled with photos of Hollywood's most
glamorous stars.
Photo of Steve Starr, July 25, 2002, by Albert Aquilar.