Gloria Swanson didn't need the word "glamour" to describe her aura.  She wore glamour like a second skin.  The magical spell she was able to cast over all those who came into her orbit, either in person or through celluloid, had less to do with beauty or fashion than it did with the sheer intensity of her personality, which she effortlessly transmitted in her every gesture.  "When you put them all together and add them up, Gloria Swanson comes out the movie star of all movie stars," observed Cecil B. DeMille, decades after the actress's rise to stardom in the twenties. "She had something that none of the rest of them had."

Born Gloria Josephine Mae Svensson in Chicago on March 27, 1899, she was hired as an extra by Chicago's Essanay Studios in 1914.  It was in this capacity that she met Wallace Beery. A few months later Beery left the Chicago Essanay studios and headed for California.  Gloria soon followed and Beery became the first in a line of six husbands.  With Beery's help, she was immediately hired by Mack Sennett . She then shifted back-and-forth between two studios, Triangle Productions and Paramount, before being hired by Cecil B De Mille who cast her in Don't Change Your Husband (1919), the first of their six box-office triumphs together.  Others included Male and Female (1919) and The Affairs of Anatol (1921).

By now a fully-fledged superstar, she controlled every aspect of her career.  Her third marriage, to Marquis Henri de la Falaise de la Coudraye, only increased her popularity with the movie-going public.  Her career with Paramount continued to flourish but she was soon tempted with an opportunity to produce her own films and have them released through United Artists. She chose to remake a 1919 Clara Kimball Young film, Eyes of Youth (retitled The Love of Sunya (1927)) for her first independent production.  It was not a financial success. Her second production, Sadie Thompson (1928), fared much better but she had an uphill battle with the Hays Office regarding censorship problems. The film paid off in the end with Swanson garnering her first Academy Award nomination.  In 1929, Swanson, with her then lover Joe Kennedy (father of John F. Kennedy), teamed with Erich Von Stroheim for Queen Kelly, a project that would never be completed.  Swanson was not one to be done in by one bad experience and she immediately began work on her first sound film called The Trespasser (1929).  It was a great success, earning her a second  Academy Award nomination, and audiences were happy to hear that Gloria could not only talk but sing as well.  She secured a contract with MGM but unfortunately her follow up films did not fare as well as The Trespasser. Her decade of splendor had ended with the depression era audiences and her films were simply out of sync with the public. After the failure of Music In The Air in 1934, she went into semi-retirement.  A comeback attempt was made in 1941 when she was offered a comedy called Father Takes A Wife. It was not a success but Gloria Swanson's film career was not over just yet.  Her next film appearance in 1949 turned out to be one of the finest achievements in anybody's career: Her Oscar-nominated virtuoso performance as faded, self-delusional silent screen star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's vitriolic Hollywood melodrama Sunset Boulevard. So convincing was Swanson in this role that many of her fans believed that she was Norma Desmond, though nothing could have been further from the truth.  Unfortunately, Swanson could not follow up this triumph.  A forgettable comedy, Three For Bedroom C (1952), failed at the box office. An Italian film, Nero's Mistresses, was made three years later but was so bad that it was not released to American audiences until seven years later. Swanson did not return to the screen until the 1970's when she made a memorable television film called Killer Bees (1974) and played herself in the disaster epic Airport 1975 (1974).

She did rather well on television in the 1950s and dabbled in scores of business enterprises.  Her most successful business venture was a line of organic cosmetics, Essence of Nature.  She was also very active in the burgeoning health food movement of the 1960s, her ageless beauty and boundless energy serving as the best arguments in favor of proper nutrition. In the 1970s, she appeared on Broadway and on tour in Butterflies Are Free. But perhaps Gloria's greatest non-film achievement was her writing ability. In 1980, she published her autobiography titled Swanson On Swanson, a great success and widely praised.

Gloria Swanson died in her sleep on April 4, 1983 of a heart attack. She was 84.  She is buried in New York City at the Church of Heavenly Rest.

 

DVDs