LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gloria Swanson: Husband
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Swanson capitalized on her provocative glance and perpetual slouch to epitomize the emancipated female predator. She collected only the most prestigious male trophies who guaranteed her continued presence in the headlines. Her third husband, an impoverished French marquis, made her one of Hollywood's first legitimate aristocrats. In the mid-1920s she snared as a lover and financier Joseph P. Kennedy, father of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy backed her in the doomed production of Eric von Stroheim's Queen Kelly. Ironically, she watches a scene from Queen Kelly projected by her butler played by von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard.
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It was in this film that Gloria uttered her most famous line, "All right Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." Erich Von Stroheim, who directed her in Queen Kelly in 1928, was given the role of her loyal butler and first husband. Gloria basked in her reprised and revered stardom. One critic raved, "Gloria Swanson's portrait of an aging movie queen is one of the screen's great masterpieces. Unquestionably! Here is a performance of such depth and magnitude that it defies description."
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Swanson met her last husband in 1968 and they became very good friends. They shared an interest in health foods and nutrition. Dufty wrote a popular book called Sugar Blues in 1975 about the dangers of sugar in the diet. He ... collaborated on more than 40 books, including Billie Holliday's "Lady Sings the Blues" in 1956. He and Gloria were married in 1976 and the marriage lasted until her death in 1983. Dufty died of cancer on June 28, 2002 at his home in Birmingham, Michigan.
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Swanson was one of the biggest stars of the silent era. No personality was more vital, more visible, more passionately alive in Hollywood. Cecil B. DeMille changed her from a routine Mack Sennett comedienne into an elegant, vivacious, and narcissistic clotheshorse. He seldom required his teenage star to act, merely pose, flirt, tyrannize servants, and discreetly reveal portions of her slim, perfectly proportioned body. She became noted for the bathing rituals DeMille incessantly constructed for her. Precisely reflecting the Paramount taste for European manners, lush lighting, and sexual innuendo, DeMille created, in his drawing room sex comedies such as Don't Change Your Husband, Why Change Your Wife?, and The Affairs of Anatol, a style that persisted into Swanson's life outside the studio; her best performances were usually for the papers.
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Eventually Gloria realized that the marriage to Somborn was yet another mistake. She had married a man whom she really did not love and a man who functioned as more of a father figure and business manager rather than a husband. They did have one daughter, named Gloria, which fulfilled Swanson's desire to finally have children. Later, she adopted a son named Joseph.
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Two years later, Gloria embarked on an affair with the married Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the future president, who told a friend, "I've won the most celebrated actress in America." Joseph ... became her financial partner, allowing her to produce her own films for United Artists. He sent her husband to France to work on a project.
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