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Gloria Swanson: Sunset Boulevard
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To a generation of filmgoers, Gloria Swanson will only be the half-mad movie queen of Sunset Boulevard who traps screenwriter William Holden in a bizarre world behind the walls of her 1920s mansion. But there is much more to Swanson's career than just this image indelibly etched in film history.
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Gloria Swanson (March 27, 1897 - April 4, 1983) was an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning American Hollywood actress. She was prolific during the silent film era, but her career declined with the advent of "talkies". She is now best known for her comeback role in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950), in which—mirroring her own life—she portrayed a former silent movie star largely forgotten by audiences of the day.
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Swanson was only 30 years old when sound came. She had no stage training, but a clear, almost piercing voice that suited the primitive systems of the time. She even learned to sing for the 1934 musical Music in the Air. But nobody was making films in her intense, sultry style. Clutching at William Holden the way her creator, Gloria Swanson, dug her manicured nails into her stardom, Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond was as deluded in her quest for immortality as Swanson was practical in hers. If operettas could not revive her luster in the 1930s, then maybe a screwball comedy such as Father Takes a Wife would do the trick in the 1940s.
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Swanson made only three films after Sunset Boulevard, but starred in numerous stage and television productions during her remaining years. She was active in various business ventures, travelled extensively, wrote articles, columns, and an autobiography, painted and sculpted, and became a passionate advocate of various health and nutrition topics.
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Sunset Boulevard