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Gloria Swanson
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Gloria Swanson may not have been the world's best actress, but she was certainly one of the screen's greatest personalities. The daughter of a peripatetic army officer, she was educated in public schools from Chicago to Puerto Rico. While visiting Chicago's Essanay studios in 1913, the 15-year-old Swanson was hired as an extra and it was in this capacity that she met her first husband, Wallace Beery, then starred in the studio's Sweedie comedies. Not long after making a brief appearance in Charlie Chaplin's first Essanay starrer His New Job (1915), she accompanied her husband to Hollywood, where he'd been signed by Mack Sennett's Keystone studios. Often teamed with diminutive leading man Bobby Vernon, Swanson earned a measure of fame as the deadpan heroine of such comedies as Teddy at the Throttle (1916) and The Pullman Bride (1916) (she later claimed that she had no sense of humor at the time and ... played her roles seriously, which made them all the funnier to the audience). Divorced from Beery in 1917, Swanson also left Keystone that same year to accept an offer to appear in dramatic roles for Triangle Pictures.
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Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois on March 27th, 1897, into a military family which moved frequently. She was educated in Chicago, Puerto Rico, Florida, and San Juan, among other places. At age 18 she broke into the movies in bit parts. In her early years she played mostly comedic roles and slapstick, which she disliked, but she would do anything to get her foot in the door and to be noticed. Studios like Essanay, Triangle, and Mack Sennett's Keystone hired her. It wasn't until director Cecil B. DeMille noticed Gloria and took her under his wing as a dramatic actress for Famous Players-Lasky that her career began taking off.
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ALTHOUGH Gloria Swanson appreciates the honor of playing the leading feminine rôles in productions, she has discovered that there are certain difficulties ... in the work. Her first appearance was in "Don't Change Your Husband," and she is next to be seen in "For Better, For Worse."
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Gloria Swanson had the art of communicating so much without saying a word. This silent screen star was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe without ever having to speak.
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Gloria Swanson still remains a recognizable name and face today. Her spectacular comeback performance in Sunset Boulevard (1950) introduced her to new generations of viewers who never saw a silent film. She was the most self-consciously glamorous of Hollywood stars, but was no Norma Desmond. Despite the flamboyant personality and her famously bizarre fashions, she was a clear-eyed, realistic woman in real life. This common touch was a frequent feature of her screen characters as well. She usually played a wealthy woman, often in love with a lower class man, or a poor woman crashing high society, and there is a strong element of farce in many of her films.
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Gloria Swanson went to public schools in Chicago; Key West, Florida; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her film debut was as an extra in The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket (1915). From the following year on, she had leading roles in pictures for Keystone, then a year with Triangle, and, in 1919, a contract with Cecil B. DeMille. DeMille transformed her from a typical Mack Sennett comedienne into a lively, provocative, even predatory, star. She collected husbands (e.g., the indigent Henri de la Falaise) and lovers (e.g., Joseph P. Kennedy, father of former President John F. Kennedy). Kennedy produced her Queen Kelly (1929), directed by Erich von Stroheim (it was von Stroheim's copy of this film that Swanson was watching as Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd.
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Gloria Swanson