The Full Biography
Gloria Swanson. Actress. The Chicago girl who was the silent era’s most complete luxury object, then spent a working life playing the luxury’s ghost — and outliving the ghost by thirty years.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is Norma Desmond on a staircase, a close-up that is a threat, “I’m ready for my close-up.” Sunset Boulevard (1950). What the still cannot show is Gloria May Josephine Swanson of Chicago, a Sennett and DeMille star who really had been that big, a woman who made talkies and then was told she had not, and a life of health food, a last marriage, and a death in 1983 that the staircase has never accepted.
She was born on March 27, 1899, in Chicago. Her father, Joseph Theodore Swanson, was a soldier and a civilian employee of the Army Transport Service; the household moved. Her mother, Adelaide Klanowsky, was of German, French, and Polish stock. Gloria was small, precise, and already a person who treated a camera as a job. Essanay in Chicago hired her as an extra in 1914. She went to California. Mack Sennett’s Keystone put her in slapstick she did not love; she was not a pie-in-the-face instrument and said so. Cecil B. DeMille found the instrument he wanted: a woman who could wear clothes as a plot. Don’t Change Your Husband (1919). For Better, for Worse (1919). Male and Female (1919), the bath in the lions’ den, a scene the country filed as luxury and sin. Why Change Your Wife? (1920). The Affairs of Anatol (1921). Paramount had a face that sold soap and ruin. She was, for a stretch of the 1920s, the most famous woman in pictures: a salary that was news, a marriage that was news, a wardrobe that was the picture.
Beyond the Rocks (1922) put her opposite Rudolph Valentino. She left the DeMille shop and still opened pictures: Zaza, Manhandled, Madame Sans-Gêne (1925), shot in France, a box-office climate. She left Paramount and went independent, a producer when that was not a woman’s sport. United Artists. Joseph P. Kennedy, for a stretch, was the financier and the private weather. Sadie Thompson (1928), from Somerset Maugham, a prostitute on a South Seas island, earned her first Oscar nomination. Queen Kelly, with Erich von Stroheim, was the wreck: over budget, over length, a European shoot Kennedy finally stopped. Stroheim was fired. The picture was unfinished in the American sense and finished enough for Europe. Sunset Boulevard would recycle the wreck as folklore. The will and the wreck are both in the file.
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The talkies came. She talked. The Trespasser (1929), for Edmund Goulding, was a sound picture and a second Oscar nomination: a kept woman, a child, a voice the microphone took without a problem. The myth that she could not speak is lazy. The truth is that the industry’s idea of a star changed, and she was thirty and already a relic in its mind. What a Widow! (1930). Indiscreet (1931), for Leo McCarey. Tonight or Never (1931). Perfect Understanding (1933) with Laurence Olivier, a picture she also produced, shot in England, a marriage story that did not save the independent shop. Music in the Air (1934). The features thinned. She did not become Norma in 1934. She became a woman the town had finished with and who had not finished with herself. Radio. A perfume line. A dress line. Inventions she backed, including a patent interest in a device to keep food from sticking to pans. A long stretch in which the staircase did not yet exist and the luxury object had to learn how to be a person in daylight. In 1941 she tried a comeback picture, Father Takes a Wife, that did not take. The town had filed her. She had not filed herself.
Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote Norma Desmond as a joke that is also a requiem. They wanted Mae Murray, then Mary Pickford, then Pola Negri. Montgomery Clift walked off the male lead; William Holden took it. Swanson took Norma. She was fifty. She had been that famous. She played a silent queen who will not admit the pictures got small, and she played it as a woman who knew the joke. Holden is the writer who washes up in the mansion on Sunset. Erich von Stroheim, who had wrecked Queen Kelly with her, plays Max, the butler who was once her director and her husband; Wilder cuts in a reel of Queen Kelly as Norma’s own movie. Cecil B. DeMille plays himself, on a Paramount soundstage, and tells her she is still a star. The picture is a hall of mirrors and a job. She was nominated for a third Oscar and did not win. Judy Holliday won for Born Yesterday. Swanson did not become Norma. She used Norma as a door back in and then walked through. In 1951 she opened on Broadway in Nina, a short run, and learned that a live room still wanted the luxury object even when the luxury object had become a person who ate yogurt.
She married six times. Wallace Beery, the actor, in 1916, a brief disaster. Herbert K. Somborn, who ran the Brown Derby, in 1919; a daughter, Gloria. The Marquis Henri de la Falaise de la Coudraye in 1925, a title the fan magazines could spell. Michael Farmer in 1931; a daughter, Michelle. William M. Davey in 1945, another brief disaster. William Dufty, the writer, in 1976, the last household. She adopted a son, Joseph, in the Somborn years. Six marriages are a second filmography. The work was the constant. The houses were weather. Kennedy’s money and Kennedy’s exit sit in the Queen Kelly file and in the memoir; she told that chapter herself and did not ask a studio to sand it. A producer who has been that famous does not get a private weather. She wrote it down instead.
I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.Norma Desmond — a line Swanson had already lived
The turn is Sunset Boulevard and the refusal to stay on the staircase. Other silent names died as Norma. She became, instead, a person who wrote a memoir, sold a line of clothes, talked about yogurt and vitamins when that was still eccentric, and showed up as herself, which is a harder part.
Six things most people never knew
- She really had been that famous. Norma is a fiction. The 1920s salary and the DeMille clothes are not.
- She produced when that was not a woman’s sport. Sadie Thompson. Queen Kelly. The Wilder picture eats the wreck and the will.
- The talkies did not end her because she could not speak. The Trespasser was a hit and a nomination. They ended a type. She spoke. The type was retired around her.
- She was not Norma off the lot. The memoir and the vitamins are a person, not a close-up.
- Six marriages are a second filmography. Beery to Dufty. The house was weather. The work was the constant.
- She outlived the staircase by thirty-three years. 1950 to 1983. The ghost got a long afterlife. So did the woman.
Gloria and Michelle have had to share a staircase. Friends from the New York years describe a small woman with a large exactness about food, about time, about not being pitied. The Swanson who asked for a sensible lunch was a woman who had already been a climate and was now a neighbor with a clock. Both are the life.
The later years
The years after the staircase were long on purpose. She did not become a wax museum. She took television when television would take a silent name without making it only a joke. In 1948 she had already hosted The Gloria Swanson Hour on a New York station, an early variety experiment. After Wilder she did guest nights on the variety shows and a turn on The Beverly Hillbillies as herself, a joke she could afford. Three for Bedroom C (1952) was a light comedy that did not become a second climate. Nero’s Mistress (1956) put her in an Italian picture as Agrippina. Airport 1975 put her on a jet as herself, a cameo the disaster picture needed as furniture, traveling with a dog and a press agent the way Norma would have, except Swanson was in on it. In 1971 she replaced Eileen Heckart on Broadway in Butterflies Are Free, a mother who is also a weather, and proved, at seventy-two, that a voice the town had filed as silent could still hold a house. She toured the play. She did not apologize for the age on the face. She painted in oil. She kept a schedule that would have tired a studio.
She became, in those decades, an evangelist for whole food and vitamins when that was still a punch line in New York. She had been a luxury object. She decided to treat the body as a project she owned. She testified, in her way, against refined sugar and for a kitchen she could control. Dufty, who wrote Sugar Blues, was the companion of the last years; they married in 1976. He had been Billie Holiday’s collaborator on Lady Sings the Blues. The household was a writer and a silent queen who had outlived the queen. The memoir Swanson on Swanson arrived in 1980, eight hundred pages, a woman telling the DeMille years and the Kennedy years and the Wilder years without asking a studio to sand them. It was a bestseller. It is not a souvenir book. It is a producer’s account of a life the staircase had tried to replace. She kept an apartment in New York that was not a mansion on Sunset. She painted. She designed clothes and a line of dresses the way she had once designed a shop. She showed up as herself on a talk-show sofa — Carson, a magazine sofa, a nutrition panel — and then went home to a sensible lunch. She was, in those rooms, small, exact, and done with being pitied.
She died on April 4, 1983, in New York, of heart disease. She was eighty-four. Dufty was there. The funeral was not a premiere. The picture still hires her face every time a young director needs a joke about fame. The joke is on the picture. She had already lived thirty-three years past the close-up and had spent them as a person who ate yogurt and kept a clock. The New York apartment was not 10086 Sunset Boulevard. That was the point. She had used Norma as a door and then refused to live on the stairs. She kept painting. She kept the nutrition argument going in rooms that still wanted only the close-up. She kept Dufty. She kept the clock. A silent star who outlives her own ghost by a third of a century is not a trivia object. She is a working life the staircase was never asked to hold. The memoir is still the book. The yogurt is still the joke people tell when they have not read the book. The producing is still the correction. She had been the shop. She remained the shop, only the product changed. The close-up was a job she had already finished and declined to live inside.
She had already, by 1950, written the public woman. The thirty-three years after Norma were not a souvenir tour. They were a New York life: a kitchen, a memoir, a play, a nutrition argument, a last marriage to a writer who had already sat with Billie Holiday’s book. She painted. She kept accounts. She declined to be pitied. Friends from those years describe a small woman who was first at the table and last to concede a fact. The staircase wanted a ghost. She gave it a lunch hour. What the staircase cannot hold is the count underneath: a Chicago extra, a Sennett lot she did not love, DeMille’s clothes, a salary that was news, a Stroheim wreck, a talkie nomination, six marriages, a Wilder mirror, a Broadway mother, a memoir, and a New York kitchen. She had already, by 1925, written the public woman. The thirty-three years after Norma were the life she actually got. The ghost is employed. The woman who asked for lunch is the file.
After she was gone
Every faded-star part still pays her a tax. Every “I’m ready” still steals the line. DeMille’s clothes still photograph. The vitamins are a footnote. The producing is the correction. Swanson on Swanson is still the book a young actress is handed when someone wants her to know the town has always been the town.
She came out of Chicago, wore DeMille, produced her own wrecks, talked when the town said she could not, played the ghost of her own size, and then lived thirty years as a person who ate yogurt and kept a clock. If you only remember the staircase, you have Norma. If you remember Queen Kelly, the talkies, and the long after, you have her.
Portrait: Karl Struss · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons