Gloria Swanson
born: 27-03-1897
birth place: Chicago, USA
died: 04-04-1983
Gloria Swanson was born Gloria Swenson. Her father was in the army, and she had attended more than a dozen schools by her early teens. Finally settling in Chicago, at age sixteen she was hired as an extra at Essanay Studios, where she met actor Wallace Beery.
Three years later, in 1916, she and Beery were married and moved to Hollywood. Beery signed with Mack Sennett's Keystone company, on the condition that Swanson also be given a contract. She started out in a series of romantic comedies, then starred in a number of melodramatic tearjerkers.
In 1919 she joined Cecil B. DeMille's team, and soon rose to major stardom in euphemism-laden bedroom farces. By the mid 1920s, now specializing in drama, she was a reigning Queen of Hollywood, expertly handling the film world's publicity machine to increase her own glamour.
Meanwhile, she divorced Beery in 1919, married and divorced again, then married a marquis. Altogether, she was married six times.
In 1927 she began producing her own films; a year later she was nearly bankrupted by the costs of Erich von Stroheim's production of 'Queen Kelly'. She proved herself capable of both speaking and singing well in the sound era, but her talkies were mostly unsuccessful, and she retired from the screen in 1934.
Throughout the next four decades she appeared in five additional films, the most important of which was 'Sunset Boulevard', in 1950, for which she received her third Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Later, she occasionally appeared on TV talk shows, often promoting health food. In 1971, she starred on Broadway in 'Butterflies Are Free'.
She died in her sleep in April 1983.
