What to do with a Coffin Full of Sugar: Gloria Swanson, Kenneth Anger, and Self-Authorship in the Star Collection

My age . . . if nothing else, entitles me to set the records straight.

GLORIA SWANSON, MARCH 8, 1979

Whatever else she may have been, Miss Swanson was never confused.

JANET MASLIN, NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 9, 1980

On April 20, 1976, a friend sent film icon Gloria Swanson, then in her late seventies, a copy of Hollywood Babylon, the Hollywood tell-all penned by avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger. The friend had underlined two separate passages relating to Swanson. The first passage describes the lavish lifestyles of the star and her silent-era compatriots, with Anger tracing Swanson’s stardom to her start as a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty, a claim Swanson repeatedly refuted. Anger then quotes Swanson on her extravagance: “In those days,” she purportedly explained, “the public wanted us to live like kings and queens. So we did—and why not?”¹

The second Hollywood Babylon passage outlined reactions to the scandal surrounding the stabbing of Lana Turner’s mafia lover by Turner’s daughter Cheryl Crane. According to Babylon, when Walter Winchell came to Turner’s defense, the gossip columnist

provoked an avalanche of furious letters from women’s clubs and old fools, among them a letter from Gloria Swanson in which the Old Glory cut loose: “Walter, I think it is disgusting that you are trying to whitewash Lana. . . . As far as that poor Lana Turner is concerned, the only true thing you said about her is that she sleeps in a woolen nightgown. . . . She is not even an actress . . . she is only a trollop . . . (signed) Gloria Swanson.”²

Swanson was furious. According to her, she had never been an actual Sennett Bathing Beauty, nor had she uttered or authored either of the quotes attributed to her. Indeed, Winchell had even published a retraction. Over the course of the following year, Swanson wrote to the publisher of Hollywood Babylon, claiming libel and threatening legal action.

But Anger and his publishers had no interest in addressing Swanson’s claims—she was one of dozens of stars singled out in Babylon, which Anger had written seventeen years earlier to raise money for his next film. The salaciousness, the blatant regurgitation of long-dispelled Hollywood rumors, was what resulted in the book’s initial ban in the United States and perhaps contributed to its subsequent popularity.³ I argue that Anger did not have any particular vendetta toward Swanson or, for that matter, any of the stars as individuals. Instead, he simply exploited the gossip and rumor surrounding mainstream Hollywood—an industry that would never embrace his unabashedly avant-garde style of filmmaking, replete with queer undertones. Industrial logic thus suggests that Anger’s main concern was obtaining funds for his next film.

But Swanson was determined. In August 1977, she filed suit in New York State against Anger, Doubleday, Dell Publishing, and Straight Arrow Books, all associated with the publication and distribution of the book. Swanson’s basis for libel was straightforward: Anger had published material with a reckless disregard as to its veracity. Although the basis of the suit was concise, its articulation was not. The sheer number of adjectives employed to describe both Swanson’s esteemed reputation and Anger’s vile intent could, without exaggeration, fill the remainder of this article. A sampling: Swanson “enjoyed an excellent reputation and worldwide esteem for honesty, integrity, forthrightness, decorum, restraint, probity, dignity, and fair-mindedness,” while Anger made the plaintiff “falsely appear to be a bitter, vicious, envious, malicious scandal monger and purveyor of filth and outrageous matter, given to tearing down, desecrating, defaming and uttering scandalous and scurrilous words and language about Lana Turner, and capable of indulging in the same, wrongful, mean, dirty and vile behavior toward other performing artists and people.” As a result, Anger, by “untruths, false innuendos, imputations and suggestions, maliciously, wantonly, recklessly, falsely and fraudulently contrived to injure, defame and libel plaintiff, GLORIA SWANSON, in her good name, professional and personal reputation, and her national and international professional business, cultural, civic and public image...