Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up

7. Her Gilded Cage

95 C H a p t e r 7 Her Gilded Cage onCe fpl’s management team realized tHat swanson’s viewers would not be satisfied seeing her in frumpy clothes or cheap settings, they looked to control costs another way. Her newest picture was a retread , an unused episode from The฀Affairs฀of฀Anatol featuring Wallace Reid and Elliott Dexter as friends both in love with Swanson. Sam Wood fleshed it out with a week’s shooting. Then FPL gave it the enigmatic title Don’t฀Tell฀Everything and hustled it into theaters. This was a clever way of keeping Wally Reid, who was unwell and unable to work, on screen; he made only one more film before his death in January 1922. Yet it was thin gruel fashioned from leftover DeMille stew. Thus far, Swanson was not overly impressed by her new director. Sam Wood had little of the creative artist about him, Gloria felt, dismissing him as “a real estate dealer at heart.”1 This was too bad, since Swanson bloomed when she felt a director’s confidence in her and her contributions . At least his sets functioned smoothly and efficiently. (For his part, Wood was beguiled by Swanson and named his infant daughter for her.) If Swanson was not inspired, she was too busy to worry much about it; her transition to starring parts barely gave her a moment to think. Production typically took two months per picture, with ten days between assignments—days devoted to interviews, fittings, and other more or less mandatory publicity tasks. Madame Glyn’s life tutorials also kept Gloria occupied. When Jesse Lasky called Swanson to his office, she gave herself a pep talk before she entered: if Lasky asked her something unreasonable, surely she should have nerve enough to say no. She almost laughed when she heard that Lasky wanted her permission to share star billing for her next picture, Beyond฀the฀Rocks, with her friend Rudolph Valentino. Rudy was working at FPL (now more frequently known as Paramount) H e r g i l d e d C a g e 96 and had made a stir in The฀Sheik. The management was puzzled by Valentino’s success. As Adolph Zukor said, “We certainly did not expect him to convulse the nation.”2 However, audiences were alight for him, and Paramount wanted to cash in. Since her contract stipulated that Swanson would not share star billing with anyone, Lasky was asking her a favor. She thought quickly about what she most wanted—a divorce—but knew Lasky was unlikely to budge. Mickey had been telling Gloria that she needed to see the world, and the prospect of getting out of Hollywood for a while was alluring. So Swanson negotiated for a European vacation at the studio’s expense in return for accepting Valentino as her costar. She was very pleased with the bargain and knew Madame Glyn, who was writing the scenario, would be thrilled. Glyn had wanted Valentino for The฀Great฀Moment, arguing that he and Swanson would have devastating screen chemistry. So Gloria gave Lasky something she was happy to concede in exchange for a lovely, long, all-expenses-paid trip abroad. “When I came out of his office,” she recalled, “I realized I wasn’t a bad businesswoman.”3 Swanson would sail to Europe after finishing her first year’s quota of five pictures. Paramount pulled out all the stops for Beyond฀the฀Rocks, filmed during the winter of 1921. The clash between Mrs. Glyn’s erratic but colorful brilliance and Sam Wood’s steady craftsmanship had made for an uneasy partnering on their first film. Now, however—her ruffled feathers smoothed by The฀Great฀Moment’s success and her new Paramount assignment —Madame Glyn was gracious. She approved the scale of the production: the picture was set in London, Paris, Switzerland, and the Arabian desert, moving from modern-day drawing rooms to Versailles in flashback. Fifty gowns were made for Swanson, publicized as costing a (clearly exaggerated) $1 million. Fantasy time travel, thanks to a reimagining of the “gallants of long ago,” gave Gloria the chance to wear dresses Marie Antoinette would have considered overblown. For a pageant acted at a British country house, Valentino appeared as a romantic highwayman, with Swanson playing the proper young woman he abducts. These fancydress dream sequences created continuity for Swanson’s established audience: women who loved fine clothes and imaginative romantic adventures . Valentino kidnapping a proper British woman...