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279 C H a p t e r 1 7 Perfect Misunderstanding s wa n s o n H a d m a r r i e d i n H a s t e , a n d s H e w o U l d r e p e n t at leisure—a lot more leisure than she expected. She left the country with her two children and her new husband as soon as her duties on Tonight or Never ended, sailing off without a word to Joe Schenck about her plans. No one would pressure her into having another abortion: she had married Michael Farmer so she could have her baby legitimately. When they arrived in France she wrote Schenck saying she needed to rest before making another movie. She wanted a break from worrying about the motion picture business and her place in it and was counting on his “sentimental streak.”1 The Depression, however, rendered such largesse impossible. The negative publicity over Swanson’s union with Husband #4 now made her hefty salary seem like a noose around the corporate neck. Once Schenck realized Gloria was pregnant, he canceled her contract with United Artists. Swanson was now entirely independent, and soon she would believe she had “married a maniac.”2 Mr. and Mrs. Farmer rebounded into the Parisian social whirl, their months of hiding behind closed doors in California over. The family wintered at the magnificent Suvretta House in St. Moritz, where Michael, an expert climber and skier, put little Gloria and Brother on skis for their first tentative but thrilling runs. Everyone was enchanted with the Alps, and Swanson described life on the “roof of Europe”: “Only those who have lived above the clouds can possibly know how uncanny the beauty can be [with] the sounds of bells and laughter coming out of the mist. It can be twenty below zero but the cold is so dry that you uncover your bare shoulders for comfort. It is very intoxicating in more ways than one. It’s where lovers should go.”3 Adolphe Menjou and Charlie Chaplin joined them; then Sylvia Ashley and Doug Fairbanks arrived. p e r f e C t m i s U n d e r s ta n d i n g 280 Sylvia would soon replace Mary Pickford as Doug’s wife. The breakup of the First Couple of Hollywood marked the end of an era. Swanson’s enjoyment of her friends, however, was tempered by her growing fear that she had once again married the wrong man. Michael was “direct from County Cork and the devil. Twenty-four hours couldn’t go by without a scene of some kind. It was almost like a child wanting to get attention.” Farmer became jealous when he drank too much, and he drank too much routinely. Their fights escalated: “One night coming home . . . he started one of his tirades, and because I wouldn’t speak and add to the nonsense, he struck my side with his elbow quite fiercely.” Gloria was five months pregnant. She told Michael she was leaving him. She couldn’t, Farmer said—he had locked up the family’s passports. He offered “all kinds of promises and apologies, even getting down on his knees. It was after a fashion patched up, but never forgotten.”4 Farmer’s contrition became less endearing as time passed. They planned to return to England in the spring for Gloria’s confinement , but now she decided to go immediately. Leaving Gloria and Brother in their new Swiss boarding schools, she and Michael headed to London, renting Thelma Lady Furness’s spacious house on Farm Street in Mayfair. (Thelma had recently introduced her lover, the Prince of Wales, to Mrs. Wallis Simpson. This turned out to be a tactical error for Lady Furness.) Swanson loved the quiet eighteenth-century neighborhood ; she walked “around and around [Berkeley Square] talking to my unborn to hurry up,” promising the baby anything “if it would only stop kicking me.”5 As Gloria paced, her thoughts turned to her financial and professional future. She was unemployed, with no prospects in sight. The cancellation of her UA contract cost her $500,000 in unearned salary; it was “a dreadful financial blow.”6 The last thing she needed was another person leaning on her, but why she thought Michael Farmer would do anything else is a mystery. When they met he was dependent on the kindness of the older...

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