Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up

1. Glory

3 C H a p t e r 1 Glory gloria swanson always Believed sHe Had piCKed Her parents. “This time,” she said, she wanted “a long, exciting life,” so she set her sights on a newlywed couple making love in the summer of 1898 and “willed” herself into existence, arriving “from infinity” on March 27, 1899.1 Joseph and Adelaide Klanowsky Swanson had begun their marriage a year earlier in a modest second-floor apartment behind Lincoln Park on Chicago’s North Side. Joseph was a twenty-eight-year-old army supply clerk whose livelihood depended on his following the regiment, and he was often away from his bride. Adelaide—called Addie—was barely nineteen when the midwife placed Gloria May Josephine in her mother’s arms that spring. Swanson’s notion of choosing her own life—even to selecting her parents—suited her to a T. However, the self-made woman would always have trouble judging people and protecting her own best interests. For her parents she picked two young people who were not especially well suited to married life—at least not with each other. In turn, she would continually surprise and challenge them. The child known as “Glory” was part of a large extended family where Polish, Swedish, French, and German were spoken. She resembled her father’s side, with Joseph’s Nordic blue eyes and his moody, mysterious temperament. His parents James (or Jöns) and Johanna had been born in Smäland, Sweden, in 1840, where James worked as a shoemaker. The Swansons (or Svenssons, according to some sources) had recently arrived in Sweden by way of northern France when Jean Bernadotte, a French marshal serving under Napoleon, became king of Sweden and Norway in 1818. James Swanson’s father, a farmer, struggled with an unpromising plot of land called Clayfield, and the young man felt inclined to try his luck in the New World. Lured by the abundant opportunities in America’s fastest-growing city, James and Johanna came to Chicago with their four children in 1870. g l o r y 4 Barely a year after the Swansons arrived, the Great Chicago Fire devastated the city. Fueled by strong winds and dry weather, it burned unchecked for two days, leaving almost a third of the area’s residents homeless. Undaunted, the resilient Midwesterners rebuilt their city on a grander scale: Chicago would be the hub of American prosperity during much of the twentieth century. Its population doubled between 1880 and 1890, and had almost doubled again by 1900. The Swansons were part of this growth: Gloria’s father Joseph was the seventh of their ten children born in the US. Adelaide’s family was also relatively new to America. Her father’s parents hailed from Alsace. Despite their arrival in the States almost fifty years before Glory was born, her great-grandfather May and his wife still spoke German and French in preference to English. The old man had a long, thick white beard which the tiny girl found alarming, but the marzipan treats he offered Glory were welcome. So were the stories he told of his globe-trotting childhood. Great-Grandfather May had lived in Holland, Switzerland, and Baden-Baden, where he worked as chef to the family of the Grand Duke before coming to the US when he was twenty-six. He also riveted his young listener with tales of the Great Fire, which destroyed the family home on La Salle Street. He and his thirteen children escaped with only the clothes on their backs and had rebuilt their lives from nothing . Her great-grandfather’s stories of gumption and determination would echo in Gloria’s mind during her many reversals of fortune. Great-Grandfather May’s eldest child Bertha was independent and feisty. She left home at an early age to marry Horniak Klanowsky from Poland. Her domestic life was not happy, however, and after bearing three children, including Glory’s mother Adelaide, Bertha left her husband . Grandfather Klanowsky was as dark and inscrutable as GreatGrandfather May was gentle. In him, Glory saw the results of heartbreak: after his wife’s desertion, he could not stand to be around women and lived a hermit’s life right in the center of Chicago. He employed a man as his housekeeper and kept a tight watch on his considerable bank account . “Perhaps he worried over the fact that he was known as a skinflint ,” Gloria recalled. “One time he started to...