Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up

8. East Coaster

118 C H a p t e r 8 East Coaster swanson was in a reBellioUs mood as sHe fled to new yorK. She felt bruised by DeMille’s betrayal and angry at Paramount’s unwillingness to see her as anything other than a clotheshorse. Lasky and company had manipulated her; now they would get a taste of their own medicine. Before Gloria dealt with her female trouble, she intended to take care of some movie business. She presented herself to Walter Wanger, the general manager of Paramount in New York: she was here about the role of Zaza.1 Allan Dwan wanted her, and she wanted it. Her health crisis would keep. Few people could stop Swanson when she was in steamroller mode, and there was no real reason why she should not play Zaza. She was under contract to Paramount, and Zaza was a Paramount property. Thus, Gloria engineered her happy and productive eight-film collaboration with Allan Dwan. It was one of the golden times in Swanson’s long career, as she remade herself yet again, the glamour queen developing a comic, lighthearted persona in both her films and her private life. She took greater control of her work, developed greater faith in her own judgment, and began the journey toward producing her own films. Though Swanson postponed the operation that had been her ticket east, her time in New York healed and strengthened her in many ways. Her new director Allan Dwan had himself gone east to seek the freewheeling autonomy he had enjoyed in Hollywood only a few years earlier . Dwan was preparing to make Zaza in Astoria when Mickey Neilan suggested he collaborate with Swanson. It was the substantial role she had been seeking: Zaza is a French music hall performer who becomes the mistress of a wealthy man.2 She leaves the stage for her lover, then gives him up for the sake of his child. Zaza returns to performing, and the couple reunites years later after the wife’s death. The melodramatic plot e a s t C o a s t e r 119 also promised to be fun: vivacious Zaza is the toast of the town before being tamed by love. Almost immediately Swanson knew she had made the right move. Working with Dwan was wonderful. He thought picture making “the doggone most fascinating game there is,” and his productions combined efficiency, hard work, and fun. “Pictures must be made fast,” Dwan claimed. “If you muddle around with them, you lose your clear vision. You cannot hurry art, of course, but you can hurry commercial production . Get your art in hand before you start to produce and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and trouble.”3 Dwan valued collaboration and spontaneity, finding Swanson an enthusiastic contributor: “She was always just perfect . . . a wonderful worker . . . and very jolly—a clown if there ever was one.”4 In one scene, Zaza is on a swing high above her audience, tossing flowers down on a group of eligible Parisian bachelors when a rival cuts the swing’s rope. Zaza tumbles to the ground, wounding her dignity more than anything else. A catfight settles the score between the women. They had no duplicates for the prop furniture, and none for the Norman Norell costumes, so Dwan instructed his leading lady to make the fight good: they could only do it once. Swanson remembered breaking the furniture and “mopping up the place” with the other actress despite being physically smaller.5 She acknowledged her competitive spirit: “I play to win. Otherwise I don’t play.” Dwan liked that edge and knew how to use it. Swanson recalled proudly that he said his new player had “the body of a woman but the brain of a man.”6 She was also proud that she had learned to cry on demand—no glycerine for this girl. She described the physical challenge: “Crying for the screen is hard work that leaves you with aching temples and with . . . muscles along the jaw throbbing and tugging. . . . It’s the most tiring thing I do.”7 She stayed in character for a big dramatic scene in Zaza, weeping quietly in a corner while the crew set up lights and hauled props around. Her director was thrilled with the “remarkable” results: “There seems to be no limit to the depth and variety of her emotions.”8 Dwan quickly earned Swanson’s friendship and loyalty. She took three adjacent suites at...