Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up

13. The Swamp

202 C H a p t e r 1 3 The Swamp JosepH Kennedy looKed notHing liKe any BanKer swanson had ever met. The boyish, freckled, blue-eyed Irishman wore an ill-fitting suit, and his thick Boston accent made him seem more like “any average working-class person’s uncle” than the man who had been the youngest bank president in America.1 Paramount’s Robert Kane had suggested that Swanson discuss financing for her next picture with Kennedy , but at first she could not understand why. They met at the Savoy Plaza, and Kennedy said his whole family was impressed that he was lunching with Gloria Swanson. He watched her pick at her braised vegetables, while she eyed the hearty meal set before him. To break the ice, they talked about their children. Kennedy’s wife, Rose, was carrying the couple’s eighth child, and he expressed alarm that Gloria’s son had not yet been baptized. Then they turned to business, Swanson laying before him the two finance proposals she had gotten, one from Joe Schenck, the other from the Bank of America. Kennedy examined the proposals briefly, then peppered Swanson with questions. He wanted to know whether her accountant had been trained in up-to-date business methods, the kind taught at his alma mater , Harvard. He asked about her European grosses, and Swanson explained her fear that her pictures were being undersold abroad; she had not gotten figures she trusted from the company. Kennedy broke into raucous laughter when she described how Mary Pickford’s mother used to stand in the back of the theater counting heads—anything to prevent Mary from being cheated. Gloria couldn’t be in all her theaters herself and despaired of knowing what was really happening with her pictures’ profits. Then Kennedy suggested a solution—the first of many. She should ask Paramount for some figures for pictures distributed in Europe in the t H e s wa m p 203 last year; any worthwhile accountant could project Swanson’s revenues from there. Kennedy elaborated: the motion picture industry needed to be run like any other business. He suspected Gloria had been seeing too much red ink and too little accounting that really accounted for the normal ebb and flow of business. About six months earlier, Kennedy said, he had organized a graduate seminar on the movie business at Harvard. More than a dozen representatives of the industry, including Will Hays, Marcus Loew, Jesse Lasky, Adolph Zukor, and Cecil B. DeMille, had lectured on the art and commerce of the motion picture; he had published a book preserving the lectures. Swanson chuckled, picturing Hungarian immigrant Zukor instructing the blue bloods at Harvard, but Kennedy said they had turned hundreds away at the door. Everyone wanted to learn how the movie business worked. Swanson found his enthusiasm infectious—until Kennedy suddenly asked how she had slipped Sadie฀Thompson past Will Hays. When she said she had simply asked for permission to film the story, Kennedy guffawed . Bristling at the insinuation that she had “vamped” Hays rather than outsmarting him and the other producers, Swanson turned icy.2 Kennedy told her he had signed the producers’ protest as a favor to the men who participated in his Harvard seminar. It was nothing personal. Swanson knew her lunch companion was a movie producer but did not know what pictures he had made. The brash, confident man wilted a bit as he admitted that his movies to date had been successful but unexceptional westerns and action stories. The biggest star in his stable at FBO was literally a horse: Silver King, ridden by western actor Fred Thomson. “After all his grand opening talk,” Swanson recalled, “he was going down in total defeat.”3 Finally, Kennedy recommended she accept Joe Schenck’s offer; he proposed no alternative plan of his own. Swanson figured the lunch had been a waste of time and doubted she would ever see Joseph Kennedy again. He had not even paid for his meal. Robert Kane had told Kennedy he thought Gloria “needed handling .”4 Maybe they should propose to handle her together, Kennedy offering financing and Kane managing her UA productions. Shortly after meeting with Swanson, however, Kennedy told Kane he didn’t think he could do anything. Swanson was “not in any position to trade” and should take what UA was offering: “I think the trouble is that she got herself all spread out with debts . . . and told too...