Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up

Images

Age eight, with her signature hair bows. Ingénue. Promotional picture for A Pullman Bride, in the detested “Bathing Beauty” costume. The Sultan’s Wife, 1917. Gloria is whispering in the Sultan’s ear. With Bobby Vernon, Keystone Teddy, and Wallace Beery in Teddy at the Throttle, 1917. The young bride with Wallace Beery, 1917. Beery in drag as “Sweedie.” As an improbably glamorous Christian slave in Karl Struss’s publicity still for Male and Female, 1919. The Lion’s Bride, Male and Female, 1919. Publicity still by Karl Struss. Marooned on a desert island with Thomas Meighan in Male and Female, 1919. Undraped for Alfred Cheney Johnston, c. 1919. Captain Joseph Swanson. Don’t Change Your Husband, 1919. Second husband Herbert Somborn. With baby Gloria, 1920. Waiting for the moth to fly out of Russell Simpson’s beard in Under the Lash, 1921. Mickey Neilan, the man Swanson called the “Pied Piper.” Vamping for Nickolas Muray, 1922. With Rudolph Valentino on the set of Beyond the Rocks (1922). Elinor Glyn and director Sam Wood stand on the platform. Kissing the open palm, a Valentino signature gesture. A “britches” part, 1924’s The Humming Bird. In Zaza, 1923. The hand-painted designs on her legs substituted for stockings. Seen by Edward Steichen in 1924 as “a leopardess watching her prey.” Courtesy of Steichen/Vanity Fair;© Condé Nast. Riding the NYC subway as Tessie in Manhandled, 1924. Caricatured by Miguel Covarrubias, c. 1924. Courtesy of Covarrubias/ Vanity Fair; © Condé Nast. Posing as Peter Pan, 1924. With her translator Henri de la Falaise on the French set of Madame Sans-Gêne, 1924. With Gloria and Joseph (aka Brother), 1924. As Madame Sans-Gêne, the laundress . . . . . . who becomes a duchess. Returning to America as the Marquise de la Falaise with her new husband. Her cropped hair is hidden under a large hat. Incognito as the Countess in The Coast of Folly, 1925 . . . . . . and in a second role as the Countess’s athletic daughter. As the little waitress confiding her daydreams in Stage Struck, 1925. Imagining herself as Salome in Stage Struck, 1925. With director and costar Raoul Walsh in Sadie Thompson, 1928. With John Boles in The Love of Sunya, her first feature for United Artists, 1927. Sadie Thompson, 1928. With Lionel Barrymore. Not afraid of the microphone. At home in Beverly Hills. Joseph P. Kennedy and Henri de la Falaise in Biarritz, 1928. With Erich von Stroheim on the set of Queen Kelly. In trouble with Seena Owen in Queen Kelly, 1928. Contemplating her rosy future in sound pictures, 1928. With Eddie Goulding, Noel Coward, and Laura Hope Crews in 1929. Streamlined in The Trespasser, 1929. With Melvyn Douglas in Tonight or Never, 1931. With fourth husband, Michael Farmer, c. 1932. Amusing Laurence Olivier in Perfect Understanding, 1933. On a tiger skin for M-G-M’s planned remake of Three Weeks. Family portrait, mid-1930s. With Herbert Marshall, 1934. With Adolph Menjou, her political ally, in Father Takes a Wife, 1941. With Billy Wilder. Fifth husband William Davey, 1945. On the set of Sunset Boulevard, 1949. Ready for her close-up as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, 1950. On tour for Sunset Boulevard, 1950. En route to London with Michelle, 1950. In London for the Command Performance of Sunset Boulevard, 1950. Oscar night, 1951. In the foreground left is Judy Holliday, winner of the award for Best Actress. In Nina on Broadway with a stunned-looking David Niven, 1951. With her mother in 1961. As Charlie Chaplin with Carol Burnett, 1973. In the ruins of the Roxy Theatre, New York City, 1960. As the murderous matriarch in Killer Bees, 1973. Her sculpted self-portrait. What becomes a Legend most? Blackglama fur ad, 1981. With sixth husband William Dufty, 1976. Gloria Swanson, New York, September 4, 1980. Photograph by Richard Avedon. ...