Gloria Swanson

Gloria Mae Josephine Swanson was born on March 27, 1899, in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of Adelaide and Joseph Theodore Swanson, a soldier of Swedish descent whose military career required the family to relocate frequently. Swanson spent portions of her childhood in Key West, Florida, and Puerto Rico, where she first encountered motion pictures. She was raised in the Lutheran faith.

Swanson's entry into the film industry came at age fifteen, when her aunt brought her to visit Essanay Studios in Chicago, where actor Francis X. Bushman was employed. She was offered a brief walk-on role and eventually a stock-players contract, prompting her to leave school entirely. Her first paid appearance earned $3.25, and the studio soon offered her steady weekly work. In 1915, she appeared alongside Wallace Beery in Sweedie Goes to College. The following year, her mother accompanied her to California, where she worked in Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios comedy shorts opposite Bobby Vernon, directed by Clarence G. Badger. The pairing of Vernon and Swanson proved popular with audiences, and surviving films from that collaboration include The Danger Girl (1916), The Sultan's Wife (1917), and Teddy at the Throttle (1917).

On December 30, 1918, Swanson signed a contract with Famous Players–Lasky at the behest of Cecil B. DeMille, beginning at $150 per week. She made six pictures under DeMille's direction, among them the World War I romantic drama For Better, for Worse and the society film Male and Female (1919). She subsequently appeared in ten films directed by Sam Wood, including The Great Moment (1921) and Beyond the Rocks (1922), the latter co-starring Rudolph Valentino, whom she had known since his early days as an aspiring actor. Zaza (1923), directed by Allan Dwan, and the French-American production Madame Sans-Gêne (1925), directed by Léonce Perret, added to her growing list of critically noted performances. Madame Sans-Gêne is now considered a lost film, with no surviving prints known to exist.

In June 1925, Swanson declined a one-million-dollar-a-year contract with Paramount in favor of joining United Artists, accepting a six-picture distribution offer from president Joseph Schenck. She established the Swanson Producing Corporation as the umbrella organization for her United Artists agreement, making her one of the film industry's pioneering women filmmakers. Under that arrangement she produced and starred in Sadie Thompson (1928), which earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the first annual Academy Awards. Her sound film debut in The Trespasser (1929) brought a second Academy Award nomination. Queen Kelly (1928–29), though a box-office failure, has since been recognized as a silent classic. Her film success diminished through the 1930s, and she stepped away from the screen for an extended period.

Swanson's return to film in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950), in which she played faded silent-film star Norma Desmond, brought her widespread renewed recognition. The performance earned her a third Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award. She made only three additional films following Sunset Boulevard, while also guest-starring on several television programs and performing in road productions of stage plays.

Her Broadway career spanned from 1945 to 1969. During that period Swanson starred in On the Twentieth Century and appeared in Nina, Bathsheba, and the comedy A Goose for the Gander. Gloria Swanson died on April 4, 1983.