Gloria Swanson was a silent film actress who transitioned to sound films successfully. She is best known for her role in Sunset Boulevard. Swanson retired from film and focused on art, clothing design, and cosmetics. She died in 1983.
Gloria Swanson was a silent film actress whose career spanned from 1915 to the mid-1970s. Best known for her role as Norma Desmond in the 1950 drama Sunset Boulevard, Swanson got her start as an extra and actress in such films as The End of a Perfect Day and Elvira’s Tale and Farina and the Lunch Ticket. After her Oscar-nominated performance in Sunset Boulevard, this actress basically retired, appearing only in small film roles or making television appearances. Swanson died of a heart ailment in New York in 1983.
Born March 27, 1897 in Chicago, Gloria Swanson began life as Gloria May Josephine Svensson. As a member of a military family, she moved frequently and received her formal education through public schools in Chicago, Florida, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. At 16 Swanson began working as a clerk in a department store. Although her start into the workforce was inauspicious, she became curious about how the film industry worked and she made a batch of movies in Chicago.
During her visit, the directors recognized her unique beauty and singled her out from the crowd. She was cast as a child actress in the 1915 silent comedy The Tale of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket. Despite her dislike of slapstick comedies, Swanson appeared in several of them during her early career and only began working as a dramatic actress when famed director Cecil B. DeMille took her under her wing. This gender shift caused her career to skyrocket, and by the mid-1920s she became one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood.
At the age of 30, Gloria Swanson had to make the difficult transition to sound films. Although many silent film actresses failed to adjust to the new medium, Swanson made the change successfully and was nominated for several Academy Awards. Even so, she began cutting back on work and officially went on hiatus around 1941.
In 1950, Gloria Swanson made a comeback in the film Sunset Boulevard, in which she played a lonely and delusional Hollywood starlet far past her prime. She starred in a few more films during the 1950s, but she essentially retired from filmmaking, appearing in only a couple of small roles in the 1970s. Although she has retired from the film industry, Swanson has focused her energies on art, clothing design and cosmetics. She also wrote her own autobiography, Swanson on Swanson, published in 1980.
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