Gloria Swanson - Swanson on Swanson

FOREWARD

Writing the story of your own life, I now know, is an agonizing experience, a bit like drilling your own teeth. At least fifty times in the past fifteen months I have wanted to throw these pagesor myselfout the window. But now that the book is finally finished, I realize that the experience was rewarding as well as painful, for it made me use muscles in my mind that I had never used before, and that is always thrilling. Forced to look intensely at the eighty years behind me, I have been amazed again and again to see patterns emerge and issues crystallize and relationships yield their significance in ways that were never quite clear while the events of those years were occurring. For that Im grateful.

Wherever possible, I have avoided the usual Hollywood gossip and stuck as closely as I could to my own personal story. Even so, with eighty years worth of files and scrapbooks and photographs and films and letters and documents to sort through and choose fromI never throw anything awaythe job of selection was a formidable one, and the book is longer than I ever intended it to be.

In going through thousands of clippings and news releases, I have been consistently appalled at how inaccurate reports in the press often are. No two ever seem to agree even on the spelling of peoples names, let alone on the facts. Nevertheless, since so much of my life has been public, I have deliberately seasoned this book with journalists accounts of my actions, and I have quoted them without corrections or comments. For your enjoyment, I recommend that you read them carefully.

As for the manuscript itself, I have relied greatly on the help of three people: Brian Degas, who conceived of the dramatic structure for the book, helped me see things that I was unwilling to see and was the lifeblood through all the stages of getting it published in its present form; Wayne Lawson, who took all the drafts and corrections and revisions and helped me weld them into the final version; and my husband, William Dufty, who tirelessly helped me research and prepare all the early material.

My children and their families deserve special thanks for helping me recall our past life together and for not disowning me when I called to ask them the same question for the second or third time, just to make sure I had the facts straight in a form that would not displease them.

I am also indebted to all my friends and colleagues, past and present, here and abroad, who have made my life what it has been. So many of them have helped me clear up facts and remember situations that I cannot name them all. They know I love them. As for the many people in the book who were no longer alive to advise me, I hope Ive dealt fairly and feelingly with them all.

My greatest debt will always be to the moviegoing public of yesterday and today, without whose love and devotion I would have had no story to tell.

GLORIA SWANSON

July 1980

Part

One

CHAPTER 1

DATELINE: Paris, Universal Service, January 28, 1925

BY-LINE: Basil Wood

GLORIA, FILM BEAUTY,

BRIDE OF MARQUIS

Gloria Swanson, thousand-dollar-a-day film actress is now Marquise de la Falaise. She was married today in the almost romantic secrecy of the Passy Town Hall. Only nine persons were there. They, including your correspondent, did not know what was afoot until an hour before the ceremony.

Im going to start with the moment in my life when I thought I had never been happier, because until that moment, I hadnt ever assessed the events that had come before it, and once it was over, I could never view my life or my career in the same way again.

That blissful morning in Passy in 1925 when I married my gorgeous marquis lifted me to the very pinnacle of joy, but at the same time it led me to the edge of the most terrifying abyss that I had ever known. One moment I had everything I had ever wanted, the next I was more wretched than I had ever been before; and in the days that followed, the more I blamed my misery on the fame and success I had achieved in pictures, the more famous and successful I seemed destined to become.

I was then twenty-five and the most popular female celebrity in the world, with the possible exception of my friend Mary Pickford. Headlines in North and South America and Europe usually referred to me by my first name only. I had starred in more than thirty successful films, six in a row directed by Cecil B. DeMille, and my leading men had included all the great heartthrobs from Wallace Reid to Rudolph Valentino. Not only was I the first American star to have filmed a major picture abroad, but I was also the first celebrity in pictures to be marrying a titled European. All over the world, fans were rejoicing because Cinderella had married the prince.

My salary at Paramount$7,000 a weekwas common knowledge, and columnists were already betting that when my contract was up in a year, Jesse Lasky would have to offer me at least a million a year to keep me. Moreover, Doug Fairbanks had unofficially invited me to join United Artists as an independent producer as soon as my contract terminated, promising that I could make much more with UA than I could ever make with Paramount or any other studio on a salaried contract. Oh, I was the golden girl, and everyone said so.

What the press and fans didnt know that January morning was that I was pregnant. Not even my dear, sweet Henri knew that, and I didnt have the heart to tell him, for well connected though he was, he had no money, and I couldnt let I him take the responsibility for a decision I would have to make alone. What I knew was that if I had Henris child in seven months, my career would be finished. The industry and the public would both reject me as a morally unsound character, unfit to represent them. In 1925, the Hays Office with its rigid censorship ruled Hollywood with an iron fist. Therefore, I took a single close friend into my confidence and with his help arranged to have a secret abortion the day after my marriage. The very idea horrified me, but I was convinced that I had no choice. I consoled myself with the fact that Henri and I were young and could therefore have other children. I already had two, a girl of my own and an adopted boy. Surely, I told myselfperemptorily so that I wouldnt argue backI could have more. With that I stifled my fears and doubts and kept the dreaded appointment.

If the operation had gone as smoothly as I was assured it would, I would have continued my life as usual later that same day and gone on living normally for years to come, with twinges of guilt, of course, but probably never with any full realization of my proper feelings about what I had done. However, the doctor bungled the simple operation, and the next day I was unconscious with fever. Then for weeks I lay between life and death in a Paris hospital, having nightmares about the child I had killed, wishing I were dead myself.

Ironically, all the while I was struggling with my soul in anguish, too weak to talk, my public was growing more ardent. Day after day the newspapers published my temperature, and millions of fans held their breath. They didnt know the cause of my illness, only that I was mortally ill; and when I recovered, they loved me more than evermore even, for the moment, than they loved Mary Pickford. Suddenly I was not only Cinderella who had married the prince, but also Lazarus who had risen from the dead.

Through me Paramount was receiving millions of dollars worth of free publicity. In a steady stream of cablegrams Mr. Lasky and Mr. Zukor begged me to speed up my convalescence and sail with my marquis to America in time for the New York premiere of Madame Sans-Gne, the film I had just made in Paris. Then, they said, they would transport us across the country for the Hollywood premiere, and then back again to New York, where I would start my next picture as soon as I felt up to it.