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Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois in 1899. At 15, she happened to tour a movie studio in Chicago, and asked to appear in a movie, and that gave her the acting "bug". She appeared in minor roles in slapstick movies for Essanay, but in 1916, she was hired by Keystone and then Triangle, and she starred in over 20 movies in 1916 to 1918. In 1919, she signed with Cecil B. DeMille, and starting making elaborate melodramas, rather than the light comedies she had been making. She also began wearing really wild outfits and accesories in her movies (practically costumes!). In 1928, she had one of her best remembered roles, as Sadie Thompson, directed by Raoul Walsh from the W. Somerset Maugham (the part would later be played by Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth). In 1929, she starting filming Queen Kelly directed by Erich von Stroheim and produced by Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (the father of the famous Kennedy brothers, with whom she had a long term affair). This was intended to be von Stroheim and Swanson's masterpiece, but they clashed over the way her character was portrayed, and there were massive cost overruns, and von Stroheim was fired, and an alternate ending was filmed, and that altered version had a limited release in Europe only (many years later a reconstructed verion of von Stroheim's original vision was created [with still photos in part]). Swanson survived the transition to talking movies, but she could see her career was winding down, and she began acting more on stage, and painting, sculpting, and writing a syndicated column. After 1934, she only made one movie until 1950, when she took the lead role as Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd (screenwriter Charles Brackett says the role was intended for Swanson from the start, while director Billy Wilder says they first offered it to virtually every other leading silent actress!). The movie has a marvelous script (of a once famous silent actress having an affair with a much younger man, and dreaming of a "comeback" that will never come), and the casting of Swanson and Holden is perfect, and the additional casting of von Stroheim and DeMille add much to the movie. It is a virtually perfect movie! Swanson had six husbands over her life, marrying the first time on her 17th birthday (to Wallace Beery!) and the last time when she was 77, which lasted until she passed away in 1983. In her day she was as big a star as Hollywood has ever known AND Cecil B. DeMille was a legendary director from the 1910s to the 1950s. What makes him so remarkable is that he made some of the very first great movies, including "The Squaw Man" in 1914, but he was one of the only great silent directors to have no trouble transitioning to sound, and he made great movies in the sound era, even into the 1950s! Some of his movies include: The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Samson and Delilah. Of course, he also had a memorable acting role in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" in 1950 (he did a great job, but it was made easier because he was playing himself!) AND Hedy Lamarr, surely one of the most beautiful women ever, she was born in 1914 (or was it 1913?). She was born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna Austria, and she appeared in movies in Germany and Czechoslovakia as a teen. In 1933, she stunned the world when she appeared in the Czechoslovakian movie Ekstase (released internationally as Ecstasy) because she both appeared completely nude and in sex scenes! Naturally that caught the eye of Hollywood, and she was signed by MGM and renamed. although her next movie was not for five years later. She held on to her beauty quite well throughout the 1940s (nicknamed "The Most Beautiful Woman In Films"), and her biggest hit came at the end of that decade, playing Delilah to Victor Mature's Samson. She had a complicated private life! She is credited with major scientific inventions, and she had run-ins with the law for shoplifting. In 1974 Mel Brooks named one of the lead characters in Blazing Saddles "Hedley Lamarr", and she sued him over that! She is also best remembered for her roles in Show Business at War, The Love Goddesses, and H. M. Pulham, Esq. AND Mitchell Leisen was a director from the 1930s to the 1960s. Some of his works include: The Mating Season, Golden Earrings, and Easy Living

Important Added Info: It would certainly seem that this key book still is from Samson & Delilah (which DeMille made in 1949), but it is interesting that Gloria Swanson is there, because she appeared in Sunset Blvd. the following year, so maybe that was already happening at this time. If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here. Also note that this key book still is on a deluxe heavyweight paper stock and has an extra 1" on the left of the still with four punch holes (where the still was kept in a binder).

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