eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

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 accessories in her movies (practically costumes!). In 1928, she had one of her best remembered roles, as Sadie Thompson (in her nominated for Best Actress Academy Award role), directed by Raoul Walsh from the W. Somerset Maugham (the part would later be played by Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth). In 1929 she had a role in Trespasser (in her nominated for Best Actress Academy Award role), and 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 version 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 Boulevard (in her nominated for Best Actress Academy Award role, 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 Herbert Marshall was an English actor from the 1920s to the 1960s. Some of his movies include: Trouble in Paradise, The Fly, The Little Foxes, and Foreign Correspondent AND May Robson (born Mary Jeannette Robison) was an Australian actress (born to English parents) from the 1900s to the 1940s. She was born in 1858, and her parents moved back to England when she was 13, and she ran away and got married when she was 17, and she moved with her husband to Texas to start a cattle ranch! She quickly had three children, and then her husband died, and she took up acting to try to support her family. She was a stage actress in the 1880s through the early 1900s, but she then appeared in some silent movies, and alternated between screen and stage until 1926, when she solely made movies! She became the actress first called whenever there was a part for a grandmother! She was the earliest born actress to receive an Oscar nomination which was for her role as Apple Annie in "Lady for a Day". Some of her other movies include: A Night Out, The King of Kings, Chicago, If I Had a Million, Alice in Wonderland, Anna Karenina, A Star Is Born, and Bringing Up Baby

Important Added Info: Note that this news photo measures 7" x 9" [18 x 23 cm].

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775