Gloria Swanson (full name Gloria Josephine May Swanson, English Gloria Swanson), (March 27, 1899, Chicago, Illinois – April 4, 1983, New York) is an American film, theater and television actress.
Gloria began her film career in 1915 when she was seventeen years old as a comic actress at the Keystone Film Company, one of whose owners and artistic director was Mack Sennett. She played with brilliance in such films as The Bride from the Pullman Car, Her Decision, or Dangerous Girl, and also, together with Charles Chaplin in the film His New Job, which she later, in 1924, imitated in the comedy Controlled by a Man “. But her artistic fate is connected, first of all, with the work of director Cecil deMille, in whom she starred in the films Don’t Change Your Husband (1919), For Better, For Joy. Worse, 1919), Males and Females (Male And Female, 1919), Why Change Your Wife? (1920), The Affairs Of Anatol (1921).
In the late 1920s, having become one of Hollywood’s leading stars, Swenson founded her own studio in 1926. and starred in the films Sadie Thompson (1928) and The Trespasser (1929), for which she was twice nominated for an Oscar. With the advent of sound, she almost stopped acting in films.
After a long break, Gloria Swanson returned to acting in the 1950s, regained her reputation as a remarkable film actress of the XNUMXth century, and thereby found a second life, now in sound films.
Her greatest achievement on screen was her performance as the mad silent star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), for which she was nominated for an Oscar. True, the award went to another actress – Judy Holliday (“Born Yesterday”).
Gloria was again invited to act, she played on stage, entered the cage of television actors – and all this was accompanied by success. In addition, she was a wealthy business woman who had her own business. Gloria Swanson organized in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. fashion house under its own brand.
It is known about Gloria Swenson’s passion for yoga. Together with star actors Ramon Navarro, Jennifer Jones, Greta Garbo, Robert Rein, she attended classes at a yoga school opened in Hollywood in 1947 by Indra Devi. Indra dedicated her book Yoga for Americans to Gloria Swanson.
In 1968, Gloria Swenson came to the USSR to promote vegetarianism.
The last time Gloria starred in a movie in 1974 in a small role in the film “Airport 1975” (Airport 1975).