{Bodywork Sessions With Dyann}

Dyann is very healthy & it’s business as usual

I’m still TAKING Bodywork APPOINTMENTS (For Now)

Discover Dyann’s – Life Coaching

On this month’s cover we have the extraordinary Gloria Swanson

GLORIA’S EARLY LIFE…

Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson on March 17, 1899 in Chicago, Illinois to Joseph Svensson and Adelaide Klanowskiand. She died April 4, 1983 in New York City, New York.

Swanson was an American actress and legend of silent movies, film, stage, and television.

She’s best known for her role as the fading movie queen Norma Desmond in the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard.

Swanson was the only child of a civilian official of the U.S. Army transport service, whose work during Swanson’s childhood, took the family to Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico.

THE START OF GLORIA’S CAREER…

While touring the Essanay film studio during a visit to an aunt in Chicago when she was 14 years old, she asked if she could appear in a crowd scene. She liked it. She stayed on as an extra, and was soon playing bit roles in two-reel comedies.

Her parents separated in 1916, and she and her mother moved to Hollywood, where Swanson got a job at the Mack Sennett studio.

Big Stardom For SWANSON….

After establishing herself as both a bathing beauty and a comedienne, Swanson was hired by Cecil B. DeMille.

She achieved stardom in a series of feature films that included:

She then formed her own production company, making such pictures as:

Sadie Thompson (1928)
Queen Kelly (1929, unfinished)
The Trespasser (1929) – Her first talkie

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND SWANSON’S OWN PRODUCTION COMPANY…

She was nominated for the first-ever Academy Award for best actress for Sadie Thompson and received another nomination for The Trespasser.

After several disappointing movie productions and the poor scripts available, she stopped making films. Swanson went on to build several business ventures outside the motion-picture industry.

In 1916, she first appeared with future husband Wallace Beery in A Dash Of Courage.
Once married, the two pulled up stakes in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles and settled into the film community of Hollywood.

Once out west, Gloria continued her streak of films. She was in hit after hit with such films as:

The Pullman Bride (1917)

Shifting Sands (1918)

Don’t Change Your Husband (1919)

By 1919, Gloria had divorced Beery and was remarried. However, it was not to be her last marriage, as she collected a total of six husbands.

By the mid 1920s, Swanson was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood.

It has been said that Gloria made and spent over $8 million in the ’20s alone.

That, along with the six marriages she had, fans couldn’t get enough of her for over 60 years.

Gloria was 30 years old when sound was added to movies and many wondered if she could adapt.

She did.

In 1928, she received an Oscar Nomination for Best Actress for her role of Sadie Thompson in the film of the same name. Unfortunately, she lost to Janet Gaynor.

Her film Sadie Thompson is considered one of the best in film history. The film script was based on the W. Somerset Maugham short story about a South Seas sensualist. On June 16, 1998, the film was named one of the top 100 films of all time by the American Film Institute. It landed in 12th place.

After a few more films in the 1950s, Gloria more or less retired.

Throughout the 1960s, she appeared mostly on television. Her last fling with the silver screen was Airport 1975 (1974), wherein she played herself.

Scroll Right To the End For Lots Of Classy Pictures & Video of GLORIA SWANSON

Swanson’s Marriages and Relationships

Wallace Beery – Husband #1

Wallace Beery and Swanson married on her 17th birthday on March 27, 1916.

By her wedding night she felt she’d made a mistake and saw no way out of it. She did not like his home or his family and was repulsed by him as a lover. After becoming pregnant, she saw her husband with other women and learned he had been fired from Keystone Studios. Taking medication given to her by Beery, purported to be for morning sickness, she aborted the fetus and was taken unconscious to the hospital. Soon afterwards, she filed for divorce.

Herbert K. Somborn – Husband #2

Swanson married Herbert K. Somborn on December 20, 1919.

Somborn was at that time president of Equity Pictures Corporation and later the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant chain. They had a daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn on October 7, 1920. In 1923, they adopted 1-year-old Sonny Smith, whom she renamed Joseph Patrick Swanson after her father.

During their divorce proceedings, Somborn accused her of adultery with 13 men, including Cecil B. DeMille, and Marshall Neilan. The public sensationalism led to Swanson having a “morals clause” added to her studio contract. Somborn was granted a divorce in Los Angeles, on September 20, 1923.

Henri, Marquis de la Falaise – Husband #3

During the production of Madame Sans-Gêne, Swanson met her third husband, Henri, Marquis de la Falaise (commonly known as Henri de la Falaise) who had been hired to be her translator during the film’s production.

Though Henri was a Marquis and related to the famous Hennessy cognac family, he had no personal wealth. She had conceived a child with him before her divorce from Somborn was final, a situation that would have led to a public scandal and possible end of her film career. She had an abortion, which she later regretted. They married on January 28, 1925, after the Somborn divorce was finalized. Following a four-month recuperation from her abortion, they returned to the United States as European nobility. Swanson now held the title of Marquise.

She got a huge welcome home with parades in both New York and Los Angeles. He became a film executive representing Pathé (USA) in France. This marriage ended in divorce in 1930.

Michael Farmer – Husband #4

After the marriage to Henri and her affair with Kennedy was over, Swanson became acquainted with Michael Farmer, the man who would become her fourth husband.

They met by chance in Paris when Swanson was being fitted by Coco Chanel for her 1931 film Tonight or Never. Farmer was a man of independent financial means who seemed to not have been employed. Rumors were that he was a gigolo.

Swanson began spending time with him, during which she discovered a breast lump and also became pregnant, but was not yet divorced from Henri. Swanson was not interested in marrying Farmer, but he did not want to break off the relationship.

When Farmer found out she was pregnant, he threatened to go public with the news unless she agreed to marry him, something she did not want to do. Her friends, some of whom openly disliked him, thought she was making a mistake. They married on August 16, 1931, and separated 2 years later.

Because of the possibility that Swanson’s divorce from La Falaise had not been finalized at the time of her wedding to Farmer, she was forced to remarry Farmer the following November. At that time, she was four months pregnant with Michelle Bridget Farmer, who was born on April 5, 1932.

Herbert Marshall – Torrid Affair

Swanson and Farmer divorced in 1934 after she became involved with married British actor Herbert Marshall. The media reported widely on her affair with Marshall.

After almost three years with the actor, Swanson left him once she became convinced he would never divorce his wife Edna Best, for her.

In an early manuscript of her autobiography written in her own hand decades later, Swanson recalled “I was never so convincingly and thoroughly loved as I was by Herbert Marshall.”

William M. Davey – Husband #5

Davey was a wealthy investment broker whom Swanson met in October 1944 while she was appearing in A Goose for the Gander. They married January 29, 1945.

Swanson had initially thought she was going to be able to retire from acting, but the marriage was troubled by Davey’s alcoholism from the start. Swanson and her daughter Michelle Farmer visited an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and gathered AA pamphlets, which they placed around the apartment as a hint. This prompted Davey to move out.

In the subsequent legal separation proceedings, the judge ordered him to pay Swanson alimony. In an effort to avoid the payments, Davey unsuccessfully filed for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty. He died within a year, not having paid anything to Swanson, and left the bulk of his estate to the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund.

William Dufty – Husband #6

Swanson’s final marriage occurred in 1976 and lasted until her death in 1983. Her sixth husband William Dufty was a writer who worked for many years at the New York Post and ghost wrote some best-selling books.

Swanson and Dufty met in the mid-1960s and moved in together. Swanson shared her husband’s enthusiasm for macrobiotic diets, and they traveled widely together to speak about nutrition. Besides her Fifth Avenue apartment, she and Dufty spent time at their homes in Beverly Hills, California; Colares, Portugal; Croton-on-Hudson, New York; and Palm Springs, California.

After Swanson’s death, Dufty returned to his former home in Birmingham, Michigan. He died of cancer in 2002.

GLORIA’S CHILDREN…

Swanson had 6 marriages and three children.

Her eldest was Gloria Swanson Somborn whom she bore with husband Herbert Somborn in 1920.

She and Somborn then adopted one year old Sonny Smith,

whom she renamed Joseph Patrick Swanson after her father.

Gloria had a third child with Michael Farmer

who they named Michelle Bridget Farmer

THE KENNEDY AFFAIR…

Gossip columnists wrote voraciously about her marriages and love affairs.

In particular, while still married to her third husband Henri de la Falaise, Swanson had a 3 year affair with the also married Joseph P. Kennedy, father of future President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy became her business partner and their relationship was an open secret in Hollywood. He took over all of her personal and business affairs and was supposed to make her millions. Kennedy left her after the disastrous and unfinished production, Queen Kelly.

For more than half a century, Miss Swanson denied having an affair with Mr. Kennedy, but then she wrote about it in her 1980 autobiography, Swanson on Swanson, which won stellar reviews and became a best-seller.

Gloria Swanson’s Death…

Gloria Swanson died of a heart ailment April 4th/1983 in New York Hospital. She was 84 years old. The actress entered the hospital for two weeks for suffering, what friends said, was a mild heart attack.

At the height of her fame, Swanson was deluged her with 10,000 letters a week from her adoring fans.

Her flamboyant gowns and innovative hairstyles and even her chin mole were imitated by millions of women.