Swanson, Gloria, 1899-1983

Actress Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Swanson on March 27, 1899, in Chicago, the only child of Joseph Theodore and Adelaide Klanowsky Swanson. Her father's position as a civilian supply officer with the army took the family to Key West, FL and San Juan, Puerto Rico, but the majority of Swanson's childhood was spent in Chicago.

It was in Chicago at Essanay Studios in 1914 that she began her lifelong association with the motion picture industry. She moved to California where she worked for Sennett/Keystone Studios before rising to stardom at Paramount in such Cecil B. DeMille features as Male and Female (1919) and The Affairs of Anatol (1921). At the height of her career in 1925 (already a veteran of some fifty films), she ended her long association with Paramount in order to become a partner with United Artists, independently producing her own films. Though producing artistically successful films such as Sadie Thompson (1928) and her first talkie, The Trespasser (1929), both of which earned her Academy Award nominations, the financial strains of her production companies all but ended her career. After her final United Artists feature release in 1933, she made only one other film (for Fox Films) during the 1930s.

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