|
Gallery
Filmography
Film Highlights
|
Silent Screen Legend
loria Swanson, silent screen legend and epitome of early Hollywood glamour
began her career at Chicago's Essanay Studios in 1913. Swanson married
Wallace Beery, another Essanay performer, in 1916, and the pair moved
to Hollywood. After appearing in a series of Mack Sennett's romantic comedies
at Triangle, Swanson moved to Paramount, back to Triangle, and then back
again to Paramount, where she reached stardom in the snappy, sophisticated
bedroom farces of C.B. De Mille, MALE
AND FEMALE was one of the more noted films they made.
In 1927, with financial assistance from investor and lover Joseph P. Kennedy,
she began producing her own films; these included the two features for
which she received her first Oscar nominations, SADIE
THOMPSON (1928) and THE TRESPASSER (1929). Her company ran into massive
fiscal problems, however, due to director Erich von Stroheim's extravagant
QUEEN KELLY (1929).
Swanson retired from the screen in 1934 after having made an only moderately
successful transition to sound films. She made numerous comebacks before
her death in 1983, the most fruitful being her Oscar-nominated performance
as a reclusive, aging silent screen star in Billy Wilder's SUNSET
BOULEVARD. (1950).
|
