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Following in Mae Murray's footsteps (!!), La Swanson receives the major biography treatment next year, surprisingly only the fifth book ever written about this film icon and the first one in nearly thirty years:

http://www.amazon.com/Gloria-Swanson-Th ... 130&sr=1-8" target="_blank

Who will be next? Norma Talmadge? Pola Negri? But lay off Corinne Griffith - she's mine!!!!

Good. Will be interesting to compare with 'Swanson on Swanson' which is a very good read.

Cari Beauchamp will also be publishing a new bio on Swanson. She's been working with Swanson's family. I do not have any detail when it will be published. In any case, Swanson definitely needs detailed reexamination.

Yes, SWANSON ON SWANSON is one of the best movie star autobiographies I have ever read, but perhaps these new books will shed some light on things Swanson purposely left out. For instance, "Father Takes A Wife"(1941) the low budget RKO film she appeared in opposite Adolphe Menjou. It has always appeared to me to be a bit of an anomaly. The only film she appeared in in the 16 years between "Music in the Air' and "Sunset Boulevard, it" has more curiosity than comedy value.

A recent bio of Aristotle Onassis revealed that he was having an affair with Gloria at the time, and this film of a famous actress marrying a rich shipping magnate, their living on his yacht, and taking in a handsome night club singer was a bit of an in joke. Onassis is said to have used his influence to get his lover a job, and to get the film produced.

Gloria in her book, leaves out any mention of this. Who knows why? Perhaps because she was living in New York City, right down the street from the Widow Onassis? To make public that she had bedded both her neighbor Jacqueline's father in Law, AND her second husband, is probably more frankness than would have been wise.

I'd love to read more about her time at Essanay Studios in Chicago, hopefully both of these books shed new light on her earliest filmmaking period.

George O'Brien wrote:Gloria in her book, leaves out any mention of this. Who knows why? Perhaps because she was living in New York City, right down the street from the Widow Onassis? To make public that she had bedded both her neighbor Jacqueline's father in Law, AND her second husband, is probably more frankness than would have been wise.

Swanson's husband, William Dufty, was the ghostwriter on her autobiography. I can't imagine he'd have been keen to cover this sort of thing.

Brooksie wrote:Swanson's husband, William Dufty, was the ghostwriter on her autobiography. I can't imagine he'd have been keen to cover this sort of thing.

No, not keen, but after relating the stories of all her other affairs, you'd think he'd have become rather inured to "this sort of thing." (The detail I wish he'd omitted was the one about her "sun-cure" for the infection in her private parts.)

I wouldn't imagine him to have been keen about the description of the Wallace Beery rape either.

By the way, speaking of Swanson I just want to say that Mio filgio Nerone, or Nero's Weekend/Mistress, which is usually panned, wasn't actually that bad.
It's just that the English dub really changed what the film was about by swapping scenes around and dubbing totally different lines, enlarging Bardot's role at Swanson's expense (and the expense of the punchline). The US cut was just not the same film anymore and the changes were for the worse.
I'm not saying it's a masterpiece, but in its original version it's not totally awful either.