Gloria Swanson

American actress who began her career in silent films at 14, becoming the epitome of Hollywood Glamour from 1919-1926. She had three Oscar nominations, including one for "Sadie Thompson" and one for "Sunset Blvd.," 1950. Dubbed the "Queen of the Screen" in the 1920s, she was an enchantress personified during the golden age of silent films, a two time Oscar nominee for her roles in silent films "Sadie Thompson," 1928 and "Trespasser," 1929. Her other film roles include "Manhandled," "Don't Change Your Husband," "Beyond The Rocks," "The Love of Sunya," "You Can't Believe Everything," "Secret Code" and "Music In The Air." Swanson was best known for her stunning comeback in the 1949 film classic "Sunset Boulevard." She is the author of an autobiography "Swanson on Swanson" in 1980.

The only child of Joe and Addie Svensson, Gloria was an army brat who spent a peripatetic childhood across the United States and Puerto Rico. Possessing a beautiful singing voice, she studied for the opera, but after making a visit to the Essanay studio in Chicago with her aunt. became hooked on the new medium of film. At 15 she was hired as an extra in the earliest days of the industry. After her parents separated, her mother took her to Hollywood where she signed on as a bathing beauty in Mack Sennet's Keystone Studios and at 17 eloped with fellow Keystone actor Wallace Beery. The marriage lasted two months.

Tiring of the studio's incessant slapstick comedies, she switched to Triangle Studios, where she portrayed elegantly dressed, affluent women who were to become the Swanson image. In 1919 she married film distributor Herbert K. Somborn, whom she nicknamed "Daddy" as he was twice her age. This marriage lasted less than a year, but produced her first daughter, Gloria, born in 1920. She later adopted a son Joseph, who died in 1975.