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(March 27, 1899 – April 4, 1983) Gloria Swanson was an American actress. She was most prominent during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille. She was also one of the first stars to challenge the Hays Code by producing the banned Sadie Thompson in 1928. In 1929, Swanson successfully transitioned to talkies with The Trespasser. However, personal problems and changing tastes saw her popularity wane during the 1930s. Today she is best known for her role as Norma Desmond in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950).
The Silent Era
 She made her film debut in 1914 as an extra in The Song of Soul for Chicago's Essanay Studios. While on a tour of the studio, she asked to be in the movie just for fun. Essanay hired her to feature in several movies, including His New Job, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. Swanson auditioned for the leading female role in His New Job, but Chaplin did not see her as leading lady material and cast her in the brief role of a stenographer. She later admitted that she hated slapstick comedy and had been deliberately uncooperative. Swanson moved to California in 1916 to appear in Mack Sennett's Keystone comedies opposite Bobby Vernon, and in 1919 she signed with Paramount Pictures and worked often with Cecil B. DeMille, who turned her into a romantic lead in such films as Don't Change Your Husband, 1919, Male and Female, 1919, with the famous scene in the lion cage,  Why Change Your Wife?, 1920, Something to Think About, 1920, and The Affairs of Anatol, 1921.
In the space of two years, Swanson rocketed to stardom and was one of the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood. Swanson later appeared in a series of films directed by Sam Wood. She starred in Beyond the Rocks (1922) with her long-time friend Rudolph Valentino. (This film had been believed lost but was rediscovered in 2004 in a private collection in the Netherlands and is available on DVD.) Swanson continued to make costume drama films for the next few years. So successful were her films for Paramount that the studio was afraid of losing her and gave into many of her whims and wishes.During her heyday, audiences went to her films not only for her performances, but also to see her wardrobe. Frequently ornamented with beads, jewels, peacock and ostrich feathers, haute couture of the day or extravagant period pieces, one would hardly suspect that she was barely five feet (1.52 m) tall. Her fashion, hair styles, and jewels were copied around the world. She was the screen's first clothes horse and was becoming one of the most famous and photographed women in the world.
In 1925, she starred in the first French-American co-production, Madame Sans-Gêne, directed by Léonce Perret. Filming was allowed for the first time at many of the historic sites relating to Napoleon. During the production of this film, she met her third husband Henry de la Falaise, Marquis de la Falaise, who was originally hired to be her translator during the film's production. After four years' residence in France, she returned to the United States as European nobility, now known as the Marquise. She got a huge welcome home with parades in both New York and Los Angeles. She appeared in a 1925 short produced by Lee DeForest in his Phonofilm sound-on-film process, which was one of the earliest attempts to synchronize sound with a moving image. She made a number of films for Paramount, among them The Coast of Folly, Stage Struck and Fine Manners. In 1927, she decided to turn down a million dollar a year contract to join the newly-created United Artists. There she was her own boss and could make the films she wanted, with whom she wanted and when. Her first independent film, The Love of Sunya, in which she costarred with John Boles and Pauline Garon, opened the Roxy Theatre in New York City on March 11, 1927 (Swanson was pictured in the ruins of the Roxy on October 14, 1960 during the demolition of the theater in a famous photo taken by Time-Life photographer Eliot Elisofon).
She was nominated for the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress for her next film performance as the title character in the 1928 film Sadie Thompson,  costarring and directed by Raoul Walsh, based on Somerset Maugham's short story "Miss Thompson", later called "Rain" (the story was re-filmed under this title in 1932, starring Joan Crawford and directed by Lewis Milestone). The Swanson original version is one of the greatest silent film classics. Swanson's unfinished film Queen Kelly (1929) was directed by Erich von Stroheim and produced by Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., father of the future President John F. Kennedy. She was romantically linked to the elder Kennedy at the time and numerous books have been written about the affair.
The Talkies and beyond
Swanson ultimately made talkies, even singing in The Trespasser (1929) directed by Edmund Goulding, Indiscreet (1931), and Music in the Air (1934). Even though she managed to make the transition into talkies, her career began to decline. Never one to dwell on the past, she threw herself into painting and sculpting, writing a syndicated column, touring in summer stock, political activism, radio and television work, clothing and accessories design and marketing, and sporadically making appearances on the big screen.
After Mae West and several former silent screen actresses (including Mary Pickford and Pola Negri) all declined the role, in 1950 Swanson starred in  Sunset Boulevard, portraying Norma Desmond, a faded silent movie star who falls in love with the younger screenwriter Joe Gillis, played by William Holden. Norma Desmond lives in the past assisted by her butler Max, played by Erich von Stroheim. She dreams of a comeback and in the process goes mad. There are guest cameos from actors of the silent era in the film including Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson. Cecil B. DeMille plays himself in a pivotal scene. This has since been called the greatest film about Hollywood. Many of the lines from the film have entered the language and are often used to describe Swanson herself: "The Greatest Star of them all", "I am big, it's the pictures that got small", "We didn't need dialogue, we had faces" and "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
She was nominated for her third Best Actress Oscar but lost to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday. She received several subsequent acting offers but turned most of them down, saying they tended to be pale imitations of Norma Desmond. Her last major Hollywood motion picture role was poorly received Three for Bedroom "C" in 1952. In 1956, Swanson made Nero's Mistress which also starred Vittorio de Sica and Brigitte Bardot. Her final screen appearance was as herself in the thriller Airport 1975.
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