The film lost $100,000 (at that time, big money) and, as Swanson put it, “I pocketed my $35,000 and returned to cinematic oblivion.” They hire her long-time costumer (the guy responsible for the turban), a huge wardrobe budget, and make much ado about how “There’s Glamour on the Screen Again Because Gloria’s Back!”īut the release was ill-timed, corresponding with the release of bombs on Pearl Harbor and new-found austerity that wanted nothing to do with glamour on the screen. She showed movies, made brief political speeches, and invited others to speak - including Ayn Rand, who, according to Swanson, “had a fascinating mind and held audiences hypnotized.” That’s one way to say ideological straightjacketing, but fine, fine, I’ll give it to you Gloria, but only because this happened pre- Atlas Shrugged.Īnd then, a whiff of a comeback in 1941: RKO calls Swanson up and throws $35,000 at her to co-star with Adolphe Menjou and “the young Latin” Desi Arnaz (La Swanson’s words, not mine) in Father Takes a Wife. Swanson began hosting mid-afternoon “salons,” if you could call them that, in an old theater on 14th Street in New York. Although, according to her memoirs, she had voted for Roosevelt, she didn’t believe that “any man, let alone a sick man” should have a third term, and thus centered her efforts on electing one Wendell Willkie, aka the most unfortunately named presidential candidate of all time. ![]() She had rid herself of dubious husband #4, and her first daughter had just married, so she pulled a good-ol-fashioned mid-career mom move and got invested in politics. It’s unclear how exploitative this may or may not have been, but several scientists made it out of Europe (good!) and Swanson failed to make any significant amount of money.īut Swanson was a busy woman. ![]() But she did it in a roundabout sort of way, starting a company, punnily called “Multiprizes,” which, starting in 1938, made a mission of rescuing Jewish smarty-pantses from Europe, bringing them to America, and then working together with their patents, inventions, science experiments, etc. ![]() So she did what any faded star should: She moved to New York and got in the patent business. I cannot imagine how much this must have pissed her off, but Swanson, for all of her conspicuous extravagance, was also a pragmatist - her career may have been in decline, but she still had three children and a fourth husband of dubious worth to consider. When we left off, Gloria Swanson’s career was effectively over.
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