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The papers of actress Gloria Swanson (ca. [18--]-1988, bulk 1920-1983,
620 boxes) document her career accomplishments, her business ventures and her
various interests, as well as her childhood, family, personal relationships,
and private life. Included are correspondence, photographs, scripts, production
records, financial and legal records, publicity materials, clippings,
scrapbooks, published materials, film, audio recordings, music, writings, art
work, and artifacts. |
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In the foreword to her autobiography, Swanson explained her eighty year
accumulation of "files and scrapbooks and photographs and films and letters
and documents" with the statement "I never throw anything away." Also a
diligent custodian, she shepherded records from California to New York,
installed state-of-the-art mechanical filing cabinets in her office in the
1950s, and even hired an archivist to order her papers after they were
"ransacked" during the writing of
Swanson on Swanson. This process was begun
in 1980 by Raymond W. Daum. |
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The collection is now arranged in seven Series: I. Correspondence
(1907-1983, 85 boxes), II. Career (ca. 1914-1983, 118 boxes), III. Business
Interests (1921-1982, 76 boxes), IV. Other Interests (1923-1983, 51 boxes), V.
Biographical/Personal Papers (ca. [18--]-1983, 110 boxes), VI. After Death
(1983-1988, 1 box), and VII. Formats (1889-1983, 147 boxes). Though these
groupings represent a comprehensive structure never realized during Swanson's
lifetime, they continue, to some extent, the arrangement process begun in 1980.
Internal files document various surveys of the papers, 1980-1982 (see folders
16.4-17.8). |
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As many files as possible have been placed in the context of their
original creation, left in their original order, and grouped together in the
appropriate series. Materials which had apparently been separated for research
or otherwise segregated (such as "VIP" correspondence) have been
reintegrated into the collection. Other parts of the collection, which were so
chaotic as to be virtually unuseable (i.e., United Artists, Health and
Nutrition subseries, clippings, photographs, etc.), have had order imposed upon
them. |
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The collection contains extensive records (including numerous film
stills) of Swanson's career in motion pictures, encompassing sixty-six films,
ca. 1914-1975. Her film career spanned the early days of slapstick two-reelers,
the peak of the silent era, and the transition to sound and other technological
developments. Her role as one of the first women to independently produce her
own films at United Artists, 1925-1933, is traced by the records of her
production companies. These companies produced six of her films, including the
controversial
Sadie Thompson, and the legendary Erich von
Stroheim fiasco
Queen Kelly, as well as her first
"talkie,"
The Trespasser. Swanson's watershed role of
later years, that of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's
Sunset Boulevard (1950), is also well
documented. |
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Also represented is Swanson's involvement in other entertainment
branches, which extended to radio (1927-1981, including
The Gloria Swanson Show, 1951), television
(1944-1981, including
The Gloria Swanson Hour broadcast during the
"stone age" of television in 1948), and theatre (1937-1977, including three
Broadway productions,
Twentieth Century, Nina, and
Butterflies Are Free). |
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Numerous scripts, synopses, stories, and treatments, representing
writers such as Zoë Akins, Jay Presson Allen, Lenore J. Coffee, James Ashmore
Creelman, Lilyan Kemble Cooper, Laura Hope Crews, Delmer Daves, William Dufty,
Laurence Eyre, Allan Jay Friedman, Leonard Gershe, Forrest Halsey, Ben Hecht,
Harold J. Kennedy, Alan Jay Lerner, Josephine Lovett, Clare Boothe Luce, Joseph
L. Mankiewicz, Frances Marion, Richard Matheson, Preston Sturges, C. Gardner
Sullivan, Erich von Stroheim, and Billy Wilder, are also present in the
collection. |
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The film stills and other numerous photographs in this collection
include the work of many photographers, among them Ernest A. Bachrach, Edward
O. Bagley, Russell Ball, Cecil Beaton, Marcus Blechman, Clarence Sinclair Bull,
Harold Carter, Irving Chidnoff, William Eglinton, Eliot Elisofon, G.L. Manuel
Frères, Maurice Goldberg, Ellen Graham, Philippe Halsman, George
Hoyningen-Huene, George Hurrell, G. Maillard Kesslere, Donald Biddle Keyes,
Roddy McDowall, Jack Mitchell, Nickolas Muray, Alexander Phillips, Melbourne
Spurr, Edward Steichen, Karl Struss, Stig Svedfelt, and others. |
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Swanson also kept extensive records of her efforts as a businesswoman,
which included cosmetics, a fashion line, hosiery, an inventions and patents
company, a travel agency, and writing assignments. Included are the records of
Gloria Swanson Enterprises, Inc. (1959-1977) and Swanson-Dufty Enterprises,
Inc. (1977-1981), as well as the papers of Multiprises, Inc. (1937-1951), which
financed and exploited various inventions by a group of four World War II
refugee inventors from Austria and Germany. Her fruitful and long lived
association with Puritan Fashions Corp. (1951-1982) is captured in the archive,
as are numerous writing projects, culminating in her popular autobiography,
Swanson on Swanson (1980). |
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Additionally, the collection also contains evidence of Swanson's varied
personal enthusiasms: art (original art and sculpture by Miss Swanson,
including a design for a United Nations Postal Administration stamp issue
commemorating the Decade for Women, 1980); fashion (in addition to costume
designs and the records of her commercial clothing line, there are associations
with designers such as Coco Chanel, Edith Head, René Hubert, Givenchy, Pauline
Trigere, Adam Werlé, and Valentina); health and nutrition (an early enthusiast
of organic foods, her papers document a tireless crusade against chemical
additives, inorganic pesticides, and pollution, her efforts in the passage of
the so-called Delaney Bill in 1958, and participation in the Independent Cancer
Research Foundation, the Committee for Independent Cancer Research, and the
Patients' Aid Society); music (she sang on film, television, and stage, and
numbered George Gershwin, Rosa Ponselle, and Jascha Heifetz among her friends);
psychic phenomena and religion (her proclivities as a spiritual seeker are
indicated in materials concerning such organizations as ESP Research Associates
Foundation, the United Church of Religious Science, and the University of
Science and Philosophy); politics (her campaign activities for Wendell Willkie,
Thomas E. Dewey, and Ronald Reagan are included); science and technology
(including visits to Bell Helicopter and to NASA, from which she cherished an
autographed picture and drawings by Werner von Braun); and travel (England,
France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Russia, and Sweden, represented
chiefly through photographs). |
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Swanson's childhood, family life, and personal life are further
documented through such personal papers as address books, appointment books,
photographs, and various personal financial, legal, and property records. |
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There is a wide range of correspondence, located primarily in Series I.,
but also scattered through the other series due to the inevitable overlap of
personal, career, business, and other relationships. Among Miss Swanson's
correspondents are family, friends, business associates, acquaintances, and
fans, spanning many notables from numerous fields of endeavor: Michelle Amon,
Kenneth Anger, Robert Balzer, Vilma Banky, Beverly Bayne, Henry G. Bieler, Earl
Blackwell, Virginia Bowker, Charles Brackett, Lewis L. Bredin, Harry A. Bruno,
Carol Burnett, George Bush, Francis X. Bushman, Richard Evelyn Byrd, Walter
Byron, James Cagney, Eddie Cantor, Carol Channing, Charlie Chaplin, Maurice
Chevalier, Ronald Colman, Noel Coward, Fleur Cowles, Joan Crawford, George
Cukor, Gloria Daly, Marion Davies, James J. Delaney, Cecil B. DeMille, Indra
Devi, Thomas E. Dewey, Marlene Dietrich, William Dufty, Allan Dwan, Nelson
Eddy, Mamie Doud Eisenhower, Harlan Ellison, Douglas Fairbanks, Douglas
Fairbanks, Jr., Michael Farmer, José Ferrer, Allan Jay Friedman, George, Duke
of Kent, George Gershwin, Margaret Ghika, Lillian Gish, Hubert de Givenchy,
Elinor Glyn, Samuel Goldwyn, Ram Gopal, Edmund Goulding, D. W. Griffith, Gladys
Griffith, Alec Guiness, Edmund Gwenn, Forrest Halsey, Oscar Hammerstein II,
Helen Hayes, Will H. Hays, Edith Head, William Randolph Hearst, Ethel Helmsing,
Katharine Hepburn, Conrad Hilton, Prince Franz Hohenlohe, Bob Hope, Hedda
Hopper, Edward Everett Horton, L. Ron Hubbard, René Hubert, William Bradford
Huie, George S. Kaufman, Buster Keaton, Edward Moore Kennedy, Harold J.
Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy, Rose Kennedy, Jean Kerr, Edward I.
Koch, Henri de la Falaise, Beatrice LaPlante, Henri Langlois, Rod LaRocque,
Jesse L. Lasky, Evelyn Laye, Vivien Leigh, Alan Jay Lerner, Mervyn LeRoy, Clare
Boothe Luce, Joel McCrea, Roddy McDowell, Frances Norton Manning, Arlette
Marchal, Stanley Marcus, Frances Marion, Gene Markey, Herbert Marshall,
Somerset Maugham, Louis B. Mayer, James Michener, Condé Nast, Marshall Neilan,
David Niven, Richard M. Nixon, Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, Albert Parker,
Louella Parsons, Mary Pickford, Zasu Pitts, Harold Prince, Ronald Reagan,
Charles Revson, Carroll Righter, Ginger Rogers, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joseph M.
Schenck, Else Schiaparelli, David O. Selznick, Ted Shawn, Eunice Shriver,
Herbert K. Somborn, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Steichen,
Preston Sturges, Ed Sullivan, Joseph Patrick Swanson, Joseph Theodore Swanson,
Constance Talmadge, Norma Talmadge, Bess Truman, Valentina, Erich von Stroheim,
Raoul Walsh, Barbara Walters, LeRoy P. Ward, Jack Warner, Clifton Webb, Orson
Welles, Dan Werlé, Billy Wilder, Lois Wilson, Sam Wood, Adelaide Woodruff,
Florenz Ziegfeld, Adolph Zukor, and others. |
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An extensive index of correspondents (which also includes photographic
subjects, prominent photographers, and some topics) has been created in order
to locate materials which are dispersed through the collection. The index is
selective and should by no means be considered exhaustive. Persons and subjects
were selected for their own intrinsic importance, as well as their quantity and
importance within the collection. Individual actors in the stills are
not indexed. However, a Film Credits List is
included in this inventory which lists the individual cast members for each of
Swanson's films. |
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Though this collection is substantially complete, it is probably weakest
in the area of personal materials for the 1920s through the mid-1940s. The
permanent move to New York in the late 1930s, the arrival of long-time staffers
such as Gladys Griffith in the 1940s, and the longevity of these arrangements
seem to have contributed to a more stable and consistent climate in which the
more comprehensive papers of the 1950s through the 1970s were created. Items
not present in this archive include the bulk of Miss Swanson's film holdings,
which were acquired by George Eastman House in 1967. For further information on
those materials, see folders 201.1-201.8. For the disposition of certain other
items after her death in 1983, see box 441. |