Biography
Friends and Family
Adelaide Klanowsky
[Mother]
::
Joseph T. Swanson
[Father]
Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 I am big. It`s the pictures that got small After years of negotiating, I felt bitter and resentful about Mr. Lasky and Paramount and I knew I always would.
All they had to do was put my name on a marquee and watch the money roll in.
By the time I was 15, my mother had turned me into a real clotheshorse.
Hollywood has called me in turn the Clothes Horse, the Old Grey Mare -- and Death of a Saleswoman. Since my comeback in "Sunset Boulevard," I`m glad to say they`ve thought up a new title -- Gloss.
"It`s the saddest night of my life. I`m just twenty six. Where do I go from here?" [Swanson to her mother following her triumphant return to Hollywood in 1925 after making Madame Sans Gene in France.]
After 16 years in pictures I could not be intimidated easily, because I knew where all the skeletons were buried.
All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year.
I have decided that when I am a star, I will be every inch and every moment a star.
I have gone through a long apprenticeship. I have gone through enough of being a nobody. I have decided that when I am a star, I will be every inch and every moment the star! Everybody from the studio gateman to the highest executive will know it." - in 1922
I think all this talk about age is foolish. Every time I`m one year older, everyone else is too.
It`s amazing to find that so many people, who I thought really knew me, could have thought that `Sunset Boulevard` was autobiographical. I`ve got nobody floating in my swimming pool.
I`ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can`t divorce a book.
On Marlene Dietrich: "Her legs may be longer than mine, but unlike me, she doesn`t have 7 grandchildren."
When I die, my epitaph should read: She Paid the Bills. That`s the story of my private life.
Trivia
Cited Beyond the Rocks (1922) as one of her favorite films from her silent career.
Claimed to have detested writing her autobiography.
Hated acting in slapstick comedy, which was pretty much all of her early career.
Known for her extravagant lifestyle, it was reported that she earned $8,000,000 between 1918 and 1929 and spent nearly all of it. By the time of her death in 1983, her gross estate was valued at just over $1,440,000.
Mother of a biological daughter, Gloria, by her second husband, and also of an adopted son, Joseph Patrick, whom everyone thought (erroneously) was named for her lover at the time, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (father/founder of the Kennedy political clan).
She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6748 Hollywood Boulevard and another for television at 6301 Hollywood Boulevard.
When she died, her book collection was sold to the Gotham Book Mart in New York City. All of the books were concerned with health and nutrition.
Wrote her own autobiography in rebuttal to certain claims made by Rose Kennedy in her 1974 memoirs.
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