Gloria Swanson

Born: March 27 1899
Where: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died: April 4 1984

A silent screen legend and epitome of early Hollywood glamour, the movie Sunset Boulevard best sums up Swanson's style.

She travelled to Hollywood with new husband Wallace Beery after making her stage debut at Chicago's Essanay Studios in 1913.

After appearing in a series of Mack Sennett's romantic comedies at Triangle, she reached stardom in the snappy, sophisticated bedroom farces of Cecil B DeMille (Male and Female andThe Affairs of Anatol).

By the mid-20s, the larger-than-life Swanson was at the peak of her popularity, starring in such lavish vehicles as Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, Zaza, Madame Sans-Gene and The Untamed Lady.

When she returned from Europe with a Marquis as her husband, she received a welcome worthy of any actual queen.

In 1927, with financial assistance from investor and erstwhile lover Joseph P Kennedy, Swanson began producing her own films; these including Sadie Thompson and The Trespasser.

Her company ran into massive fiscal problems, however, with director Erich von Stroheim's extravagant Queen Kelly in 1928.

Despite having a fine speaking (and singing) voice, Swanson retired from the screen in 1934 after having made an only moderately successful transition to sound films.

She made numerous comebacks before her death in 1983, the most fruitful being her brilliant Oscar-nominated performance as reclusive, aging silent screen star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.