GLORIA SWANSON A Life of GRIT& GLAMOUR

A SELF-MADE WOMAN, SHE REINVENTED HERSELF AS HOLLYWOOD'S ORIGINAL GLITTERING GODDESS

- Louise A. Barile

After nearly two decades away from the silver screen, Gloria Swanson agreed to play a Hollywood legend who boards a fateful flight in the hit film Airport 1975. For the role, which would be her last, the diva insisted on writing her own dialogue. “I was holding out for a picture I could take my grandchildren to see, something exciting and contemporary, without senseless violence,” she said.

Gloria prized her grandchildren almost as much as her life as Hollywood’s most dazzling diva. “She was very ambitious and very certain of herself,” says Stephen Michael Shearer, author of Gloria Swans on: The Ultimate Star. “She commanded a room when she entered it, even at 4-foot-11-inches tall.”

An only child born into a family of modest means, Gloria’s parents fueled her confidence with an assertion she could do anything she set her mind to. A crush on a movie star inspired teenage Gloria to talk her way onto her first film set.