Gloria Swanson 03.27.1899 - 04.04.1983 (84 years old)

At age sixteen Gloria was hired as an extra at Essanay Studios, where she met actor Wallace Beery. They married in 1916 and went to Hollywood where Beery accepted an offer from a Mack Sennett's film studio on the condition his wife also to be hired. In this early years she played mostly comedic roles and slapstick, which she disliked.

In 1919 Swanson moved over to Cecil B. De Mille's at Paramount where she became a star. She scored successfully in several DeMille films like Don't Change Your Husband, For Better or For Worse, Male and Female, all in 1919 and Why Change Your Wife? (1920).

In 1924 while filming Madame Sans Gene (1925) she fell in love with the impoverished Marquis Henri Le Bailly de la Falaise de la Coudray, by whom she became pregnant. To elude ruinous publicity she decided to end the pregnancy.

She was the highest salaried woman in films in the mid-1920's, making $250,000 a week. In 1927, with the help of her lover Joseph P Kennedy, Swanson began producing her own films; including the two features for which she received her first Best Actress Oscar nominations, Sadie Thompson (1928) and The Trespasser (1929). Both lost a fortune in their business endeavor.

Swanson retired from the screen in 1934 after having made an only moderately successful transition to sound films.

In 1950 when director Billy Wilder needed to cast an older actress for Sunset Boulevard, few women in Hollywood wanted the role. Swanson accepted and played an aging, half-mad, silent movie queen.

Gloria established a successful line of cosmetics she named Essence of Nature and promoted a line of clothing she designed called Forever Young. She continued to work on stage and television throughout the rest of her life.

Her last film was Airport (1975) in which she played herself. Click here to read more about Gloria Swanson