Mistress Manifesto

Friday, July 10, 2026

GLORIA SWANSON AT THE HEIGHT OF HER CAREER : SHE FELT BLACKMAILED INTO AN EXPENSIVE DIVORCE BY HER HUSBAND AND THE HAYS OFFICE

Excerpt page 5 : In 1924, Hollywood movies were made on sets built on stages and back lots. Newfangled rear projection and process-screen photography even enabled characters to sit or stand in front of a screen and appear to be anywhere in the world. To go overseas to make a picture was unheard of. ...

With the possible exception of Mary Pickford, who never managed the transition from the girlish image that had made her "America's Sweetheart" to full screen womanhood, Gloria Swanson was the most popular female celebrity in the movie-crazed mid 1920's. When, in September 1924, she sailed to Europe to make Madame Sans Gene, she was twenty-five, had starred in thirty movies - six in a row with *De Mille - and her leading men had included the great heartthrobs from Wallace Reid to Rudolph Valentino.

When Gloria Swanson wanted out of her marriage with Herbert Somborn, he and his attorney threatened her for $150,000: According to author Axel Madsen, De Mille was panicking too. The Hays Office, as it was called, had instituted morality clauses in movie star's contracts with their studios, and a nasty divorce with rumors flying about her infidelity could end her career. As a result, De Mille called a meeting and insisted that the divorce would have to be settled secretly as, though she could have charged her husband with desertion a year earlier, now her circumstances could threaten the entire industry! (pages 86-87)

Excerpt Page 87: When the divorce papers were presented to her, she was tempted to sign it all without seeing her own humiliation spelled out in black and white. She steeled herself, however, and began to read. Paramount was indeed picking provisions that awarded Herbert $70,000 because he ha "assisted in procuring" her much-improved contract. He was paid $35,000 in cash and another $35,000 in installments, deducted from her salary at the rate of $500 a week. There was more. To keep her job, she had to sign a morals clause waiver. Should she in the future "be charged with adulterous conduct or immoral relations with men other than her husband, and such charges or any of them were published in the public press," her contract would be null and void. Angry and embarrassed, she signed and went back to work.

During her marriage to Somborn, from 1919-to 1922, Gloria gave birth to a daughter and adopted a son. She remarried to French nobleman Henry de La Falaise in 1925. She had her relationship with Joseph P. Kennedy during that marriage. She and Henry divorced in 1931.

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* Demille : Cecil B. DeMille - a movie producer and actor
** Herbert K. Somborn (m. 1919; div. 1922): President of Equity Pictures Corporation.

Wednesday, July 8, 2026

GLORIA SWANSON IN THE 1923 SILENT FILM "ZAZA"

Gloria Swanson was one of those few actors who was able to go from the acting - later considered exaggerated expressions to convey the emotions and story - necessary in silent films to the talkies, both speaking and singing as well as acting more naturally. Her career was roaring in the 1920's, the era of the flapper, and the New Woman. She married six times and had three children as well as being engaged in political and humanitarian causes in which she used her fame.

From 1914 to 1974 she appeared in films and on some television programs.

IMDb GLORIA SWANSON's FILM CAREER A long list. Click here!

Gloria Swanson was the top movie actress in the United States for many years, unless you considered Mary Pickford. Pickford was not successful past the silent film era.

Tuesday, July 7, 2026

GLORIA SWANSON and HER RED CARNATIONS

Gloria Swanson was known to carry a red carnation when she was out in public or appeared on a television talk show, so that flower became an associated icon. She would give them as little gifts. In 1981 during an interview with Barbara Walters, she said she had first started doing so in order to have something to do with her hands instead of smoking a cigarette. She exercised, limited her diet to health foods, and credited taking care of her health for maintaining her beauty without cosmetic surgeries or procedures.

Saturday, July 4, 2026

GLORIA SWANSON - THE PATRIOT and HUMANITARIAN

In the late 1930's and early 1940's, the World War II era, Gloria Swanson put at least $25,000 into establishing a company called "Multiprises," with the mission to help Jewish and anti-Nazi scientists and inventors to escape from Europe and set up in the United States. They were working to develop new technologies that would be useful to the United States military.

The actress would be considered a conservative today. She was a Republican who supported the presidential campaigns and of Wendell Willkie (1940, 1944), Thomas E. Dewey, and Barry Goldwater (1964). In 1964, she also spoke at a "Project Prayer" rally in Los Angeles, advocating for school prayer in public schools. In 1980 she activated for the Reagan-Bush presidential election. I speculate her attraction to the Republican party - as it was in those days - was because she was a self made business woman.

This post is the result of Internet research.

Thursday, July 2, 2026

THE DYNAMIC SCREEN STAR GLORIA SWANSON : HER TWO - THREE YEARS WITH JOSEPH P. KENNEDY MAY HAVE RUINED HER CAREER BUT IN LIFE SHE PERSEVERED

GLORIA MAE JOSEPHINE SWANSON

1899 - 1983

Back in 2009 when I began this blog, the very first posts I made here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO included Gloria Swanson, a silent screen star who made it to the talkies, was married repeatedly, and might be most known today for the 1950 film "Sunset Boulevard" in which she portrayed an actress clinging to a famous past long gone. An unconventional woman for her times, the petite and classically beautiful Swanson was a talented actor who earned fabulous sums of money but lost control of her finances when producing her own movies. In 1927, Joseph P. Kennedy, the future father of President John F. Kennedy, and by then a successful banker and broker in his late 30's, married with children, came into her life. She was married too, to her third husband.

Some would say he targeted her. But, my dear readers, after reading this book I've decided to take the perhaps unpopular stance that Kennedy's confidence, built through other business and investment successes - as a Harvard educated banker who was quite savvy with money and investing in other areas, including the stock market - might have given him the idea that he could succeed in the movies too. But he was in over his head, in business and in love - and so was Gloria when it came to the business side. There was a lot of ruthless competition and the Stock Market Crash of 1929 that plunged the country into the Great Depression, though Kennedy personally wasn't plunged, is something to consider too.

The silent film era was almost over and Swanson was one of the actresses who moved into the talkies with some success. But perhaps, though Swanson was at the top, earning record-breaking sums for her acting, she wouldn't have sustained her career anyway, for she was getting older. Acting for women, like modeling, tends to span years, not decades, to this day. Swanson wanted to produce her own movies. Kennedy wanted to expand his financial empire by investing in the movie business, by owning his own production company, and making movies with a star that would attract the audiences. So, he was quite possibly learning as he went himself and the day came when he knew it was all too much for him and he got out. However, the overall opinion circa 2026 is that the man was ruthless and heartless, allowed her to sink her fortune into a movie that didn't go so well, and then left her in a lurch and broke.

That's why the book "Gloria and Joe" by Axel Madsen jumped off the library shelf; and my quick review of it at this moment is that it goes into detail about both Gloria and Joe's career success and financial dealings before they met, while I will focus on what happened when they did. Though Gloria Swanson was at the top when they met in November of 1927, she had been taken advantage of by men before, in various ways. Joe Kennedy had done his business research, had interesting questions that proved he'd done his 'due diligence", but also manipulated her to agree to let him get her out of debt and into his bed.

Gloria Swanson was married several times, the first time at age seventeen to Hollywood star Wallace Beery, who was thirty. According to Gloria, he raped her on their wedding night and he was very abusive. She had an abortion he tricked her into during that brief marriage and wanted out quickly. They were married in 1916 and divorced in 1918; she had to wait a year before the divorce could be granted at that time.

Her second husband was Herbert K. Somborn, a movie business executive who was the president of Equity Pictures Corporation at the time. According to author Madsen, he hid his financial problems from Gloria until they were married and unfairly threatened to ruin her by lying that she'd had a long list of men - adulterous affairs, in order to get money from her, when she wanted out. They were married in 1919 and divorced in 1922-23. Movie moguls at the time were involved in getting Somborn a settlement that would preserve her reputation and thus her career, though there were some shenanigans going on there too. Gloria felt this husband was blackmailing her. A morality cause was added to her studio contract. Herbert was the father of her daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn, who was born in October of 1920 and called Sister. It was a difficult birth and so Gloria also adopted a son from an orphanage, Joseph, called Brother. Somborn used the money he got in his divorce settlement from Gloria to invest in the restaurant business, the popular Brown Derby. Of interest to me, though perhaps it is just a coincidence, Gloria named the son, said to be of Irish heritage, Joseph Patrick Swanson...

Her third husband was Henri de la Falaise, a French aristocrat with a noble heritage who also benefited by his marriage to Gloria. She met him in Jazz age Paris, and he followed her to Hollywood where he was offered the opportunity to become a movie director. It Joseph P. Kennedy who offered him that opportunity and Henri had to go back to France to take the job; this was likely Kennedy's manipulation to get him out of the way. Some of her friends thought Henri was a gigolo, but he was one who could hold his own in conversations and an intellectual who seemed to have loved Gloria, if his heartfelt, sad goodbye is to be believed. They were married in 1925 and divorced in 1931, this being Gloria Swanson's longest marriage.

Her fourth husband was Michael Farmer, a rich sportsman, who she married in 1931 and divorced in 1934. During this marriage Gloria gave birth to Michelle Bridget Farmer in 1932.

Her fifth husband was William Davey, an investment banker, who she married in 1945 and divorced in 1946.

Her sixth husband was William Dufty, a successful ghost writer and anti-sugar activist, who she married in 1976 and stayed married to until her death in 1983. They shared a macrobiotic lifestyle. Gloria believed healthy food was the key to, not only health, but also her enduring good looks. She was considered to be a "fitness pioneer."

Now dear readers, I want to let you know that while reading this book, I learned a little bit about a mistress I had never heard of and a little bit more about one I elected Mistress of the Month years ago. So stick with me, because next month I'm going to include them in this narrative!

Missy

For this month's posts, Axel Madson's book is the primary reference. Having once read Swanson's memoir and at least two books about Joseph P. Kennedy, I also did some Internet research.

Wednesday, July 1, 2026

PLANNED DOWN TIME NOTICE : MISTRESS MANIFESTO WILL BE "DOWN" AT SOME POINT IN THE NEAR FUTURE

To my regular readers!

After blogging for so many years, it's time to move MISTRESS MANIFESTO to a new theme and format. Although this, and some other adjustments, may happen quickly and easily, a day or so perhaps, I want you to know that I'm preparing for glitches or more time consuming actions. I will be trying to do technology updates bit by bit at first without disappearing from the Internet, but it's likely my tech will have more recommendations....

Missy