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