CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : REDUCED TO SELLING HER JEWELRY : LEWIS SZELNICK WASN'T HAPPY WHEN FELL FOR HARRY GARSON and MARRIED HIM

Excerpt from the book : In this book author Axel Madsen writes that actress Gloria Swanson, married to Herbert Somborn of Equity Pictures, and actor Rudolph Valentino were friends. Two years earlier, in 1919, he had made the movie Eyes of Youth with Clara Kimball Young.  

Here's a clip from the movie from a YouTube poster Imperio Retro  

Excerpt page 83: Getting to know Valentino was a pleasure for Gloria.  He too, was caught in a miserable marriage. His wife was the dancer Jean Acker. He was an excellent horseman, and on Sunday mornings he and Gloria rode together in the Hollywood Hills. .... They talked about Eyes of Youth, the picture he had made with Clara Kimball Young two years earlier. Rudy felt sorry for Clara. She had been Lewis Selznick's mistress for years.  The reason Selznick had pulled the financial rug from under Equity Pictures * was that Clara had fallen in love with Harry Garson.  It was Garson who had persuaded Clara to produce her own picture. Now she was reduced to selling her jewelry. The Studios wouldn't touch her.

Missy here : It may've been that the increasingly powerful Selznick decided that Clara would "never work in this town again." However, I think we need to look at the changes in the movie making business that effected everyone, from various business deals that eventually lead to larger, more powerful studios that put actors on contract, the Great Depression, and the technology that ended the silent film era in which Clara Kimball Young had found her fame and rapidly moved to movies with sound.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG TALKED MOVIE BUSINESS - IMPRESSED AND INSPIRED GLORIA SWANSON : THEY BOTH ESTABLISHED THEIR OWN MOVIE PRODUCTION COMPANIES

We continue with the entwinned story of Gloria Swanson and Clara Kimball Young.

Excerpt page 70 : (Gloria Swanson had begun her relationship with the man who became her second husband Herbert Somborn and they went out to dinner with Clara Kimball Young.)

Their first dinner with Clara Kimball Young had been an eye-opener for Gloria.  Not only was their hostess a gracious, amusing woman, and her candle-lit dinner for four exquisite; she, Herbert and Harry Garson, the general manager of Equity Pictures (the distribution company for Clara's movies), talked about movies on a level Gloria had never heard before. Clara's story paralleled Gloria's insofar as marriage was concerned. James Young and Clara Kimball, soon to be his bride, had come from a Salt Lake City stock company to appear in Vitagraph pictures, and before long both were making $1000 a week. As with Gloria and Wally (The actor Wallace Beery) problems had started when Young's ascent didn't match his wife's'.  Clara's breakthrough picture had been My Official Wife in 1914, in which Leon Trotsky had been an extra  Success had brought her other offers from Vitagraph's rivals, and she had accepted a contract from World Films, managed by the ambitious Lewis Selznick, who had made her a star in Trilby, Camille, and The Common Law (three movies), sophisticated pictures dealing with feminine martyrdom.  Her women admirers were legion, and here she was talking distribution deals, stock issues, mortgages, and billboards because movies could show cars, clothes, curling irons, whatever, the hostess turned toward Gloria and said, "He's absolutely right,  Don't you think so, Miss Swanson?"

Gloria Swanson went on to marry Herbert Somborn and have a daughter with him, but the marriage ended badly. She'd decided for Somborn and gave up Marshall "Mickey" Neilan. Mickey had directed Clara Kimball Young for a Harry Garson tear jerker. (Clara married Garson eventually.)

Excerpt page 73 :

For Gloria, the (her) marriage became a cram course in economics and contract law... Persistent long-distance phone calls during the Alexandra suite honeymoon had forced Herbert to admit he was, momentarily, in some difficulty. For different reasons, Selznick and Powers had turned against Equity pictures. Selznick, who was worth sixty million dollars, lived in a seventeen-room Park Avenue apartment, and made fifty films a years, was in a new scrap with his rivals. To make sure they rented all their movies, regardless of quality, film companies resorted to 'block booking." In order to get pictures with big box-office stars, theater owners had to accept a block of less profitable moves. New, Selznick was breaking away from the practice and offering the new Clara Kimball Young features separately at considerably higher rentals. They made everybody else less saleable suffer, and Selznick's relations with his rivals were at a low point. Exhibitors didn't want to be caught in any high-power crossfire and simply refused to book Eyes of Youth.

*** Because Gloria saw how Clara had been treated after breaking from the then-existing Studio System she was a bit afraid to found her own company.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Research includes using Google, AI, Wikis, YouTube, etc.

GATHERED

 

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : PROLIFIC ACTRESS - SECOND TO FOUND HER OWN "NAMESAKE" MOVIE PRODUCTION COMPANY : MISTRESS OF LEWIS J. SELZNICK

 

Clara Kimball Young as painted by Rolf Armstrong.

Cover of May1920 Photoplay Magazine. Also appeared in Motion Picture news same month.

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG

Clarisa Kimball

Edith Matilda Clara Kimball

1890 - 1960

Axel Madsens book about Gloria Swanson and Joseph P. Kennedy lead me to Clara Kimball Young, who I'd never heard of before. Though I found some information about her in his book, for this month's reportage about this famous Hollywood Silent Screen Era actress, I had to do further research.

Clara Kimball Young began her stage acting career as a three-year-old child who toured with her parents who were also actors and grew up on the road. Clara Kimball came by her name Clara Kimball Young name through a first marriage, in 1910, when she was about 20, to James Young, an actor who'd appeared on Broadway and director who is said to have launched her career. They were both signed by one of those upstart movie making companies, The Vitagraph Company of America, in 1912. So maybe it was that company that launched both of their careers. She appeared in more than 150 films, beginning in 1909,  mostly in the silent film era, before her screen retirement in 1943. She was at the peak of her fame from 1915-1917 according to polls that were taken in those years.

Perhaps we will never know exactly how it began or when, but Clara became involved with Lewis Selznick in business and personally. Film making and distribution early on emerged from a number of upstart companies that competed, but also sometimes bought each other out or made deals. A company called the World Film Corporation was established in 1914 by Selznick and a partner. World Film Corporation distributed independently produced films (the term independently fits the efforts of so many of those upstarts) and had offices in New York City. It became the company that distributed the movies that starred Clara Kimball Young. 

Today she is honored as a pioneering woman in Hollywood not only because she acted in so many mostly silent films and was considered to be the most popular actress of 1914 but because she was the second woman to found her own namesake production company, second only to Mary Pickford. (Pickford, with a group of others who called themselves United Artists.) Her company, the Clara Kimball Film Corporation, was established in 1916, at that peak in her fame. Selznick partnered with her on that project.

Lewis J. Selznick is one of the early shakers-and-movers of the early years of Hollywood, one of several men of Jewish eastern-European heritage who came to America seeking a new way of life and a fortune. Born in 1870 of Russian-Jewish heritage, he was about twenty years older than Clara. At the age of 26, he had married Florence Sachs, with whom he had four children. (One of them, David, followed his father into the movie business and is renown in his own right.) Initially settling in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, he owned jewelry stores. He retained them when he got involved in the movie business, and apparently he gifted Clara with jewelry quite a bit. For when it was over between them, when she was 'ruined' by him, it was said that she was reduced to selling her jewelry.

Something to be careful with, I think, is the way a woman's will to independence or to have a business in which she can earn more money, might be attributed to a man or men in her life.  In those times this was, unfortunately, often enough true. I feel sure that there were some people who thought she was daring for even considering having her own Production Company.

Apparently, while married to James Young, she was already involved with Lewis Selznick, for a passage from Madsen's book, which I'll soon post, is that she fell in love with a co-star, Harry Garson, and out of jealousy Selznick revenged. (But the book doesn't say that she married Garson! - Which she did in 1920.) Garson was an actor but also a film producer and director. The implication is that she ended her marriage with first husband James Young to be with Garson, and therefore, that she saw no point in continuing with Selznick, if ever there had been a chance he would leave his wife and their family to marry her. 

Another take on this, and perhaps her personal life was this complicated, is that her relationship with Selznick was considered to be volatile and the cause of her first divorce, as, according to the Turner Classic Movies Fan site dedicated to her, "She became involved in a much publicized affair with Selznick, culminating in a 1916 divorce suit accusing her of alienation of affection. James Young finally obtained a final decree on April 8, 1919 on grounds of desertion." (But she marred Garson and stayed married to him until 1927.)

Clara's third marriage in 1928 was to Dr. Arthur Fauman. They stayed married until his death in 1937. Widowed at 57 years old, Clara didn't remarry again. She had never had any children.

Or did she?

I tried to track this down as to where the information came from, but a Rudolph Valentino fan site called Mad About the Boy on Facebook references an authorized biography. It was written by Joan Wester Anderson and was titled Forever Young: The Life, Loves, and Enduring Faith of a Hollywood Legend and was published in 1999 or 2000. Because Valentino and Clara Kimball Young starred together in a film, there's some interest in her on that fan site. According to that post on the Valentino fan site, to quote:

"During her active career, she was not known to have any children. However, in a 1999 authorized biography, it was confirmed that Young gave birth to a biological daughter, Judith "Judy" Young, on November 6, 1935. The child's father was reportedly actor Clark Gable, with whom Young had a brief affair."

(So she had a child she kept secret though married to Dr. Arthur Fauman?)

"To preserve her public image, Young temporarily placed the baby in an orphanage shortly after birth and initially claimed she had adopted her. Judith later took the last name Lewis after Young married Tom Lewis." 

Tom Lewis?  Did this person mean Lewis Selznick? As Clara did not marry a Tom Lewis...

I tracked the book down and it turned out this was misinformation.  Anderson wrote the book about another actress, Loretta Young!

All right!

Let's look into Clara Kimball Young, who was once one of the most popular actresses of the Hollywood Silent Film era and does have a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!

Missy

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Research includes using Google, AI, Wikis, YouTube, etc.

 

FLORENZ ZIEGFELD HELPED LAUNCH MANY WOMEN'S CAREERS

 

The film came out in 1936 and featured a large and well loved cast of 

characters, in particular the leading men William Powell, Luise Rainer, and actress Myrna Loy.

It suggested the life of Florenz Ziegfeld, 

as a man who womanized, made a fortune but lost it, 

and who helped launch many a showgirl's career.

Ziegfeld girls often went on to pursue modeling, acting, 

and marrying or mistressing rich men.

Several of them have been featured here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO.

When it came to actresses, it was Mary Pickford who established United Artists, along with others. Clara Kimball Young was the next, and by 1916 many actresses had the same idea. They wanted more control over their careers, to expand, and to prosper.

EXOTIC

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SUGAR BABY ICON : SHE ADMITTED TO BEING MATERIALISTIC : WAS THAT THE PROBLEM?

Peggy Hopkins Joyce was and is considered to be the icon of the Gold Digger, a woman who seduces men to marry her, men who have money, is insincere or without love for them, divorces, and then moves on to her next conquest. But it seems to me that the flamboyant Peggy was in her youthful bloom when she succeed to do so and that, although some men do the same, and without apology, few women can get away with it. 

I say that as more than one woman friend of mine has found herself married for money or traded in by her husband/partner when a richer woman wanted him. The ruthlessness of such maneuvers can be heartbreaking.

Peggy was honest about her materialism and perhaps because she projected some humor about it and herself, it wasn't held against her too much. It was part of her personae. She claimed her reputation. Some say she was "The Original Material Girl." Some say she was an inspiration for Marilyn Monroe of Diamonds Are A Girls' Best Friend fame for her depiction of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Years went by and Peggy went without marriage, and without children, though we have no idea how many men came into her life or left it between marriages or if she ever wanted to be a parent.

Peggy was born in 1893 as Emma Marguerite Upton. She had two marriages later in her life.

Peggy's fifth marriage was to a man named Anthony Easton, an engineer. They married in 1945 and were married until about her sixth marriage in 1953 was to Andrew Glifford Meyers, a retired banker and she died of cancer in 1957 still married to him. I wonder if she ever went by Mrs. Easton or Mrs. Meyers.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

DELICATE

 

PAT POWERS ATTEMPTED TO LAUNCH PROTOGEE PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE'S MOVIE CAREER

Excerpt page 131:  Joe (Joseph P. Kennedy) could not have picked a better time to make his debut as a movie mogul. The years 1926-1927 were one of the most prosperous periods in Hollywood history; almost every one of the 740 films made each year was a box-office success.  Movie-going had become a worldwide obsession. There were over 50,000 movie theaters around the world, more than a third of them in the United States and Canada.  Annual receipts in North America alone came to more than $120 million.

With Pat Powers, Joe plotted to fold the ailing Producers Distribution Corporation into Associated Exhibitors with the view of merging the fused entity with FBO to make an even bigger company. Joe was on the financial periphery of Pat's efforts to launch Peggy Hopkins Joyce, riding high on the success of his uninhibited and lavishly rich version of The Merry Widow, Erich Von Stroheim declined to take part in furthering of Peggy's screen career. Instead Micky Neilen (who Gloria Swanson had given up on in order to marry Henri de la Falaise) undertook the mission. The result was The Skyrocket, a thinly disguised retelling of Neilan's torrid affair with Gloria Swanson.

Excerpt page 164:  Soon after The Merry Widow was finished, Stroheim agreed to have lunch at the Ambassador with Pat Powers and the canny Irishman's new protégée, Peggy Hopkins Joyce. Powers wanted to launch the former Ziegfeld beauty as a film star. Stoheim, however, was still smarting from his experience with Mae Murray and was in no mood to start another ex- Broadway hoofer;s screen career.  Instead he hypnotized Powers with a project of his own, a double feature to be called The Wedding March and The Honeymoon that he would write, direct, and star in himself, and that would make tons of money for whoever financed it.  As he explained to Pat and Peggy, the appeal of his project was that it could be shown in two parts, tobe screened with an hour's intermission...

Missy here : As was and is often the case, a woman's career depends on being the protégée of a man, some patronage, and if he fails, so does she.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

THE SKYROCKET : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE IN 1926

This was Peggy Hopkins Joyce's first full length movie, as she had done "shorts" before

 and it was intended to launch her movie star career 

and allow her to be know for an accomplishment

 other than meeting, marrying, and divorcing rich men...

It's a rags to riches to rags again story.

According to author Axel Madsen, on page 131-132 of his book, Mickey Neilan had bought the Edendale studio from a bankrupt Harry Garson and Clara Kimball Young for $300,000, 

refurbished it, and with financing from Pat Powers made a movie about Hollywood, called The Skyrocket. The film was "a thinly disguised retelling of Neilan's torrid affair with Gloria Swanson!

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SHE PURSUED ACTING WHILE SHE PURSUED MEN

IMDB : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : MOVIE ROLES 

Here's a YouTube video featuring the 1933 trailer for the movie International House, which also starred the comedian W.C. Fields.  Peggy Hopkins Joyce didn't act in many movies, despite her said career orientation. But note that other actresses played Peggy!  And she was the January 1926 Winner of the Photoplay Award (sponsored by Photoplay Magazine, a fan magazine) for the Best performance - of the month - for her work in the movie The Skyrocket. This was a silent film, as were the 'shorts' she appeared in as early as 1916.

VELVETY

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE & CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : ZIEGFELD FOLLIES SHOWGIRLS WENT INTO ACTING

In this passage from the book by Axel Madsen, a man named Pat Powers, nineteen years older than Joseph P. Kennedy,  who'd started out as a policeman, had become a businessman and had gotten involved in the nickelodeon business, in particular the Edison-Biograph company.  At the time a number of small companies were at war with each other to dominate the movie making business and the movie theater business. 

Excerpt page 99 :  Powers was a loner. He sold out to (Carl) Laemmle and for the next decade was in and out of film investments with a variety of partners. Known as a "bonus shark," he loaned production money at steep interest rates or became a participant in the profits. One partner was Lewis Selznick, the former jewelry dealer from Kiev who had persuaded his sons they were heirs to a kingdom, but who had lately lost his fortune. When he hadn't been able to pay a debt of a mere $3000, Selznick's enemies had forced him into bankruptcy. His sons, Myron and David, vowed vengeance.

Clara Kimball Young adored Powers and believed him to be the most wonderful, clever man in the world. He had lost money, however, by becoming a major stockholder in Equity Pictures. A year later he had invested $120,000 in one movie --- The Miracle Man with Lon Chaney --- and made three million dollars.

Now in his mid-fifties, Pat had become infatuated with the icy blond charms of Peggy Hopkins Joyce. She had distracted Mickey Neilan (who Gloria Swanson had once had a between-marriages affair with) and told (Charlie) Chaplin of her gold-digging days while skinny dipping with him on Catalina. Peggy had added MGM's frail wunderkind, Irving Thalberg, to her list of conquests, wanted Erich von Stroheim to write and direct a film starring his Peggy. Pat was courting the stormy, individualistic Stroheim because in The Merry Widow, MGM's current hit, the director had managed the feat of turning Mae Murray, another ex-Follies hoofer, into a star

Reflating the careers of former chorus girls was not among Joe Kennedy's ambitions in 1924....

Lewis Szelnick's mistress was Clara Kimball Young.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

EMMA MARGUERITE "PEGGY" UPTON BECAME PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE THROUGH MARRIAGES : MICKEY NEILAN WENT FROM PEGGY TO GLORIA

In this passage, the way movie stars, directors, producers, and financiers intertwined in Golden Era Hollywood reminds me that it was once a very small town.

Excerpt page 79  Mickey Neilan swept her (Gloria Swanson) off her feet that summer with his madcap, brilliant, vivacious insouciance and his claim that there were only some 290 days before he was free to marry her. "After Herbert, how could I not love him?" she would ask. "After one afternoon with him, how could I not forget Craney Gartz and every other handsome man who had ever tempted me?  As Mickey waltz me into my first real love affair, it never occurred to me to utter a syllable of protest."

While waiting for his divorce to become final, Mickey lived like a young lord at the Los Angeles Athletic Club next to Charlie Chaplin, who was trying to escape the sensational charges surrounding his divorce from the teenage Mildred Harris.  Mickey's romance with Gloria was particularly torrid and came after his affair with Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a former Ziegfeld Follies girl who distracted him so much from his long and confused  Strangers Banquet that the  cast and crew had to wait two weeks after the starting date before Neilan showed up. The term "gold digger' had been coined in honor of Peggy around 1920.  Born Margaret Upton in Virginia, the bid blonde had arrived in Chicago in 1914, changed her name to Hopkins, and landed her first millionaire husband, Stanley Joyce.  Divorced with a million-dollar settlement, she had, in quick succession, netted four more millionaire husbands. Dressed in stylish mourning outfits, because Henri Letellier, a famous Parisian publisher and man-about-town, had just taken his life on her account, she had cruised into Hollywood with a three-million-dollar bankroll, bent on a movie career.  After Mickey's infatuation with her had cooled, he had introduced her to Chaplin, who used the story of her relationship with Letellier as a basis for A Woman of Paris.

Notes: Herbert Somborn was Gloria Swanson's second husband.  She had an affair with Mickey but decided on marriage to Henri de la Falaise, during which she had her relationship with Joseph P. Kennedy.

A Woman of Paris was Chaplin's movie that came out in 1923

Margaret Upton is an Americanization of her name given a birth : Emma Marguerite Upton

The Author was incorrect that Peggy changed her name to Peggy Hopkins. The name was a result of her second marriage.

in 1910 she married Everett Allen Archibald Jr., a millionaire. But she was only fifteen years old and so the marriage was annulled. (What kind of parents did she have?)

In 1913 she married Sherburne Philbrick Hopkins, a lawyer from a prominent and rich family. She left him to pursue acting and with his approval that she marry James Stanley Joyce.

in 1920, she married James Stanley Joyce.  She married two days after ending her marriage with Hopkins. This was her most famous marriage because of the story that she refused to come to him on their wedding night unless he wrote her a check for half a million dollars first.

During this era in Hollywood, in which Pat Powers, an associate of Joseph P. Kennedy, attempted to move Peggy into an acting career, she then married in 1924 to Count Gosta Gustave Morner, who she said was her first true love. They divorced in 1926.

Peggy had two more husbands in her life, years later. This information was culled from Wikipedia.  I note that her reputation as a "Gold Digger" came because of her many marriages to rich men, but also because she attracted other men who wanted to marry her, but I wonder if it was only that she was beautiful and charming. What about men who go after a woman knowing they may not succeed with her?

Missy.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : THE ORCHID LADY OF STAGE AND SCREEN

 

In the Roaring Twenties Peggy Hopkins Joyce was called

 "The Orchid" or "The Orchid Lady of Stage and Screen: 

Orchids were (and often are) exotic and, when rare, expensive,

 and require special care, 

just as she did.

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SPENDTHRIFTY GOLD DIGGER : THE GOLD DIGGER AS A COMIC FIGURE : HUNGER MAKES YOU THINK

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE 

 SPENDTHRIFTY GOLD DIGGER

First posted on April 5th 2010

Born Emma Marguerite Upton

1893 – 1957

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE was the most publicized Mistress-Courtesan of the 1920's and 1930's. She was introduced to Florenz Ziegfeld, who owned the famous showgirl venue New Amsterdam Theatre, by a dressmaker to fashionable ladies, Madame Frances, and her career began. She was a heartbreaker and international celebrity, perhaps the first famous to be famous woman of the 20th century. She was known for her spendthrifty ways as well as a steamy sex life. Was Peggy ruthless and sociopathic? Or did she simply decide at a young age that she would do well, beyond her childhood as the daughter of a Norfolk barber?

She had three multimillionaire husbands. And a great number of generous patrons. She came to own one of the largest blue diamonds known to the world in her time.

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : THE GOLD DIGGER AS A COMIC FIGURE

First posted April 6 2010

Excerpt Page 84 :

"Though the gold digger is a comic, not a tragic figure, she is not totally uncomplicated. While men adored these creatures, they were also made slightly uneasy by them. It was appealing to have a glamorous plaything whose favors could be bought for no more than the price of a fashionable apartment, a generous allowance, and a regular supply of steak dinners and expensive jewelry. But in making such a hard-nosed exchange, these women exhibited not only a deep cynicism but also a degree of power, which is one reason men felt a certain anxiety in their presence. Men were also made uncomfortable by females who so flagrantly flouted the social rules designed to keep people in their places. Unlike the courtesans of Europe, who occupied an established an respected niche, the American gold digger was a renegade; there was nothing subtle, or admirable, about her methods - or her goals."

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : HUNGER MAKES YOU THINK

First posted April 9 2010

Excerpt Page 43: 

In her memoirs Peggy described her transition from society wife to Broadway showgirl as the ultimate Cinderella story... As she told it, she left home in March on 1915 with a single suitcase full of clothes and headed by train to New York, where she ensconced herself in the Hopkins family suite in the St Regis Hotel off Fifth Avenue... Wearing torn stockings, her last pair of fresh underwear, and a plaid suit that badly needed cleaning, she headed south towards Times Square pondering the ways of the world.

"Hunger certainly makes you think about things," she wrote. "When I was a kid I used to think that it was Love that was the most important thing in Life, then after that experience in Denver I thought it was money, but now I know it is food." - Peggy Hopkins Joyce

C 2010-2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

 

MISTRESSES DISCOVERED IN THE GLORIA SWANSON STORY : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE and CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG

As you know, MISTRESS MANIFESTO depends most often on books - biographies and memoirs especially - that have been published in the past and which I've selected and read cover to cover.  Once in a while I read a book about one of the women I plan to elect to the Mistress of the Month pantheon, and I find that another Mistress or two has been mentioned.

That's been the case reading 'Gloria and Joe' by Axel Madsen, which was my primary source for posts last month about Gloria Swanson.

Golden Era Hollywood - Silent Films - Talkies -  The development of technologies, the movie-makers - producers - directors - studio heads -  Madsen's book tells a lot.  To my surprise a woman I wrote about in April of 2010, Peggy Hopkin's Joyce, called a 'Gold Digger' and who ended up one of the world's largest diamonds, is mention. Another woman mentioned is the actress Clara Kimball Young, who, shame on me, I never had heard of before. These two women who were in Hollywood and hoping to become movie stars in the same era as Gloria Swanson.

Now, if you've been reading MISTRESS MANIFESTO, you know that the Classic Mistress is a woman who was (or maybe is) entirely "Kept" by a man who she isn't married to. Kept as if being financially provided for, often for her entire life, sometimes though he is married to one - or several women - over time.

Gloria Swanson was a talented and determined woman whose personal life suffered because of her fame and wealth and perhaps her own unconventional values. However, I think that if she had come of age in the 1960's she would have had affairs but not married the men she did when it was believed with good reason that a celebrity could have their fans turn against them if they went against the morals of the day. Having a series of lovers and not marrying them is rarely such a scandal now. 

But what about Peggy Hopkins Joyce? Clara Kimball Young? Let's find out what author Axel Madsen wrote about them in his book Gloria and Joe. I'll add-to with research and reportage as we go along.

Missy

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

GLORIA SWANSON SAID "IF YOU'RE 40 YEARS OLD AND YOU'VE NEVER HAD A FAILURE ...

You've been deprived!

Gloria Swanson by A. L. Whitey Schafer

August's Posts Will Begin Tomorrow!

 MISSY ASKS YOU!

Are you a person who learns from your failures?

 

GLORIA SWANSON : A WOMAN OF SCIENCE and INVENTION

ANOTHER SIDE OF GLORIA SWANSON : While researching around Gloria and Joe, I found that the Library of Congress Blog included Gloria in it's WOMEN OF INVENTION website!

Excerpt: When the legendary screen diva Gloria Swanson died in 1983, she was 82 years old. Yet, for all the things she did–the multitude of lifetimes she seemed to live–it does not seem possible that one person was able to fit all of it in just eight quick decades. Consider what Gloria Swanson (whose legendary film “Sunset Boulevard,” from 1950, was among the very first films added to the Library’s National Film Registry) was: an actress, film producer, fashion designer (and fashion icon), acclaimed visual artist, best-selling author, newspaper columnist, businesswoman, health advocate, radio host, and television pioneer. And, even then, she still found the time to raise three children and marry (and usually divorce) six husbands!

Additionally, one aspect of her life for which Swanson should also be remembered is as an inventor, patent holder, patent facilitator/executive and humanitarian. It’s a quartet of labels that all arrived, more or less, together.

 Read all about it!

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS BLOG : GLORIA SWANSON WOMAN OF INVENTION 

MISTRESS GLORIA SWANSON & WIFE ROSE KENNEDY : A LOVE TRIANGLE

 Joe Kennedy told his wife that Gloria Swanson  was his most important business partner.

Excerpt page 212 : ... The two women in his life played along.  Echoing Joe's exact sentiments, Gloria told Rose she was grafted she had her husband to giver her the right business advice because her affairs were a mess.  Gloria would always wonder what exactly Rose knew, and she always watched for a remark, a glance, a gesture, that would tell her whether Rose was a saint, a fool, or a better actress than she.  There were moments she knew she was being tolerated, for Joe's sake, and moments when Rose must have been aware of the fatuously surprised face Gloria showed.

Rose willed herself to believe that her husband told her.  She, they, had nothing in common with Gloria, no convictions, no sanctity. The mere fact of lying - if that was what Joe was doing - showed he respected that sanctity, the family they had created together, even if he had deserted their marriage bed. So to Rose, Gloria was a talented star, incipiently crucified by her own good looks, terribly lonely behind the put-on self-deprecation and blasé indifference to her own fame. Gloria was a woman married to an affable but untalented man and therefore desperately in need of Joe's solicitude and financial acumen.

Joe Kennedy promised Gloria that she would never have to be alone with his wife, Rose. He had Gloria come out to the family compound in Hyannisport. But the day came when Gloria was tricked into being taken to talk to the Cardinal O'Connell of Boston. She bluffed that she had only a business association with Joe. He knew better. He told her that Joe was in trouble. His Catholicism was being challenged by having the affair with her. She was offended. She thought the Cardinal should be talking to Joe. But the message was clear. She was being told to quit the affair with Joe, to leave him be. It's possible that Rose's father was the person who had contacted the Archdiocese of Boston. The gossip columnist Hedda Hopper reported that the former Boston mayor (Rose's father) had ordered Joe Kennedy to get out of Hollywood.

When Joe dumped Gloria, he simply left Hollywood without making plans to see her.  Some years went by and, perhaps both had become philosophical, because the author reports of a friendly-enough phone call and favor.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

GLORIA SWANSON : SINKING MONEY AND TIME INTO THE MOVIE 'QUEEN KELLY' WAS THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Excerpt page 201 :  Gloria and Joe were having dinner on Rodeo Drive when Joe handed her a leather--bound copy of Stroheim's massive script and told her Robert Sherwood had finally read it and pronounced it the best film story ever written...  (Queen Kelly's script was originally entitled The Swamp.)  

Excerpt page 14 :  By starting their ambitious film project as a silent (film) four months after the release of the all-talking Lights of New York, producers Swanson and Kennedy and director Stroheim were extraordinarily careless, suicidal, or both.

The movie was worked on in 1928-1929 - the years in which the stock market fell and the Great Depression took hold. At the time technology for recording wasn't terrific and frustrated the actors and directors who had to carefully move on set to be near hidden microphones.  Sound engineers were trained by the telephone companies and if an actor turned his head away from the microphone they'd have to yell cut and start over. Some actors waited to see how it would all work out. Some actors lost their careers when the public heard what they sounded like. In some cases sound was added to silent film. All all-talkie was a film in which the entire film from start to finish had sound - the actors voices - background.

Excerpt page 205 : ... (A front page story read..) "Miss Swanson will appear in a few talking sequences and it marks the first time for her voice to be heard by the general public. She had never made any personal appearances tours nor has she ever spoken over the radio.: A Variety item a week later announced that Ben Glazer, the overseer with Le Baron of the Stroheim project, was working on the screen treatment of FBO's first talkie, a film scheduled to go into production in ten days.  Persistent rumors that Stroheim and Swanson did not see eye to eye on Queen Kelly were only laid to rest on November 5 when Motion Picture news reported that the film "went into actual production Thursday morning on location at the old Lasky ranch."

Another possible issue that might have delayed the making of Queen Kelly was that Joe Kennedy said that more than anything he wanted the two of them to have a child. Kennedy already had many children with his wife, Rose. Gloria said there was no way she would be willing to do that.  Yet, it is possible that she did become pregnant and had an abortion.

Excerpt: Queen Kelly, in the scheme of things, was an anachronism, a Gloria Productions film for United Artists, shooting on RKO stages because of its star's personal relationship with the ancien regime... and with each passing week, wearing out its welcome

In the end, Stroheim went way over budget and the money lost was significant. Queen Kelly was released as a silent film by United Artist in 1931. According to Wikipedia, it was released as a part-talkie in European and South American markets because of a contract she had with Stroheim and that version had a different ending - a different director and cinematographer - a year or so later.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.