Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson (March 27, 1897 – April 4, 1983) was an American actress.

Marriages

• She married actor Wallace Beery (1885-1949) in 1916. They divorced in 1919 with no children but according to Swanson she miscarried after Beery, encouraged by his mother, secretly gave her a poison intended to induce an abortion.
• She married Herbert K. Somborn (1881-1934), then president of Equity Pictures Corporation and later the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant, in 1919. Their daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn, was born in 1920. Their divorce, finalized in January 1925, was sensational. Somborn accused her of adultery with 13 men including Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan. During this divorce in 1923 Swanson adopted a baby boy named Sonny Smith (1922-1975). She renamed him Joseph Patrick Swanson in tribute to her then lover, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr., the Kennedy family patriarch.
• Her third husband was French aristocrat Henry de la Falaise, Marquis de la Falaise whom she married in 1925 after the Somborn divorce was finalized. He became a film executive representing Pathé in the United States. She conceived a child with him but had an abortion which she said (in her autobiography, Swanson on Swanson) she regretted. This marriage ended in divorce in 1931.
• In August 1931, Swanson married Michael Farmer (1902-1975). Although frequently described as a sportsman the only evidence of the Irishman's prowess was his frequent betrothals. Unfortunately Swanson's divorce from La Falaise had not been finalized at the time, making the actress technically a bigamist. She was forced to remarry Farmer the following November, by which time she was four months pregnant with Michelle Bridget Farmer, who was born in 1932. The Farmers were divorced in 1934.
• In 1945 Swanson married William N. Davey and they divorced in 1946.
• Swanson's final marriage was in 1976 and lasted until her death. Her sixth husband, writer William F. Dufty (1916-2002), was the author of Lady Sings the Blues and Sugar Blues, a best-selling health book. Swanson shared her husband's enthusiasm for macrobiotic diets.

Gloria Swanson died in New York City of a heart ailment at the age of 86; she was cremated and her ashes were buried at the Episcopal Church of Heavenly Rest in New York City.

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She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6748 Hollywood Boulevard and another for television at 6301 Hollywood Boulevard.

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