Plot Intro
Struggling movie writer Joe Gillis (William Holden) is trying to escape bailiffs taking his car. He hides it in what seems to be an old abandoned LA mansion, but he quickly realises that the resident of the house is none other than the famous silent era actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), waited on by her one loyal servant, a mysterious butler named Max (Erich Von Stroheim). When Norma finds out that Joe is a writer, she pays him to stay in her home (which suits the destitute Joe very well) and help develop her script for a movie adaptation of Salome. But as time progresses, Joe comes to realise that Norma’s influence in Hollywood is long gone, and her mental state even more so…
As stated before, after every 3 Best Actress winners, we’re going to briefly tackle the life and work of an actress who never got to win the award in her lifetime. Today’s blog post is on Gloria Swanson whose most famous role as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard came very late in her career and, well, she’s basically playing an exaggerated version of herself.
Norma was immensely famous in the age of silent movies throughout the '20s - so was Gloria. Norma’s fame and popularity declined when sound movies became vogue - so did Gloria’s. Norma is hoping to release a movie that will revitalise her career despite Hollywood’s hatred for women over the age of 35 - so was Gloria. The difference is that Gloria had a little bit more success in this endeavour than poor Norma.
Born in Chicago in 1899, Gloria was discovered a just 15 years old when she went on a tour of a film studio. Within half a decade, she was working regularly for esteemed director Cecil B. DeMille for $300 a week (equivalent to over $8000 today). The 1920s continued this incredible trajectory and at one point she was offered a $1 million pa contract (over $14 million today). She was incredibly bankable and director George Cukor once joked that she was carried to the studio in a sedan chair.
In 1928, she was one of the nominees for the very first Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in Sadie Thompson, a very controversial but successful work. By this point, her influence was such that she had some say in the directors and producers involved. However, it proved to be her last big hit at the time. A string of less profitable films and some bad investments, plus failed attempts to establish her own movie studio, led to less money and Gloria’s movement into political activism and fashion design instead.
Skip forward 20 years, and Sunset Boulevard comes along. Beating other silent stars Mary Pickford and Mae West to the role, Swanson stormed back into the spotlight with a performance rivalling anything Joan Crawford could ever do. The most brilliant thing about it is how the performance is insane but totally believable. This is a woman who believes that the silent era was far superior to sound acting, and when she displays her acting skills, she puts on the sort of extreme facial expressions that Gloria would have pulled in her early career- all of which look deranged to modern viewers but this was how they acted. She’s not as murderously insane as Baby Jane, or as sharp as Margot Channing, but she’s somewhere in between, convinced that she can get her career back but sadly aware that she probably never will. Swanson’s scenes are some of the most lively you’ll ever see. I’m surprised no one’s impersonated her on Drag Race yet.
I also loved the various cameos and references to the silent era. DeMille has a substantial role as himself. He has a very poignant scene in which he cannot break the news to Norma that he doesn’t want to work with her because he has such fond memories but she’s way out of fashion. The irony is that DeMille and Swanson had this very same relationship. Norma also plays cards with other silent era legends who, though only referred to as “The Waxworks” in the script, are played by H.B. Warner, Anna Q. Nilsson, and the infamous Buster Keaton. She looks down on them, but they look at her with a sort of wariness that shows they see her as someone who needs help (but they’re not going to give it). On top of that, Erich Von Stroheim who plays the mysterious butler Max was a director who worked with Swanson back in their heyday, but apparently the two didn’t get along. Stroheim could be difficult to work with and refused to conform to budgets, but apparently only took the role in Boulevard due to financial necessity.
1950 proved to be a competitive year at the Oscars. Boulevard gained acting nominations in all four categories, and for Swanson it was her third (and last) nomination. However she was up against Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for the coincidentally similar movie, All About Eve. None of them won (and we’ll be blogging about this when we get to the real 1950 winner), but Sunset Boulevard has remained a hugely successful and influential work.
Swanson turned down many roles after Sunset Boulevard because she considered them to be pale imitations of Norma Desmond, but what a film to finish on! Her personal life was pretty tempestuous, she married six times in total, three of which were before she turned 35. Her first was to actor Wallace Beery (he was 30 and she was 16) and it was an almost immediate disaster. He had affairs and when she got pregnant, she dangerously self-aborted the foetus. Other relationships include marriage to a French nobleman which connected her to European royalty, and a relationship with the father of JFK. Her sixth marriage lasted from 1976 until her death in 1983 at the age of 84.
Highlight
The scene in which Norma returns to the Hollywood studio to meet DeMille, convinced that he is about to agree to turn her turgid script into the next big hit. She is thrilled to be there but becomes overwhelmed by crowds of excited fans, and DeMille cannot bring himself to turn her down nor say yes. It’s a very layered and bittersweet scene.
Lowlight
Nancy Olson has a rather thankless role as a studio secretary/budding writer. She got a nomination for Best Supporting Actress but the character is so bland that the film slows during scenes between her and William Holden.
Mark
10/10
Doug says...
I’m writing this a day after Olivia de Havilland has died at the extraordinary age of 104, taking with her the last fragment of Hollywood’s Golden Age elite. There are a handful of silent film actors left, but none with the fame or celebrity of de Havilland, and while 104 is certainly more than ‘a good innings’, there is a melancholy to the knowledge that we have lost another tie to that glamorous, upheaval of an era.
I say all this, because it is precisely what Sunset Boulevard is talking about. Norma Desmond was young and at her peak in the era that Joe Gillis and all his zeitgeisty friends lust after. They are all crowded into small rooms, desperately trying to make it as producers and screenwriters and actors, longing for the success and opulence of those days. Meanwhile Norma rots away in her cavernous, beautiful mansion that was built to be constantly flooded with people in parties a la Gatsby. Her stunning Art Deco swimming pool is now drained, home only to stray rats.
The film itself directly references Miss Havisham and Norma is a clear descendant. She has money - at one point she mentions excellent investments she made in oil fields - she just doesn’t have the adoration or reason to fill the pool, throw the party, leave the house. She is stuck in time, wishing at the age of 50 that she were 20, watching her old films obsessively while her butler Max quietly informs Joe that she has made many attempts on her own life. It’s why none of the doors have locks, and why she can’t be near knives.
Gloria Swanson, innately successful in her early career, knows exactly what to do here. When at first she is almost laughably over the top, you never do quite laugh. She steers the camp just the right side of believable, because she was a silent film actress - it was what she had to do her entire career. When she spits ‘I am big. It’s the pictures that got small’, you believe her. Just as at the end, when she descends to the police photographers, she reaches out her arms to an director who hasn’t been there for decades and says she is ready for her close-up. It’s a moment that if Faye Dunaway tried it would be ruined (see Mommie Dearest for evidence of this), but with Swanson it is deeply, utterly moving in the sheer tragedy of the moment.
The film itself is excellent, shrouded in gothic shadows, and slow reveals of who these people really are. It is a love-letter to the ‘20s too, with cameos from DeMille and Buster Keaton. And when Norma fills the swimming pool for Joe to use, the house seems alive briefly. But it is a false life, and soon - inevitably - comes crashing down. For such a gothic, melodramatic piece, it feels very sad and very real.
DeMille, playing himself, says to an assistant who offers to tell Norma he’s not there ‘Thirty million fans have given her the brush. Isn’t that enough?’ How many of this era’s actresses could that have applied to, one wonders…
Highlight
Gloria Swanson turns in a truly iconic performance.
Lowlight
I actually can’t think of one. A marvellous film.
Marks
10/10
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