CHARLEY BRADY
“In those days the public wanted us to live like kings and queens. And why not? We were in love with life. We were making more money than we ever dreamed existed and there was no reason to believe it would ever stop.”
—Gloria Swanson
I never really did understand William Holden in that great movie, Sunset Blvd. Or rather, I didn’t understand his character Joe Gillis, the lover of Gloria Swanson’s immortal Norma Desmond.
Seeing it for the first time many years ago, I just thought that Joe Gillis had it all: he was sleeping with and adored by ‘aging’ silent screen star Desmond (she is a supposedly ANCIENT fifty years old, but Toyboy Joe doesn’t look far off it himself ); he got to live rent-free in that wonderful old mansion, with its echoes of another age; in company, with the fabulous Norma he watched silent movies while she re-enacted stories and played characters from the Best Age of Cinema; and just to put the icing on the cake, he got to hang out and play cards with the likes of Buster Keaton and von Stroheim.
And he’s still not satisfied? Now that’s just being greedy, Joe.
As it happens, someone recently told me that they thought I liked female silent film stars so much because I couldn’t hear what they were saying; but the person giving me this opinion was a woman, so I wasn’t really listening.
Norma talked rather a lot and I didn’t mind her. Also, on occasion, she has the mad staring eyes of a stone-cold psychopath, and who among us doesn’t find that attractive?
Several years of living with Gloria Swanson in return for a few bullets in the back before ending up floating face down in her swimming pool? It’s kind of a metaphor for real life when you think of it. And does real-life offer us any better choice at the climax of our own personal movie?
Enough of the philosophising! Silent Cinema Galway is showing Beyond the Rocks this coming Saturday the 14th of September, starring the Divine Swanson and none other than Rudolph Valentino.
And I can’t be there. I swear Cinephile Paradiso waited until they knew I was gone before bruising this tired old heart of mine even farther.
Gloria, you’ll have to go on without me. Those wonderful people out there in the dark deserve no less.
“We didn’t need voices. We had faces then!”
Gloria Swanson (1899-1983) lived such a life that one can only admire the age she reached. She was a tiny five-foot-and-one-inch dynamo who roared along at a breakneck pace, with a career in feature films that spanned 1918 to 1975. She was smart enough to be using her own production company as early as 1927 and equally so to know when she was temporarily out of favour with cinemagoers. That was when she turned to the stage and to the tube for a while, doing a surprising amount of it during television’s original Golden Age.
In addition to acting, she was an accomplished sculptor and painter as well as designer for her fashion label Forever Young.
She was nominated three times for an Academy Award and twice for the Golden Globes, winning once.
And seriously - as to extracurricular activities, where did she get the energy?!? She had numerous lovers and at the age of 74, having taken a bit of a break, she decided - in a mad fit of optimism - to marry for a SIXTH time.
Did Elizabeth Taylor have a photo of Gloria on her fridge door for inspiration?
Of course, Gloria’s taste in men wasn’t always the best, to put it mildly. But perhaps that’s only because she never met me. I like to think that in some parallel universe, I was born earlier; and that Gloria and I are forever gliding down that celluloid staircase, cameras flashing in our faces as we prepare for our close-up.
Mr. DeMille, we’re ready.
charleybrady@gmail.com