“Gloria Swanson was at the beach house one night. She was a little prankster at heart; she loved to have fun. She said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s not look at a picture tonight; let’s play a game.” It was a little like playing Post Office. You would say to a man…”Who would you like to marry?”
They would look around. It was just a game, but still their true feelings came out. They would say, “That one.” Eleanor Boardman or somebody else. We would say to both of them, “Come into the next room and seal the ceremony.”
Then we would go into the Marine Room, next to the library, and they wouldn’t know exactly what was happening, but we had it all planned. We had a pillow there and they were supposed to kneel. I would say, “Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?”
The man would say, “I do.”
“I’d say, “Seal the pact with a kiss.” As they reached forward, Gloria would take a bag with ice in it and bang them in the face. They would fall backward. We wouldn’t let them out of the room until we pulled that gag.
It sounds silly, but it was really fun.”
~Marion Davies, describing teaming up with Gloria Swanson to HIT PEOPLE IN THE FACE WITH BAGS OF ICE. Knocking them down. While holding them prisoner in a room. At a party. :)
(excerpt from The Times We Had, image via)
(via akubizone)
Gloria Swanson as a young girl
I’ve posted this photo before, but without this anecdote:
“I was born on March 27, 1899, under the sign of Aries. My maternal grandmother, who was in attendance, leaned down to my pale, exhausted mother and said, “She’s beautiful.” Then she turned to the doctor, and lowering her voice so that her daughter wouldn’t hear, asked, “But aren’t her ears awfully large?”
…The size of my ears, which had alarmed my grandmother Bertha Lew the day I was born, continued to worry my mother in the years to come. My big blue eyes were one thing; my big ears were something else. So for years, while all the other girls my age were wearing teeny tiny hair ribbons, my mother made giant silk bows and poufs for me to hide my ears.”
~Gloria Swanson in Swanson on Swanson: An Autobiography
(This book is a real page-turner and made me love Gloria to pieces, for her virtues and for her faults. :) This particular passage also made me hyper-aware of the fact that even grown-up famous actress Gloria Swanson wears an awful lot of large ornaments, ribbons and hairstyles that cover her ears!)
My Grandma reminded me of Swanson and lived kitty-corner to Sunset Boulevard.
