My walls aren’t covered with black and white photos and my bookshelves don’t resemble the film section at Book Barn Downtown down Niantic way, but I do love me some classic Hollywood. I didn’t grow up in a town with classic film revival houses. The only classic movie my parents had was the 1933 King Kong included with our RCA SelectaVision player. What turned me onto classic Hollywood was a discovery made in the stacks of the S-bury Public Library circa 1983, legendary film star Gloria Swanson’s 1980 Swanson on Swanson bound in Tiffany blue vinyl leatherette covering. From page one, I was hooked.

Now the problem with loving Classic Hollywood is biographies. You can build a fort with all the books on Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford out there. <pushes aside idea of attempting to actually build a  book fort in the middle of the living room because the library WOULD revoke my inter-library loan privileges> For some stars, you have to rely on little bits here and there and maybe one autobiography to be treated with care since a star is only going to want to tell about the good. Like Myrna Loy, Gloria Swanson fell into this category. You had Swanson on Swanson or Annette Tapert’s The Power of Glamour or Jeanine Basinger’s Silent Stars. All good in their owns ways but not the full on full length biography.

Enter Stephen Michael Shearer’s Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star. A star biography can go many ways. There’s the salacious (Irving Shulman’s Harlow: An Intimate Biography), the pandering (Charlotte Chandler’s Star Name: A Personal Biography series), the star autobiography and the outsider. Right now, I am thanking Stephen Michael Shearer and Gloria Swanson’s surviving family for working together to create a well rounded biography on a star who was the template for How To Be A Star. It’s heartbreaking but refreshing to have Swanson’s youngest child be so candid with an author. Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star isn’t a slap in the face or a white washed look. It’s real and honest and pulls back the veiling, the smoke and mirrors Swanson herself used in writing Swanson on Swanson. Gloria Swanson wasn’t the prettiest, most talented or clever person. She loved her career and the power and money it gave her. She wasn’t above putting her career first before family. She didn’t learn from her mistakes and made some of the same ones over and over and over. Was she a bad person? It depends. Was she fascinating? Yes. Did her peers like her? Sometimes.

Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star is a good solid read even if you’ve never heard of Gloria Swanson beyond Sunset Boulevard. Or heard of her at all. If you’re already in the know, Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star is must read even if it destroys certain cherished notions of Miss Swanson. Now off to request Swanson on Swanson from the inter-library loan system. Because reading Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star and Swanson on Swanson as companion pieces? Amazing…