orig. Gloria May Josephine Svensson
born March 17, 1899, Chicago, Ill., U.S.
died April 4, 1983, New York, N.Y.
U.S. film actress.
She played minor roles in comedies at the Mack Sennett studio before she was hired by Cecil B. DeMille and achieved stardom in a series of farces, including Male and Female (1919), Zaza (1923), and Madame Sans-Gêne (1925). The glamorous queen of silent movies, she formed her own production company with backing from her lover Joseph P. Kennedy , making Sadie Thompson (1928) and then the disastrous Queen Kelly (1928). After The Trespasser (1929), her first talkie, and several lighter vehicles, she tired of the poor scripts available, stopped making films, and started several business ventures outside the motion-picture industry. She made an acclaimed comeback as an aging silent-film star in Sunset Boulevard (1950).