'We didn't need dialogue, we had faces': The Public Bodies of Gloria Swanson

Abstract

This paper focuses on Gloria Swanson's career in silent film as a particularly compelling case of modern stardom and its exchanges with the cinematic medium and the public. While her early films establish her as one of the first stars and glamour icons in the history of Hollywood, Swanson's screen appearances also develop a remarkable self-reflexivity which both enacts and undermines the mythical structures underpinning star bodies in their public and medial constructions. In my discussion of selected scenes from Male and Female (1919), Stage Struck (1925) and Queen Kelly (1929), I trace the overdetermined mise-en-scène of Swanson's star body, her direct audience address as well as her protean performance between glamour and corporeal comedy. At the same time, I show how in drawing on both earlier cinematic traditions and the cultural license of the 1920s, Swanson's specific stardom differs from other star treatments.