Alone, she persuaded Wall Street bankers to finance her unit, Gloria Swanson, Inc., to the extent of $1,200,000, taking as consideration her box office record and her insurance policies of several million dollars. Alone, she must make the money to pay her $10,000 monthly living expenses. She must keep up her $100,000 penthouse on top of the Park Chambers Hotel in New York, her Hollywood home, her $75,000 Croton country estate. Tied to her by a monetary thread are her four secretaries, her press agent, her vice-president, her production manager, her scenario manager. Her days are a constant series of disturbances by butlers and maids, by secretaries and camera men, by electricians, and writers and bill collectors.
Hers is a mad, chaotic organization, set into the tumultuous life of a tired, worried woman whose temperamental sympathies are fluid, running in channels dammed by her assistants. Everyone and everything influences her. She listens and weeps. She hires and fires, shoots situations that are never used, orders sets, and countermands, pays for sub-titles and throws them out the window, announces that she will not be bothered by details any more, and then insists on licking each fan mail stamp. And now, in the midst of the whirlpool of her life, brave and bewildered, is Gloria, going around faster than she ever believed possible. The waves wrap her, and she strangles in the seaweed tentacles of her octopus of troubles, her responsibilities, her enormous debts, her file of lawsuits for the non-payment of her extravagant bills.
From Doug and Mary and Others, by Allene Talmey with woodcuts by Bertrand Zadig
New York: Macy-Masius, 1927
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