Gloria Swanson (1899–1983) was an actress in the golden age of Hollywood, famous for her performance in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, among other roles. Both onscreen and in real life, she drew attention for her extravagant style, especially her jewels.
From silent films to the talkies
Born in Chicago on March 17, 1899, Gloria Swanson got involved in the movie industry from an early age. When she was 14 she visited a film set with her aunt, and asked the director if she could join the actors on set and take part in the scene. He agreed and offered her her first role. She then appeared in silent comedies and slapstick films – the kind of pictures Charlie Chaplin was famous for, involving broad humor and exaggerated physical movements; these two genres were typical of the American burlesque cinema popular in the first half of the 20th century.
As a slender-framed brunette, Swanson defied the beauty standards of her era; her face was thought too gaunt, and her strong jaw unattractive. But it was this atypical physique that won her roles playing strong and independent women, like in 1919’s Don’t Change Your Husband and Why Change Your Wife? in 1920. These two feature films had a libertarian feel, in line with the early 20th century movement for women’s emancipation.
1929 saw Gloria Swanson featured in her first talking picture, The Trespasser, a drama that was a colossal hit in America. The New York Times review described her as “more of an actress than ever”. Unlike many of her actor peers, Swanson had no trouble transitioning from silent movies to the talkies. But in 1932, after starring in nearly thirty films and tired of constant shoots with barely a break in between, she withdrew from moviemaking for almost sixteen years.
Viewers had to wait until 1950 for her next appearance on the silver screen, when she played a faded silent movie star trying to make a comeback in the film Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder. Throughout the picture she is seen wearing exotic cocktail dresses, her hair and makeup the height of sophistication.
Swanson was a woman of taste, and a loyal Cartier client. In 1932 she bought a bracelet-watch with a sliding cover from Cartier Paris, along with a spectacular pair of rock crystal and diamond bangles that set a high-water mark for Cartier and the history of fine jewelry.
Gloria Swanson’s bracelets
After the flat surfaces so typical of the 1920s, jewelry in the 1930s focused more on the kind of sculptural volume seen in these two bangle bracelets, which were made in 1930 as stock items and purchased by Gloria Swanson two years later. A composition of rock crystal half-disks set with baguette-cut diamonds, they stand as a true manifesto of modernity. Rock crystal was highly prized by Cartier for its effects of transparency and light, and here it brings a sense of lightness to these pieces. Supple and translucent, the bracelets have no clasp, but are designed with a flexible expanding structure that slips onto the wrist.
A crowning moment in the history of Cartier, these two bangles also entered cinema history, having graced Swanson’s wrist in Perfect Understanding (1932) and Sunset Boulevard (1950).
