Gloria Swanson vintage Hollywood photographs – Sadie Thompson 1928 & What a Widow 1930

Description

Two terrific pieces of early Hollywoodana from the period when Gloria Swanson was not merely one of the great faces of silent cinema but increasingly in control of her own pictures. The earlier photograph comes from Sadie Thompson (1928), Swanson’s celebrated independent production based on W. Somerset Maugham’s story, directed by Raoul Walsh and distributed by United Artists. Swanson’s performance was recognized at the first Academy Awards, and the film remains one of the defining pictures of her silent career. The second photograph shows Swanson with Owen Moore in Allan Dwan’s What a Widow! (1930), made by Gloria Productions during Hollywood’s transition into sound.

These aren’t modern celebrity reprints but vintage photographs that survived as working pieces of Hollywood’s visual record. Both subsequently entered the picture collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, whose markings remain on the photographs; they were later deaccessioned after being digitaized and sold through the Friends of the Library. Together they span a fascinating two-year period in Swanson’s career—the acclaimed Sadie Thompson at the height of late silent cinema and What a Widow! as Hollywood moved decisively into talkies. They’re battered around the edges in exactly the right way: photographs that were collected, handled, catalogued and preserved rather than manufactured decades later for the memorabilia trade.

Two original pieces of Gloria Swanson and early Hollywood history, preserved together after nearly a century.