Television and Theater
Swanson hosted one of the first live television series in 1948, The Gloria Swanson Hour, in which she invited friends and others to be guests. Swanson also later hosted a television anthology series, Crown Theatre with Gloria Swanson, in which she occasionally acted.
Through the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, Swanson appeared on many different talk and variety shows such as The Carol Burnett Show in 1973 and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to recollect on her films and to lampoon them as well. She was twice the "mystery guest" on What's My Line. She acted in "Behind the Locked Door" on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1964, and in the same year was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her performance in Burke's Law. A guest appearance on The Dick Cavett Show with Janis Joplin (summer 1970) was another memorable TV appearance.
Her most famous television appearance, however, is a 1966 episode of The Beverly Hillbillies titled "The Gloria Swanson Story," in which she plays herself. In the episode, the Clampetts mistakenly believe Swanson is destitute, and decide to finance a comeback movie for her—in a silent film. Her last acting role, aside from playing herself in Airport 1975, was in the made-for-TV horror film Killer Bees (1974).
After near-retirement from film, Swanson appeared in many plays throughout her later life, beginning in the 1940s. She toured with A Goose for the Gander, Reflected Glory, and Let Us Be Gay. After her success with Sunset Boulevard, she starred on Broadway in a revival of Twentieth Century (1951) with Jose Ferrer, and in Nina with David Niven. Her last major stage role was in the 1971 Broadway production of Butterflies Are Free at the Booth Theatre.
In 1980 Swanson published her autobiography, "Swanson on Swanson". It was a commercial success and brought her one last wave of fame. In the same year Kevin Brownlow and David Gill released the first of their many documentaries on the silent era. This was Hollywood, a 13-part history of the silent era in Hollywood, produced for Thames Television. This also brought more attention to Swanson in her last years.
Read more about this topic: Gloria Swanson
Famous quotes containing the words television and/or theater:
“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
—Salvador Dali (1904–1989)
“Be reflective ... and stay away from the theater as much as you can. Stay out of the theatrical world, out of its petty interests, its inbreeding tendencies, its stifling atmosphere, its corroding influence. Once become “theatricalized,” and you are lost, my friend; you are lost.”
—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)