Item: i99816

Authentic Medal of:

United States – Hollywood – French Film
Gloria Swanson “Madame Sans Gene”
1925 Bronze Medal 25mm (6.60 grams)
PRO PATRIA ET GLORIA SWANSON PARAMOUNT – MADAME SANS GENE -, Gloria facing right.
LIBERTE FRATERNITE EGALITE A PARAMOUNT PICTURE SANS GENE MEANS YOU’LL NEVER WORRY Madame Sans Gene WHIT, Text and Script.

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Gloria Josephine May Swanson (March 27, 1899 – April 4, 1983) was an American actress, producer and business woman. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for an Academy Award as Best Actress, most famously for her 1950 comeback in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, which also earned her a Golden Globe Award.

Swanson was born in Chicago and raised in a military family that moved from base to base. Her schoolgirl crush on Essanay Studios actor Francis X. Bushman led to her aunt taking her to tour the actor’s Chicago studio. The 15-year-old Swanson was offered a brief walk-on for one film as an extra, beginning her life’s career in front of the cameras. Swanson was soon hired to work in California for Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios comedy shorts opposite Bobby Vernon. She was eventually recruited by Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount Pictures, where she was put under contract for seven years.

In 1925, Swanson joined United Artists as one of the film industry’s pioneering women filmmakers. She produced and starred in the 1928 film Sadie Thompson, earning her a nomination for Best Actress at the first annual Academy Awards. Her sound film debut performance in the 1929 The Trespasser, earned her a second Academy Award nomination. After almost two decades in front of the cameras, her film success waned during the 1930s. Swanson received renewed praise for her comeback role in Sunset Boulevard (1950). She only made three more films, but guest starred on several television shows, and acted in road productions of stage plays.

Swanson was born in a small house in Chicago in 1899, the only child of Adelaide (née Klanowski) and Joseph Theodore Swanson (né Svensson), a soldier. was raised in the Lutheran faith. Her father was a Swedish American and her mother was of German, French, and Polish ancestry. of her father’s attachment to the U.S. Army, the family moved frequently. She spent some of her childhood in Key West, Florida, where she was enrolled in a Catholic convent school, in Puerto Rico, where she saw her first motion pictures.

Her family once again residing in Chicago, the adolescent Gloria developed a crush on actor Francis X. Bushman and knew he was employed by Essanay Studios in the city. Swanson would later recall that her Aunt Inga brought her at age 15 to visit Bushman’s studio, where she was discovered by a tour guide. Other accounts have the star-struck Swanson herself talking her way into the business. In either version, she was soon hired as an extra. The movie industry was still in its infancy, churning out short subjects, without the advantage of today’s casting agencies and talent agents promoting their latest find. A willing extra was often a valuable asset. Her first role was a brief walk-on with actress Gerda Holmes, that paid an enormous (in those days) $3.25. studio soon offered her steady work at $13.25 (equivalent to $342 in 2020) per week. left school to work full-time at the studio. 1915, she co-starred in Sweedie Goes to College with her future first husband Wallace Beery. Swanson’s mother accompanied her to California in 1916 for her roles in Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios comedy shorts opposite Bobby Vernon and directed by Clarence G. Badger. They were met at the train station by Beery, who was pursuing his own career ambitions at Keystone. and Swanson projected a great screen chemistry that proved popular with audiences. Director Charley Chase recalled that Swanson was “frightened to death” of Vernon’s dangerous stunts. movies in which they appear together include The Danger Girl (1916), The Sultan’s Wife (1917), and Teddy at the Throttle (1917). was sufficiently impressed by Swanson to recommend her to the director Jack Conway for Her Decision and You Can’t Believe Everything in 1918. had never put Swanson under contract, but did increase her pay to $15 a week. When she was approached by Famous Players-Lasky to work for Cecil B. DeMille, the resulting legal dispute obligated her to Triangle for several more months. Soon afterwards, Triangle was in a financial bind and loaned Swanson to DeMille for the comedy Don’t Change Your Husband.1919–1926: Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount Pictures

At the behest of DeMille, Swanson signed a contract with Famous Players-Lasky on December 30, 1918, for $150 a week, to be raised to $200 a week, and eventually $350 a week. first picture under her new contract was DeMille’s World War I romantic drama For Better, for Worse. made six pictures under the direction of DeMille, Male and Female in which she posed with a lion as “Lion’s Bride”. she and her father were dining out one evening, the man who would become her second husband, Equity Pictures president Herbert K. Somborn, introduced himself, by inviting her to meet one of her personal idols, actress Clara Kimball Young.

Why Change Your Wife? (1920), Something to Think About (1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (1921) soon followed. her time at Famous Players-Lasky, eight of her films were directed by Allan Dwan. appeared in 10 films directed by Sam Wood, Beyond the Rocks in 1922 with her longtime friend Rudolph Valentino. had become a star in 1921 for his appearance in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but Swanson had known him since his days as an aspiring actor getting small parts, with no seeming hope for his professional future. She was impressed by his shy, well-mannered personality, the complete opposite of what his public image would become. In 1925, Swanson starred in the French-American comedy Madame Sans-Gêne, directed by Léonce Perret. was allowed for the first time at many of the historic sites relating to Napoleon. While it was well received at the time, no prints are known to exist and it is considered to be a lost film. appeared in a 1925 short produced by Lee de Forest in his Phonofilm sound-on-film process. made a number of films for Paramount, including The Coast of Folly, (1925) Stage Struck (1925) and The Untamed Lady (1926). she could produce films with United Artists, she completed Fine Manners with Paramount and turned down an offer to make The King of Kings with DeMille.
 

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km²), the United States is the world’s third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe’s 3.9 million square miles (10.1 million km²). With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York. Forty-eight states and the capital’s federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, and the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776. The war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, and gradually admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848.

During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery. By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, and its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the country’s status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 Moon landing. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

The United States is the world’s oldest surviving federation. It is a federal republic and a representative democracy, “in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law”. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), and other international organizations. The United States is a highly developed country, with the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for approximately a quarter of global GDP. The U.S. economy is largely post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world’s largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U.S. holds 33% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. It also suffers from growing levels of income inequality and wealth inequality.

The United States ranks among the highest nations in several measures of socioeconomic performance, including human development, per capita GDP, and productivity per person. The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.