Gloria and Joe: The Star-Crossed Love Affair of Gloria Swanson and Joe Kennedy

by Axel Madsen

Overview

The ultimate Hollywood story revealed: the sizzling relationship between Joseph Kennedy, patriarch of America's most influential political family, and Gloria Swanson, one of the most prominent silent film stars of her day. Gloria and Joe were in love with each other and with the movies, especially Queen Kelly, which completed the real-life ménage à trois. Starring along with the star of the screen and the Boston Brahman in this exposé are Erich von Stroheim, Kennedy's wife Rose, Swanson's husband, and a cast of colorful hangers-on. Madsen recreates their love, scandal, and world, which in its extravagance and intrigue has never been surpassed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504008754
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Publication date:	05/12/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	387
Sales rank:	915,111
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Axel Madsen authored twenty-two books, including sixteen biographies. His most notable works include an in-depth look at the life of a legendary fashion icon, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own, and an investigation of the relationship between Gloria Swanson and Joe Kennedy, Gloria and Joe: The Star-Crossed Love Affair of Gloria Swanson and Joe Kennedy. Madsen began his journalism career as a legman for columnist Art Buchwald in Paris, and later wrote one of the first books on television’s longest-running news magazine show, 60 Minutes: The Power and the Politics of America’s Most Popular TV News Show. As a 20th Century Fox publicist, he handled Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and George C. Scott, and was fired off Myra Breckinridge for siding with director Mike Sarne against producer Robert Fryer. His Hollywood biographies include the life stories of directors William Wyler, John Huston, and Barbara Stanwyck, as well as an examination of Golden Age Hollywood’s gay underground in The Sewing Circle. He wrote and produced the ITV documentary version of The Sewing Circle. Over the years, Madsen interviewed scores of movers and shakers, from legends like Goldwyn and Selznick to directors like Howard Hawks, Louis Milestone, and Rouben Mamoulian. Madsen died in 2007.
 

 

Editorial Reviews

Axel Madsen shows Gloria Swanson and Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., in such a satisfyingly full-blown way that few readers—even Kennedys—will carp about invasion of privacy or mud on the idol. . . . [An] unstoppable read. . . . Reckless love, seen big.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Covering events in the lives of both principals until their deaths, the author also adds gossip about the Kennedy clan and members of the film colony.” —Publishers Weekly

“Gloria and Joe is great reading. Madsen [is] an expert on Hollywood. . . . The great strength of his book . . . is the background against which the somewhat torrid events were played out—Hollywood at the end of the silent era, in a time of enormous scandals and just before the entire American economy collapsed. It would make a fabulous movie.” —Cosmopolitan
 

From the Publisher

This dual biography calls to mind a collage, with large parts derived respectively from Gloria Swanson's Swanson on Swanson and from the multiple books on the Kennedy family. Moving back and forth in time, Madsen (Billy Wilder, John Huston) occasionally repeats the same information, most of it already well known. He details the love affair that began when Boston banker Joseph Kennedy met the screen star in 1927 and how they became partners in Gloria Swanson Productions, which they expected to make cinema history and huge profits. The relationship ended abruptly in 1930 with the collapse of the film Queen Kelly, a souvenir of Erich von Stroheim's brilliant but erratic directorship. Covering events in the lives of both principals until their deaths, the author also adds gossip about the Kennedy clan and members of the film colony. (February 22)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Madsen produced the fine biography William Wyler as well as other books on Hollywood personalities. However, this dual biography of silent film star Gloria Swanson and Joseph Kennedy (father of Jack, Bobby, and Ted) is one of his lesser efforts. In the late 1920s, while Swanson was one of Hollywood's most popular actresses and Kennedy was beginning his rise in the financial side of the film business, the two began a three-year love affair, although both were married. Unfortunately, there is little new here. Most of the information on Kennedy can be found in several biographies of the clan, and Swanson is well served by her excellent autobiograhy, Swanson on Swanson (LJ 11/1/80). John Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.

Library Journal