Early Life
Gloria Josephine May Swanson was born in a small house in Chicago, Illinois, in 1899 to Adelaide (née Klanowski) and Joseph Theodore Swanson, a soldier. She attended Hawthorne Scholastic Academy. Her father was from a strict Lutheran Swedish American family, and her mother was of German, French, and Polish ancestry.
Although born in Chicago because of her father's attachment to the Army, they moved frequently and she ended up spending most of her childhood on the island of Puerto Rico and in Key West, Florida. It was not her intention to enter show business, but on a whim one of her aunts took her to a small film company in Chicago called Essanay Studios for a visit and Swanson was asked to come back to work as an extra. After a few months as an extra working with among others, Charlie Chaplin, and making $13.50 a week, she left school to work full-time at the studio. Soon though, her parents separated and she and her mother moved to California.
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