celebrity gossip, academic style

Below you’ll find the text (and accompanying slides) for the presentation I gave this past March at this year’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Conference in Los Angeles. I’ve been meaning to publish this for awhile now, and the recent push to post our talks from last weekend’s Console-ing Passions conference finally spurred me into action. (I’ll post that paper in the next few days, but thought I should go about things in order). Conferences in the social sciences often publish the full proceedings of their conferences; media studies has yet to even publish abstracts. But in effort to create greater transparency as to what we academics do all day — not to mention share my presentation with those academics who were unable to attend for various reasons — I’m posting it in full.

If you’re unfamiliar with academic conferences, they basically involve a collection of panels (each usually 3-4 to participants) grouped in a general theme; each panelist is given around 15 minutes to present on a topic. Most often, this means reading from a written paper — some academics are more skilled delivery than others. Others craft presentations on Powerpoint or Prezi and talk from notes or memory. There are bonuses and drawbacks to both styles. I find that I’ve been most successful with writing a paper (I’m a pretty crappy off-the-cuff presenter) but writing it in a thoroughly conversant style.

The admittedly CRAZY artifacts I describe and discuss below are fascinating in and of themselves, but I hope you also find the discussion of the archive compelling as well. If you’re unfamiliar with much film history, Gloria Swanson was one of the biggest stars of the silent period — we’re talking Angelina Jolie huge starness. Her stardom didn’t make it through the transition to talkies, but she enjoyed a massive come-back with Sunset Boulevard in 1950. Kenneth Anger was and is an avant-garde filmmaker and artist, perhaps most famous for Scorpio Rising, who also penned the best-selling Hollywood Babylon, a smut-filled memoir of classic Hollywood referenced at length below.

I’d love to hear any thoughts, criticisms, or other comments, as I’m hoping to flesh out the piece a bit and eventually submit it. Academics: if you have an idea for a home for the finished piece, please suggest — I’m rather at a loss. And so, enjoy the Kenneth Anger ridiculousness!

On April 20th, 1976, a friend sent Gloria Swanson, then in her late 70s, a copy of Hollywood Babylon, the Hollywood tell-all penned by avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger. The friend had underlined two separate passages relating to Swanson. The first passage describes the lavish lifestyles of the star and her silent era compatriots; Anger traces Swanson’s stardom to her start as a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty, a claim Swanson repeatedly refuted. Anger then quotes Swanson on her extravagance: “In those days,” she purportedly explained, “the public wanted us to live like kings and queens. So we did — and why not?”

Swanson at the height of silent cinema -- and glamour.

The second Hollywood Babylon passage described reactions to the scandal surrounding the stabbing of Lana Turner’s mafia lover by Turner’s daughter, Cheryl Crane. According to Hollywood Babylon, when Walter Winchell came to Turner’s defense, he “provoked an avalanche of furious letters from women’s clubs and old fools, among them a letter from Gloria Swanson in which the Old Glory cut loose: ‘Walter, I think it is disgusting that you are trying to whitewash Lana…As far as that poor Lana Turner is concerned, the only true thing you said about her is that she sleeps in a woolen nightgown…She is not even an actress…she is only a trollop…(signed) Gloria Swanson”

Lana Turner, husband Johnny Stompanato, and Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane -- obviously before the fatal stabbing.

Swanson was furious. According to her, she was never been an actual Sennett Bathing Beauty, nor had she uttered or authored either of the quotes attributed to her.

Swanson worked for Mayer and indeed wore bathing suits, but she was not an official "Sennett Bathing Beauty" -- a designation with connotations of performing sexual favors in exchange for career advancement.

Indeed, Winchell himself had even published a retraction. Over the course of the following year, Swanson wrote to the publisher of Hollywood Babylong claiming libel and threatening legal action. In August of 1977, she filed suit in New York State Court against Anger, Doubleday, Dell Publishing, and Straight Arrow Books, all associated with the publication and distribution of Hollywood Babylon.

Swanson’s basis for libel was straightforward: Anger had published material with a reckless disregard as to its veracity. While the basis of the suit was concise, its articulation was not. The sheer number of adjectives employed to describe both Swanson’s esteemed reputation and Anger’s vile intent could fill the rest of this presentation, and I am not exaggerating.

A small taste: Swanson “enjoyed an excellent reputation and worldwide esteem for honesty, integrity, forthrightness, decorum, restraint, probity, dignity, and fair-mindedness,” while Anger made the plaintiff “falsely appear to be a bitter, vicious, envious, malicious scandal monger and purveyor of filth and outrageous matter, given to tearing down, desecrating, defaming and uttering scandalous and scurrilous words and language about Lana Turner, and capable of indulging in the same, wrongful, mean, dirty and vile behavior toward other performing artists and people.”

As a result, ANGER, by “untruths, false innuendos, imputations and suggestions, maliciously, wantonly, recklessly, falsely and fraudulently contrived to injure, defame and libel plaintiff, GLORIA SWANSON, in her good name, professional and personal reputation, and her national and international professional business, cultural, civic and public image for fairness, integrity, dignity, restraint, good taste, and the sensitive respect and regard for the private lives, privacy, and feelings of others.”

In short, the suit claimed that Hollywood Babylon had sullied Swanson’s image, which, as in the case of any other star, was also the basis for her livelihood, even in old age, and her future legacy.
The court found in favor of the defendants. Hollywood Babylon was not libelous ‘on its face’ or defamatory ‘per se,’ as the innuendo surrounding the passages could not be used to enlarge the allegedly libelous statements. What’s more, Swanson was a public personality, and, following the landmark libel ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan in 1970, she was required to allege the existence of acts which would show that the defendants acted maliciously, a burden that had not been met. That’s ostensibly the end of the story. But before that verdict was handed down, Anger took action.

Over the course of several months, Anger sent the following items to Swanson (letters/cards, unless otherwise noted):

These items, along with the full documentation of the lawsuit, are all included as part of The Gloria Swanson Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Swanson’s archive is a ‘lifestyle archive’ - it includes materials from her personal and professional life alike. Contrast this with the likes of Robert De Niro’s papers, which are limited to De Niro’s capacity as actor, director, and producer, with nary a mention of his private life. We might call Swanson’s archive a star archive, while De Niro’s is an “actors” archive. Such a distinction matters, as Swanson’s archive, with its inclusion the filmic and extrafilmic, including family letters, pictures, divorce documents, collections of clippings, publicity photos, contracts, scripts, film reels, and, yes, coffins of sugar, is intended not only to preserve her art as an actress, but her star aura and image.
So what do we do with these items? What do they tell us about Swanson, the preservation of her star image, or Anger? Before I make any claims, I’d like to rewind a bit to the very title of this presentation. I employed the phrase ‘coffin full of sugar’ for two reasons: obviously, I knew that it would attract attention. Second, I wanted the title itself — and others’ reactions to it — to recreate the feeling that I felt when I first happened upon the rather macabre obsessive ‘correspondence.: Because when I first read this list of items and soon after glimpsed them in storage, I was enthralled. This, I thought, was what archival scholars dream of: a tenable, sexy, glorious find.

The point of this paper, however, is not simply to play show-and-tell. Rather, I want to think about how such ‘finds’ often claim our attention, distracting us from the small, less flashy materials, such as lengthy lawsuits, endless letters, and minute script revisions that surround and contextualize them — none of which are nearly as forthrightly compelling as a coffin full of sugar, or, say, Scarlett O’Hara’s dresses. Scholars are certainly not the only ones attracted to such items: they are often the centerpieces of archive exhibitions, tours, promotional materials, and other fundraising campaigns.

These items are obviously fascinating. They’re odd; they’re unique; and many — such as wardrobes, locks of hair, baby drawings, love notes, and writing desks — seem to offer intimate access to the core of the star, author, politician. But what do they do? Are they, in and of themselves, worthy of study? I’ve tried, and failed, to craft articles around such literally ‘awesome’ objects. Instead, my most successful archival scholarship has sprung from pages and pages of Swanson complaining about how hard she worked on her two failed television shows and financial contracts for her enormously successful dress line, much of it dry, repetitive, and tiresome. Yet these most banal of objects compose the backbone of archival research.

Which is not to say that we should ignore the coffin full of sugar. My contention, then, is that such articles can be studied and in and of themselves, but are much more fascinating when studied meta-textually. Or, more specifically, meta-archivally. In other words: why did Swanson choose to include this set of correspondence, carefully preserving piles of hate mail that insulted and lampooned her, in her archive? And what can we conclude about the ways in which Swanson intended it to be read as part of her star image and legacy?

Star scholars have often grappled with whether, or how, to ascribe agency to stars concerning the creation and maintenance of their images, especially those stars dating from the silent and classical era. Importantly, I am not claiming that Swanson exercised complete control over her image throughout her career, although, as Janet Staiger has argued, she certainly exercised far more control, even during the 1920s, than most. There is a difference, however, between controlling one’s image and controlling one’s papers. For Swanson closely supervised the collection of her papers, deciding what would and would not be included; for example, nearly all evidence of her affair with Joe Kennedy, for example, has been excised. Additionally, Swanson was clearly a smart woman, and an even smarter businesswoman. When asked, following the success of Sunset Boulevard, why she spent so much money on dresses, Swanson replied “without them I’m not Gloria Swanson. It’s a business expense.” Swanson knew what her image meant — not only for own livelihood, but for that of her children and grandchildren for years to come.

In other words, Swanson included the Anger correspondence with reason. And I argue that Swanson preserved the evidence — as well as detailed copies of the lawsuit — not only to show that she arduously pursued her ‘innocence,’ but also as a means of indicting Anger. The existence of these materials — and their availability to scholars such as myself — labors to exonerate Swanson of Anger’s claims, affirming and preserving Swanson’s own carefully maintained image of glamour, integrity, and sophistication.

It matters little whether Swanson, the woman, was, in fact, glamourous and sophisticated. Far more interesting are her efforts to maintain that image — and how threatened she felt by the publication of two sentences in a book already widely discredited. To my mind, Swanson’s eagerness to take legal action highlights her awareness of the power of gossip. Having lived through the silent, classic, and post-classical age, she witnessed the ways in which magazines like Confidential and The National Enquirer had, though well-crafted innuendo, severely tarnished star images.

For gossip matters not because it’s true, or because people even necessarily believe it, but because its suggestions become permanently affixed to the star image. And gossip especially sticks when it seems to complement a pre-exisiting star image. The relative genius of Anger and Hollywood Babylon, no matter how fabricated, was that it confirmed what many secretly wanted to believe about the stars: namely, that they were snotty, backstabbing, and promiscuous. That’s why people believed Anger’s claim that Clara Bow had sex with the entire USC football team — the rumor still circulates, despite its repeated refutation. It’s also why Anger’s depiction of Swanson so angered the star: it rang dangerously true. It meshed with understandings of Swanson’s opulent and excessive lifestyle, yet highlighted what seemed to be the flipside of such sophistication: an inner ‘bitch.’

With that said, the inclusion of the correspondence also clearly forwards an image of Anger as, for lack of a more appropriate set of words, bat shit crazy. The correspondence speaks for itself: some might call it a form of performance art, but it also keenly resembles the work of a stalker. This reading is bolstered by documentation of Swanson’s bodyguards’ first defense attempts against Anger’s unmarked packages, including memos to the rest of Swanson’s Fifth Avenue apartment building informing them mysterious packages, stymied police, and lurking messengers. From the portrait proffered via Swanson’s archive, Anger appears as a vindictive terrorist. Not an artist.

By means of conclusion, I’d like return to the ways in which we sometimes treat archives as if they were they were the star, studio, or production company’s office and filing cabinets, simply transferred to the reading room and made available for our perusal, thereby offering a private window into the inner — and authentic! — life of the star. Yet they have been picked over, organized, and re-organized; indeed, the journey from filing cabinet, sock drawer, or back closet into the archive box is a multi-tiered process of mediation.

Ultimately, the coffin full of sugar serves as a reminder not of the complex and perhaps deranged psychology of Kenneth Anger — but of the ways in which the star archive should be studied, and considered, as a construct. My hope, then, is that if Swanson were alive, she would appreciate the fact that her papers were being used to contemplate and remember the labor performed not only by the archive itself, but by Swanson herself in preserving that image, in all of its complexities, for nearly a century.