Gloria Swanson as a young girl
I’ve posted this photo before, but without this anecdote:
“I was born on March 27, 1899, under the sign of Aries. My maternal grandmother, who was in attendance, leaned down to my pale, exhausted mother and said, “She’s beautiful.” Then she turned to the doctor, and lowering her voice so that her daughter wouldn’t hear, asked, “But aren’t her ears awfully large?”
…The size of my ears, which had alarmed my grandmother Bertha Lew the day I was born, continued to worry my mother in the years to come. My big blue eyes were one thing; my big ears were something else. So for years, while all the other girls my age were wearing teeny tiny hair ribbons, my mother made giant silk bows and poufs for me to hide my ears.”
~Gloria Swanson in Swanson on Swanson: An Autobiography
(This book is a real page-turner and made me love Gloria to pieces, for her virtues and for her faults. :) This particular passage also made me hyper-aware of the fact that even grown-up famous actress Gloria Swanson wears an awful lot of large ornaments, ribbons and hairstyles that cover her ears!)
My Grandma reminded me of Swanson and lived kitty-corner to Sunset Boulevard.
