Could it be? Sunset Boulevard is…trending? Almost 75 years after the world was introduced to the sweepingly campy Norma Desmond—the silent film-era actress tragically unaware that her movie-star glow has effectively been snuffed out in the age of the talkies—TikTok seems to be rediscovering the brilliance of the 1950 Billy Wilder noir-comedy classic starring Gloria Swanson. The source? Jamie Lloyd’s astute reimaging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical Sunset Boulevard, which is now on Broadway starring Nicole Scherzinger. Just like the many fake fan letters that Max von Mayerling sent to his beloved Norma, TikTok is effusive in its praise of all things Sunset Boulevard—from Scherzinger’s performance to biographies of the glorious Swanson.
Here, we add to the fodder with a piece on Swanson’s career ahead of the 1950 release of Sunset Boulevard, written by longtime Vogue editor Allene Talmey. “The present excitement over Sunset Boulevard is another cliff hanger in the perils of Gloria,” Talmey wrote. “In her sixty-third movie, Gloria Swanson has become for the first time in her thirty-seven-year-old career, a magnificent actress.” The story is accompanied by a brilliant photograph of Swanson, by Irving Penn, that features her gloved hands framing her face, as though she’s signaling the composition of a tight shot around her famous almond eyes. In other words? She was ready for her close-up! |
