Gloria Swanson’s 6 Husbands: The Affairs, Scandals and Regrets That Defined Her Love Life
‘The mess I made of marriage was all my fault,’ she once said. ‘The trouble is I’m too independent’
Gloria Swanson might have been a pioneer within the film industry, as the star of the film Sunset Boulevard (which inspired the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical) among many other credits, but it wasn’t her acting skills that kept making headlines throughout her life and career. Instead, it was her six short marriages to men from all walks of life, among them actors, investment bankers and French noblemen. For some, six marriages—and five divorces—might seem like a lot, but for Swanson, she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
”The mess I made of marriage was all my fault,” she once said. “The trouble with me is that I’ve always been too independent.”
But who exactly are these men that Swanson made a mess of, and what exactly happened between them? We dive deep into all of that below.
Wallace Beery (1916 to 1919)
Actor Wallace Beery married Swanson in 1916. She was 17 at the time, and he was 30. However, the drama didn’t stop at their ages.
Swanson claimed that on the night of their wedding, Beery forced her to have sex with him, despite repeatedly telling him that she didn’t want to. A short while later, Swanson learned she was pregnant and Beery reportedly coerced her to take pills to terminate the pregnancy. It was a very abusive relationship, according to Swanson, which caused her to feel quite lonely.
“I was now a member of the great conspiracy of silence,” the actress wrote in her 1980 memoir Swanson on Swanson. “I recognized how many other members belonged as I sadly began to study the faces of women around me at work, in stores, on the street.”
The pair went on to divorce in 1919 after three years of marriage, with Beery claiming that Swanson abandoned him.
Beery would remarry once more before he died in 1949 at age 64.
Herbert K. Somborn (1919 to 1923)
Pretty quickly after divorcing Beery, Swanson married Herbert K. Somborn, the president of Equity Pictures and a famous restaurateur. He was 18 years her senior.
The two welcomed a daughter named Gloria Swanson Somborn in 1920. They then adopted another child together in 1923 named Joseph Patrick Swanson. Sadly though, that was also the year Swanson and Somborn got divorced as a result of her numerous affairs with men like Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan.
Following their split, Somborn never married again, but reportedly did help with childcare.
Henry de La Falaise (1925 to 1930)
French film director producer, translator and nobleman Henry de La Falaise married Swanson in 1925. They met on the set of Madame Sans-Gêne (1925) and quickly fell in love.
During their marriage, Swanson did get pregnant but had an abortion after being encouraged to do so by various production studios.
Swanson and La Falaise divorced in 1930, with Swanson saying that he “willfully and maliciously abandoned and deserted” her.
Following that, the French nobleman married once more before dying in 1972 at age 74.
Michael Farmer (1931 to 1934)
During a fitting for the 1931 film Tonight or Never, Swanson met Michael Farmer, a young, rich, unemployed man who was rumored to be a gigolo.
After just a few months together, Swanson became pregnant and was soon forced into marriage by Farmer, a decision she later reportedly really regretted.
The two would go on to marry once again just a few months later, upon learning that Swanson might not have been legally divorced from La Falaise during the first wedding.
Following their second wedding in November 1931, Swanson and Farmer welcomed daughter Michelle Bridget Farmer the following year. She was Swanson’s last child.
Sadly, though, like all of her other marriages, the actress filed for divorce from Farmer in 1934.
“The rumors that a divorce was impending I have consistently denied,” Swanson said at the time. “But there is no use of that now. I have thought about the matter for a long time and have decided that our marriage was a mistake. When you find that you have made a mistake, it seems to me, there is no use to continue it.”
Farmer never married after his divorce and died in 1975 at age 73.
William Davey (1945 to 1946)
Swanson’s shortest marriage was to William Davey, an investment banker she had met while performing in A Goose for the Gander.
Thanks to his profession, Davey was reportedly a very rich man, which excited Swanson because she thought she might finally be able to retire from acting. In an unfortunate twist of fate, though, Davey turned out to be a raging alcoholic, and so Swanson divorced him after just one year of marriage.
During the divorce hearings, Davey originally refused to pay Swanson any sort of alimony but was later forced to change his mind by a judge. Even so, Swanson never saw a cent, because Davey died shortly after and left the majority of his earnings to the Damon Runyon Cancer Memorial Fund.
William Dufty (1976 to 1983)
Swanson’s last—and longest—marriage was to musician and activist William Dufty, a man 17 years younger than her. It was her sixth marriage and the two reportedly connected while promoting Dufty’s book Sugar Blues together in 1975.
In fact, a large part of their relationship revolved around Swanson helping Dufty change his eating habits, and in exchange, he helped her write her memoir with Wayne Lawson.
They kept this up until Swanosn tragically died in 1983 from a heart ailment, and even though her life was extraordinary, right before dying Swanson said she wouldn’t do it again.
”If I had my life to live over again, I wouldn’t,” the late actress said. “Life is a privilege. Mistakes should be dropped in the wastebasket. No, I’m not much for the past. I’m concerned about tomorrow and what’s going on between dreams.”
Following Swanson’s death, Dufty never remarried and died in 2002 at age 86.
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