Gloria Swanson - Glamour and Grit

Director Cecil B. DeMile's lifelong nickname for his protege, Gloria Swanson, was `Young Fellow'. Despite her glamour, she was as gutsy as a young boy, willing to do whatever it took to achieve a spectacular scene. When DeMIlle conceived an audacious fantasy sequence in his film `Male and Female' (1919), even he feared he had gone too far. Set in Biblical times, it required Gloria to walk into a lion cage to be mauled by real lions. At the last moment, he decided to scrap the scene. Gloria