Marriages and relationships
Wallace Beery and Swanson married on her 17th birthday on March 27, 1916, but by her wedding night she felt she had made a mistake and saw no way out of it. She did not like his home or his family and was repulsed by him as a lover. Swanson wrote in her autobiography that Wallace raped her on their wedding night. After becoming pregnant, she saw her husband with other women and learned he had been fired from Keystone. Taking medication given to her by Beery, purported to be for morning sickness, she miscarried the baby and was taken unconscious to the hospital. Soon afterwards, she filed for divorce, which was finalized on December 12, 1918. Under California law in that era, after a divorce was granted, there was a one-year waiting period before it became finalized so that neither of the parties could remarry.
Swanson married Herbert K. Somborn on December 20, 1919. He was at that time president of Equity Pictures Corporation and later the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant. Their daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn, was born on October 7, 1920. In 1923, she adopted one-year-old Sonny Smith, whom she renamed Joseph Patrick Swanson after her father. During their divorce proceedings, Somborn accused her of adultery with 13 men, including Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan. The public sensationalism led to Swanson having a "morals clause" added to her studio contract. Somborn was granted a divorce in Los Angeles, on September 19, 1923.
During the production of Madame Sans-Gêne, Swanson met her third husband, Henri, Marquis de la Falaise (commonly known as Henri de la Falaise), who had been hired to be her translator during the film's production. Though Henri was a Marquis and related to the famous Hennessy cognac family, he had no personal wealth. She had conceived a child with him before her divorce from Somborn was final, a situation that would have led to a public scandal and possible end of her film career. She had an abortion, which she later regretted. They married on January 28, 1925, after the Somborn divorce was finalized. Following a four-month recuperation from her abortion, they returned to the United States as European nobility. Swanson now held the title of Marquise. She received a huge welcome home with parades in both New York and Los Angeles. He became a film executive representing Pathé (USA) in France. This marriage ended in divorce in 1930.
In spite of the divorce they remained close, and Falaise became a partner in her World War II efforts to aid potential scientist refugees fleeing from behind Nazi lines. Swanson described herself as a "mental vampire", someone with a searching curiosity about how things worked, and who pursued the possibilities of turning those ideas into reality. In 1939, she created Multiprises, an inventions and patents company; Henri de la Falaise provided a transitional Paris office for the scientists and gave written documentation to authorities guaranteeing jobs for them. Viennese electronics engineer Richard Kobler, chemist Leopold Karniol, metallurgist Anton Kratky, and acoustical engineer Leopold Neumann, were brought to New York and headquartered in Rockefeller Center. The group nicknamed her "Big Chief".
While still married to Henri, Swanson had a lengthy affair with the married Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., father of future President John F. Kennedy. He became her business partner, and their relationship was an open secret in Hollywood. He took over all of her personal and business affairs and was supposed to make her millions. Kennedy left her after the disastrous Queen Kelly.
After the marriage to Henri and her affair with Kennedy was over, Swanson became acquainted with Michael Farmer, the man who would become her fourth husband. They met by chance in Paris when Swanson was being fitted by Coco Chanel for her 1931 film Tonight or Never. Farmer was a man of independent financial means who seemed not to have been employed. Rumors were that he was a gigolo. Swanson began spending time with him, during which she discovered a breast lump and also became pregnant, but was not yet divorced from Henri. She was not interested in marrying Farmer, but he did not want to break off the relationship. When Farmer found out she was pregnant, he threatened to go public with the news unless she agreed to marry him, something she did not want to do. Her friends, some of whom openly disliked him, thought she was making a mistake. They married on August 16, 1931, and separated 2 years later.
Because of the possibility that Swanson's divorce from La Falaise had not been finalized at the time of the wedding, she was forced to remarry Farmer the following November, by which time she was four months pregnant with Michelle Bridget Farmer, who was born on April 5, 1932.
Swanson and Farmer divorced in 1934 after she became involved with married British actor Herbert Marshall. The media reported widely on her affair with Marshall. After almost three years with the actor, Swanson left him once she became convinced he would never divorce his wife, Edna Best, for her. In an early manuscript of her autobiography written in her own hand decades later, Swanson recalled, "I was never so convincingly and thoroughly loved as I was by Herbert Marshall."
Davey was a wealthy investment broker whom Swanson met in October 1944 while she was appearing in A Goose for the Gander. They married January 29, 1945. Swanson had initially thought she was going to be able to retire from acting, but the marriage was troubled from the start by Davey's alcoholism. Erratic behavior and acrimonious recriminations followed. Swanson and her daughter Michelle Farmer visited an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and gathered AA pamphlets, which they placed around the apartment. Davey moved out. In the subsequent legal separation proceedings, the judge ordered him to pay Swanson alimony. In an effort to avoid the payments, Davey unsuccessfully filed for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty. He died within a year, not having paid anything to Swanson, and left the bulk of his estate to the Damon Runyon Cancer Memorial Fund.
Swanson's final marriage occurred in 1976 and lasted until her death. Her sixth husband William Dufty was a writer who worked for many years at the New York Post, where he was assistant to the editor from 1951 to 1960. He was the co-author (ghostwriter) of Billie Holiday's autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, the author of Sugar Blues (a 1975 best-selling health book still in print), and the author of the English version of Georges Ohsawa's You Are All Sanpaku. They met in the mid-1960s and moved in together. Swanson shared her husband's enthusiasm for macrobiotic diets, and they traveled widely together to speak about nutrition. Swanson and her husband first got to know John Lennon and Yoko Ono because they were fans of Dufty's work. Swanson testified on Lennon's behalf at his immigration hearing in New York City, which led to his becoming a permanent US resident. Besides her Fifth Avenue apartment, she and Dufty spent time at their homes in Beverly Hills, California; Colares, Portugal; Croton-on-Hudson, New York; and Palm Springs, California. After Swanson's death, Dufty returned to his former home in Birmingham, Michigan. He died of cancer in 2002.
