1957 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I Saloon
(Restoration Project)
VIN #: (LSCC67)
SW: (LHD)
Bespoke Built for Gloria Swanson, The hollywood legend ordered the car from her Rolls Royce dealer in France. When the car was completed at the factory, it was flown to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris were her chauffeur took delivery, she use the car around France before shipping to the United States. Gloria Swanson became great friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Swanson testifying on Lennon’s behalf at his immigration hearing in 1976 arriving in this car. She used the car till her death in the early 80’s. The car was sold off and ended up in California for a short time before relocating to Louisiana, In the late 80’s the car moved to Atlanta where repairs were made and the motor and gearbox was replaced.
It is a complete original rust free car, partial restoration needs to be completed, need painted, upholstered and wood. The body, replacement motor and gearbox, suspension and brakes were done. all parts that are not attached to the car have been marked and boxed for easy re-install. The engine starts ups and runs smoothly.
Gloria May Josephine Swanson (March 27, 1899 – April 4, 1983) was an American actress and producer best known for her role as Norma Desmond, a reclusive silent film star, in the critically acclaimed 1950 film Sunset Boulevard.
Swanson was also a star in the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille. Throughout the 1920s, Swanson was Hollywood’s top box office magnet.
Swanson starred in dozens of silent films and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the Best Actress category. She also produced her own films, including Sadie Thompson and The Love of Sunya. In 1929, Swanson transitioned to talkies with The Trespasser. Personal problems and changing tastes saw her popularity wane during the 1930s when she moved into theater, and later television.
In 1960, Gloria Swanson was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1955 and 1957, Swanson was awarded The George Eastman Award for distinguished contribution to the art of film, and in 1966 the museum honored her with a career film retrospective, A Tribute to Gloria Swanson. A parking lot by Sims Park in downtown New Port Richey, Florida, is named after the star, who is said to have owned property along the Cotee River.
William Holden and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. (1950)
In early 1980, Swanson’s 520-page autobiography, Swanson on Swanson, was published by Random House and became a national best-seller. It was translated into French, Italian and Swedish editions. That same year, she also designed a stamp cachet for the United Nations Postal Administration.
In 1982, a year before her death, Swanson sold her archives of over 600 boxes for an undisclosed sum, including photographs, artwork, copies of films and private papers including correspondence, contracts and financial dealings to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The second-largest collection of Swanson materials is held in the family archives of Timothy A. Rooks. In the last years of her life Swanson professed a desire to see Beyond the Rocks, but the film was unavailable and considered lost. The film was rediscovered and screened in 2005.
Shortly after returning to New York from her home in Portugal, on April 4, 1983, Swanson died in New York City in New York Hospital from a heart ailment, aged 84. After Swanson’s death, there was a series of auctions from August to September 1983 at William Doyle Galleries in New York of the star’s furniture and decorations, jewelry, clothing, her Rolls Royce automobile and memorabilia from her personal life and career. As one of the greatest stars of early Hollywood, today Swanson is most remembered for her portrayal of Norma Desmond in 1950’s Sunset Boulevard.
Cecil B. DeMille and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. (1950)
I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.- Life and death. They are somehow sweetly and beautifully mixed, but I don’t know how.
- I’ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can’t divorce a book.
- All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year.
- As Daddy said, life is 95 percent anticipation.
- I was married when I was 17. I knew nothing. I was full of romance.
- I became a fanatic about healthy food in 1944.
- If you’re 40 years old and you’ve never had a failure, you’ve been deprived.
- The only time I ever went hunting I remembered it as a grisly experience.
- The first feminine feature that goes, with advancing age, is the neck.
