SORRY FOR HERSELF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 217, 13 September 1930, Page 5 (Supplement)

SORRY FOR HERSELF.

ALWAYS HAD TO FIGHT.

(By GLORIA SWANSON.)

If I have had trouble, it has been because 1 have had to light every inch of my way. Mary Pickford always had Douglas Fairbanks to lean on; Norma Talmadge Ims always acted over a net — with Joe Schenck holding the net. I have just had myself—and with plenty of other things to drag me down.

1 don't know why I havo always had to light. In every other way except business, I have been protected. I have had the same butler and cook for years. My cJiauli'eur has been with me a long time. 1 have two secretaries —one in Hollywood and one in New York; and they are like companions to me. My little daughter and iny adopted little boy have a governess who has been with me for years. They are all faithful and devoted.

But my business affairs. ... When they were not in the hands of crooks, it was something worse. For instance, I had a piece of property in Hollywood that a young fellow took over to sell for me. Out of friendship, he wanted to save me the expense of an attorney. So he handled the details himself. He saved me $200; and what do you suppose lie lost for me? One hundred thousand!

I sometimes feel sorry for myself—l, the most envied girl who breathes the breath of life. 1 have wealth, title of nobility, love, children, fame. . . People say that if Providence had come around with all the blessings of life on a tray like French pastry, I couldn't have had more! But they don't know what these things cost me. I was so ill that I couldn't digest even a glass of water. I would go to a cafe and have to come home; the music would make me so nervous I couldn't stand it.

A horrible sense of responsibility weighed over my life. It got to be a morbidity. I would wake up in the morning, so tired that I was like a rag; but I would almost frantically crawl out of bed. L was haunted ay ways by the feeling that I must do something, somehow, somewhere, or everything would collapse. That everything depended upon me. The doctors told me I would die if I didn't stop; but the producers held me mercilessly to my contract. They drove me on without pity.

The doctors finally sent me out into the country and told me to sit on the porch and not think about anything. Women-like me can't rest. I have to keep going even if death is at the end of the passage. , Still, what's the. use of talking like that. Ambition—and I have it— is purely a chemical process and success is when it "jells"—so to speak. It's no use to ask myself a lot of silly questions why I am not Mrs. Three-on-No-Trumps, of Chicago. I just couldu't help being what I am. Just like when I went to rest on the porch. Even if I knew that unhappiness would be the result, I would just have to climb up here and find out for myself. Well, it was worth while. Anyhow I have tasted it all. I have tried everything once. That's what life is for —experience—l've had a lot. Every creative mind finds* unhappiness—but happiness, too, only more of the former.