A predatory, pathetic cougar. I couldn't stand her. I've never saw her in a movie before, but was that all of Gloria Swanson's mannerisms in real life? Bug-eyed, hateful, and horrifying?
How could anybody ever find her attractive, even Joseph Kennedy? And I don't mean the fictional Norma Desmond - I mean, Gloria Swanson, the supposedly late great movie star. Was she truly as ugly in person as in the movie?
At this point, I wish I could see how Glen Close portrayed Norma Desmond in the musical version. I bet she portrayed her as human - cruel, bombastic, etc., but human. Unlike this Gloria Swanson who was as ugly as the beast Desmond had to bury in a funeral ceremony early on in the story.
Every word Swanson uttered was an emotional declamation. I bet if she had had a line that says, "I am going to brush my teeth," it would sound like a warning on the end of the world. Overacting was hardly sufficient to describe her performance. She should have been told that movie goers even in her time were not as dumb as to beat them with her theatricals over the head.
Or maybe the trouble was not Swanson herself, but the character Norma Desmond, as disgustingly written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. If there were any feminists worth their salt out there, it was this denigrating stereotype of cougars and would-be cougars both in the movies and in real life that they ought to protest against.
It was the predatory Vivien Leigh's Blanche DuBois, all over again. In A Streetcar Named Desire, DuBois, without regard for her sister Stella's feelings, shamelessly flirted with her younger brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, played by Marlon Brando, ultimately accusing him of rape.
It was, again, the cringy older Anna Magnani's sex-starved and woebegone Lady Torrance in The Fugitive Kind, allowing herself to get pregnant to hold hostage her boy-toy Val, also played by Brando.
It was the suicidal Mrs. Stone (Vivien Leigh again!) in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, dangerously tossing her apartment's keys to an anonymous stalker, after her boy-toy Paolo (played by Brando wannabe, Warren Beatty) insulted and abandoned her.
There are many pathetic examples of cougars in real life, especially among celebrities with descriptions both libelous and barf-inducing, but let me give just one example, the very classless way the young Brando in his autobiography, denigrated the elderly Talulah Bankhead, his co-star in the stage play, "The Eagle Has Two Heads:"
"Whenever I was onstage with her and the moment approached when I was supposed to kiss her, I couldn't bear it... Her tongue would explore every cranny in my mouth before forcing itself down my throat... I tried eating a lot of garlic, but that didn't stop her, so I asked a stagehand to buy me a bottle of mouthwash, and after each time I had to kiss her, I went offstage and took a swig, but that didn't work either, so I bought a very strong astringent lotion and began gargling with it in the wings after every kiss."
Was there ever an older woman-younger man relationship in a play or movie, where the cougar was held in high esteem? Yes, there was. It was Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession, with a difference: Rock Hudson was no boy-toy in the movie. He was an honest and ardent younger lover who tried and succeeded on improving himself to be worthy of her love. Wish there were more of that kind of May-December where the woman was the May; if not, at least, the conventional desperate romance between an older woman and a younger man with its share of tenderness and pain, that would not scandalize.
Unfortunately, it was not so with Gloria Swanson and William Holden in Sunset Blvd. For one thing, William Holden was a bit too old to be a boy-toy. For another, Swanson just seemed to be the most horrid, most despicable and a more frightful cougar than the examples mentioned above.
But how could she have done better? Apparently, that was how the misogynists Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote Norma Desmond. No wonder quite a number of the old silent movie stars declined the part. They felt insulted by the role.
According to Wikipedia, Wilder first considered Mae West and Marlon Brando for the leads, but West rejected the offer out-right. West portrayed herself as a sex symbol through her senior years and was offended that she should be asked to play a Hollywood has-been.
Greta Garbo and Clara Bow were not interested. Norma Shearer found the script distasteful. Wilder and Brackett then visited Mary Pickford, but before even discussing the plot with her, Wilder realized she would consider a role involving an affair with a man half her age an insult, so they departed.
Way to go, late classy ladies!
Why four stars? Because everything else in the movie, except the Desmond character, was perfect. The innovative point of view of a dead man telling his story with occasional biting humor; the awesome cinematography and clever use of light and dark, the music score, the story development, the locations and props, the interactions of the supporting cast and fascinating cameos of actual old stars and directors were tops.
Furthermore, the handsome William Holden was at his greatest.