FAMOUS SUNSET BOULEVARD

Sunset Boulevard opens with screenwriter, Joe Gillis not only floating in a pool of silent screen legend Norma Desmond. While police and reporters swarm the mansion, Joe tells us what happened in a voice-over that leads to a flashback.

We find out that Joe Gillis is barely able to survive. He is visited by two repo men ready to take his car. He says he doesn't have it and they give him 24 hours to get it.

He retrieves his car and drives to Paramount to get script feedback. It has been panned by a reader. As he drives home, the repo men see him and give chase. They race along Sunset Boulevard and GIllis turn his car into an abandoned garage at a gaudy estate as the men pass him.

Joe goes to the door and is let in by butler Max who mistakes him for someone else? He directs him upstairs where silent movie star, Norma Desmond awaits.

Once upstairs, he sees a dead chimp that Norma expects him to bury. After explaining that he is a screenwriter, he recognizes her. She orders him out. As he leaves, she asks him to read a script she's written, Solame.

Joe thinks the script is awful, but he tells he he can spruce it up for a price. She hires him. He moves from his apartment to the guest house. When it starts leaking, he is moved into the main house. Max tells Joe that Norma's suicidal tendencies.

Norma slowly falls in love with Joe, and he becomes her new pet. The repo men find Joe's car and tow it away. Joe sneaks out and sees Betty, the script reader who rejected his script. Joe leaves when he finds out Norma has tried to commit suicide.

Feeling sorry for her, Joe gives into Norma. Norma visits Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount the next day. Not wanting her hurt her feelings, DeMille tells her that they will work together soon. Joe and Betty decide to work on a script secretly.
A deluded Norma prepares herself for her big return.

Betty tells Joe she's in love with him. Norma finds Joe's and Betty's script and phones Betty to tell her the truth about Joe. Joe invites Betty to the house. Betty wants him to leave with her, but he pretends he loves it there. After Betty leaves, Joe prepares to leave Norma.

Norma follows him outside and shoots him twice in the back and once in the stomach and he falls into the pool. So many policemen, photographers and reporters arrive that she thinks she is on the film set for Solame. Norma descends the stairs for the last time as only a star can do and goes into a darkness where she never returns.

Sunset Boulevard is about looking in the mirror and seeing the cracks. Norma's close-up is immortalized like her descent down the stairs which also symbolizes a decent to insanity.

She wants to regain the love and recognition she once had. She lived in the past because that was the only thing that gave her comfort. At Sunset Boulevard's core is a story of unrequited love.

Gloria Swanson's acting is so impeccable that you can feel Norma's sadness. You can feel her heavy heart breaking into a million pieces when Joe rejects her. Norma Desmond is the victim of rejection on all sides. There is unrequited love from Joe; from Hollywood; from her fans that have forsaken her and lastly from herself.

Norma doesn't love herself. She stopped when the public turned their backs on her. She felt dejected, unworthy and she would have done anything to get the love back. Anything -- including murder. A fate to which she never recovers.

Love's desperation is unrelenting. A well-to-do woman and a man nor doing so well. For every Norma Desmond, there is probably a Joe Gillis. Those who can't fulfill the void inside and find they love they crave. Those who waste good intentions on someone unworthy. Norma couldn't make Joe love her so she tried to buy him. When that didn't work, she demanded he return her love. He never did.

In the end, Joe paid the ultimate price. We have to believe that if we have love in our hearts, it will find a path to someone who appreciates us for who we are. Joe never had that luxury. Norma took it away and sent him to a watery grave.

Gloria Swanson may have only stood 4' 11½", but her performance in Sunset Boulevard as Norma Desmond soared to the greatest height of her career. Swanson started in silent films, but soon her speaking roles would garner her three Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations, in which she won a Golden Globe for Sunset Boulevard

Born Gloria May Josephine Svensson on March 27, 1897, in Chicago, Illinois. At 16, she accompanied her aunt to a film studio to see how movies were made. She was chosen from the crowd to be a walk-on performer in The Fable Of Elvira And Farina And The Meal Ticket. She later married her first husband, Wallace Beery and the two moved to California.

By appearing in several silent films, she became the highest paid actress in Hollywood by the mid 1920's. She divorced her first husband, but soon remarried. In all, she married seven men, earned and spent over $8 million dollars in the roaring 20s.

When Gloria was 30 years old, she ventured into talking motion pictures, that had begun in 1927. She adapted quite easily and in 1928 she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Sadie Thompson. In 1929, she was nominated again for her performance in The Trespasser. She slowly dropped out of making films in the 30s, until her triumphant return in 1950 with Sunset Boulevard. Once again she was nominated for her performance, but alas, lost.

Though she appeared in a few more films after Sunset Boulevard, that film was her swan song and she retired shortly thereafter. She appeared on television programs sporadically throughout the 60s and had one last shining moment in the 1975 film Airport 1975, where she played herself.

Gloria Swanson died on April 4, 1983 in New York City at the age of 84, but her work will live with us forever.

Sunset Boulevard was filmed at Paramount and it is also featured in the film when Norma Desmond is chauffeur driven through the mammoth gates to see Cecil B. DeMille.

Paramount Pictures began in July 12, 1912, when Adolph Zukor founded the production company Famous Players Film Corp. It is the longest continually operating studio in Hollywood and one of the few studios that admit the public on regular guided tours of the studio's back lot.

Paramount's pioneers include directors Cecil B. DeMille and William S. Hart, and stars Mary Pickford, Rudolf Valentino and Clara Bow. Wings, the studio's 1928 release, received the very first Academy Award® for Best Picture. After producing over 5,000 films, Paramount remains committed to the company's original slogan: "If it's a Paramount Picture, it's the best show in town."

Max chauffeurs Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis in an Isotta Tipo 8A Town Car Landaulet.

Isotta Fraschini is an Italian manufacturing company which produces sea engines and other goods. In the early 20th century it was famous worldwide as a luxury car manufacturer. The Isotta Fraschini was a favorite of royalty, and also extremely popular in the United States among the well-heeled. It rivaled the Rolls Royce.

Among it's owners were, Pope Pius XI, the Aga Khan, the queen of Romania, the king of Egypt, Benito Mussolini, William Randolph Hearst, Jack Dempsey and Rudolph Valentino.