The ultimate Hollywood story revealed: the sizzling relationship between Joseph Kennedy, patriarch of America’s most influential political family, and Gloria Swanson, one of the most prominent silent film stars of her day. Gloria and Joe were in love with each other and with the movies, especially Queen Kelly, which completed the real-life ménage à trois. Starring along with the star of the screen and the Boston Brahman in this exposé are Erich von Stroheim, Kennedy’s wife Rose, Swanson’s husband, and a cast of colorful hangers-on. Madsen recreates their love, scandal, and world, which in its extravagance and intrigue has never been surpassed.
“Axel Madsen shows Gloria Swanson and Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., in such a satisfyingly full-blown way that few readers—even Kennedys—will carp about invasion of privacy or mud on the idol. . . . [An] unstoppable read. . . . Reckless love, seen big.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Covering events in the lives of both principals until their deaths, the author also adds gossip about the Kennedy clan and members of the film colony.” —Publishers Weekly
“Gloria and Joe is great reading. Madsen [is] an expert on Hollywood. . . . The great strength of his book . . . is the background against which the somewhat torrid events were played out—Hollywood at the end of the silent era, in a time of enormous scandals and just before the entire American economy collapsed. It would make a fabulous movie.” —Cosmopolitan
