The 1929 Talkie „The Trespasser" was Edmund Goulding melodrama with Gloria Swanson (in her first „ALL TALKING picture"), Robert Ames, Purnell Pratt and Henry B. Walthall. )The producer Joseph P. Kennedy was the father of Joe, John, Bobby, and Teddy Kennedy, and had a well publicized love affair with Gloria Swanson for many years).
She originally hired writer/director Edmund Goulding to help her complete „Queen Kelly", the unfinished silent epic she'd started with Erich von Stroheim. After he'd spent months editing Von Stroheim's footage, Goulding persuaded Swanson to make „The Trespasser" -- based upon D.H. Lawrence's novel, instead. He wrote the script in three weeks, the movie was in theaters by the end of the year, and Swanson recouped enough money to pay off „Queen Kelly"'s backers.
The film tells the story of a "kept woman" who maintains a lavish life style with the help of her lover. It earned an Academy Award nomination for Gloria Swanson in her talkie debut and was a smash hit for its superstar, Gloria Swanson. (In 1937, Goulding remade the film as That Certain Woman with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda).
Sadly for Swanson, „The Trespasser" proved to be her only hit talkie. Subsequent followups like „What a Widow!", „Indiscreet", „Tonight or Never", „Perfect Understanding" and „Music in the Air" all proved to be box-office flops. Despite the disappointments following „The Trespasser", Swanson will be forever remembered as Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's masterpiece „Sunset Boulevard" (1950).
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Recording:
Ben Selvin and His Orchestra - Love, Your Spell Is Everywhere (from the Talkie "The Trespasser") (Music Edmund Gould, Words Elsie Janis), Columbia 1929
