The Most Beautiful Man in the World: Paul Swan, from Wilde to Warhol

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U of Nebraska Press, Jan 1, 2006 - Biography & Autobiography - 278 pages
When Andy Warhol cast Paul Swan (1883?1972) in three films in the mid-1960s, he knew that the octogenarian had once been internationally hailed as ?the most beautiful man in the world? and as ?Nijinsky?s successor.? Arthur Hammerstein had advertised Swan as ?a reincarnated Greek God,? and George and Ira Gershwin had celebrated his beauty in their musical Funny Face.

What Warhol didn?t know was that Swan had also been called ?America?s Leonardo,? portrait artist of the famous and the infamous, including writer Willa Cather, aviator Charles Lindbergh, British Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, and dictator Benito Mussolini. This book is the first to tell Swan?s story, from his days as a world-famous dancer and artist, through his film career?which ran from silent pictures, including De Mille?s Ten Commandments (1923), to Warhol?s Camp, Paul Swan, and Paul Swan I-IV (1965)?to his portrait painting late in life when Nelson Rockefeller?s children, Malachy McCourt, and Pope Paul VI were among his subjects.

With unprecedented access to Swan?s scrapbooks, letters, diaries, and an unpublished memoir that tells the story of a bisexual man trying to build a public life in perilous times, Janis and Richard Londraville reconstruct the intriguing life of this uniquely interesting figure, whose story, although widely glossed in the press, was until now never fully known.

 

Contents

Andy Warhol and the Rebirth of Paul Swan
1
Cold Comfort Farm 18801897
16
Mentors and Lovers 18971906
34
Apprentice to Adonis 19061911
53
Americas Premier Dancer 19111921
77
All the Worlds a Stage 19211925
106
Death and the Celebrity 19261929
121
Ateliers 19301933
136
Farewells 19381939
167
The Carnegie Club 19401950
184
Holding On 19511960
202
Diminuendo 19611972
220
Notes
239
Bibliography
263
Index
267
Copyright

Winds of War 19331938
152

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About the author (2006)

Janis Londraville is a fellow at the Center for Independent Scholars, Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley, and holds a guest appointment on the English faculty at the State University of New York at Potsdam. Richard Londraville is a professor emeritus of English at the State University of New York at Potsdam. The Londravilles are the authors of Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends and Too Long a Sacrifice: The Letters of Maud Gonne and John Quinn. Emily W. Leider is a poet, an editor, and the author of Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino and Becoming Mae West.

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