“Tonight I want to welcome you to a showing of a naughty little number I made with my own money – $800,000 of it.”
– Gloria Swanson introducing Queen Kelly in 1967

Silent cinema icon Gloria Swanson was born on this day in 1899. Today, 127 years later, is the publication day for my new book The Curse of Queen Kelly. The title of the book is taken from a phrase Swanson herself used for the disastrous production of her film Queen Kelly, directed, until she fired him, by the great Erich von Stroheim.

My book, published today by Sticking Place Books, tells the full story of how Swanson and Stroheim – and Joseph P. Kennedy became tangled up together in the attempt to make an impossible film. And it tells exactly what happened next, to this brilliant, transgressive and enduring unfinished film.

There are a number of ways you could choose to celebrate this auspicious date: