Swanson Operetta

Cinemagoers who saw Gloria Swanson in The Trespasser (TIME, Nov. 11) were surprised when she sang the tawdry theme song in a voice exceedingly pleasant. Hungarian Franz Lehar, venerable comic opera composer (The Merry Widow, Gypsy Love, The Count of Luxemburg) saw The Trespasser in Berlin. For two years he had consistently refused to write music for cinema production, but so impressed was he with the Swanson singing that last week he agreed to compose music for Queen Kelly, an unlucky Swanson vehicle-- started two years ago, exhausting two directors (Von Stroheim and Goulding) and millions of dollars, still unfinished. Because in childhood an astrologer warned against sea voyages, Composer Lehar, 60, will not travel to California for the recording. No novice at singing, Gloria Swanson has studied intermittently since her Chicago schooldays. Only when Mack Sennett offered her a cinema contract and a wardrobe of bathing suits did she definitely abandon the idea of a concert career.

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