Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo (
September 18,
1905 –
April 15,
1990) was a
Swedish actress, by reputation one of the greatest and most inscrutable
movie stars ever to be produced by
MGM and the
Hollywood studio system. In 1954 she received an
Honorary Oscar "for her unforgettable screen performances", and she has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame. [
1] [
2]
She was born
Greta Lovisa Gustafsson (some sources cite her original surname as
Gustafson) ([
3]) in
Stockholm, Sweden, the youngest of three children born to Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871 -1920) and Anna Lovisa Johansson (1872 - 1944). Her older sister and brother were Alva and Sven.
When Greta was 14, her father, to whom she was extremely close, died, and her relationship with her mother was, at best, strained. Consequently, she was forced to leave school and go to work. Her first job was as a lather girl in a barbershop.
She then became a clerk in the department store
PUB in
Stockholm, where she would also
model for newspaper advertisements. Her first
motion picture aspirations came when she appeared in a group of advertising short films for the department store where she worked, eventually seen by comedy director Eric Petscher.
He cast her in a bit part for his upcoming film
Peter The Tramp (1922) (although her major motion picture debut was a year earlier in a low-budget film).
From 1922 to 1924, she studied at the prestigious
Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. While she was there, she met director
Mauritz Stiller. He trained her in
cinema acting technique, gave her the
stage name Greta Garbo, and cast her in a major role in the silent film
Gösta Berlings Saga (1924) (English:
The Story of Gösta Berling), a dramatization of the famous novel by Nobel laureate
Selma Lagerlöf. She starred opposite Swedish film actor
Lars Hanson.
She starred in two movies in Sweden and one in Germany (
Die Freudlose Gasse --
The Joyless Street).
When Stiller went to the
United States in 1925 to work for
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he insisted that Garbo be given a contract as well. But their relationship came to an end as her fame grew. He was fired by MGM and returned to
Sweden in 1928, where he died soon after.
Throughout this period, Garbo was slowly emerging as a Galatea molded by a series of corporate Pygmalions. In photographs and films one can see her change from a pudgy shopgirl, through various metamorphoses as she enters the
studio machinery, until she turns into the perfect Sphinx, the "face" captured in famous pictures by
Steichen and Clarence Bull and other photographers of the period.
The most important of Garbo's
silent movies were
The Torrent (1926),
Flesh and the Devil (1927) and
Love (1927). She starred in the latter two with the popular leading man
John Gilbert.
Her name was linked with his in a much publicized romance, and she was said to have left him standing at the altar when she changed her mind about getting married. The actress reportedly had several lesbian or bisexual lovers, including
Louise Brooks and the writer/socialite
Mercedes de Acosta.
She also had an on-and-off affair with the primarily homosexual British photographer
Cecil Beaton who writes about his somewhat requited passion for her in his published diaries.
Having achieved enormous success as a silent
movie star, she was one of the few who made the transition to
talkies. She delayed as long as possible, and the studio worried endlessly about whether the world was ready for a talking Swedish Sphinx. Her film
The Kiss (1929) was the last film MGM made without dialog (it used a soundtrack with music and sound-effects only), and marked the end of an era.
Her low, husky voice with
Swedish accent was heard on screen for the first time in
Eugene O'Neill's
Anna Christie (1930), which was publicized with the slogan "Garbo Talks". The movie was a huge success, but Garbo personally hated her performance.
|
Greta Garbo on the cover of Silver Screen (November 1930). |
Unfortunately, her one-time fiancé,
John Gilbert, whose popularity was waning, did not fare as well after the advent of sound, due to the high pitch and thinness of his voice, and his career faltered. His last appearance with Garbo, in
Queen Christina, was not as bad as some critics have suggested: he suffered from the problem all of Garbo's leading men suffered, which was that she was inevitably stronger and more powerful than they were.
Gilbert,
John Barrymore,
Fredric March,
Robert Taylor and others ended up like feeble drones worshipping before the queen bee.
Clark Gable was more than a match for Garbo, but she made only one early film with him,
Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise. This may have been because the two greatly disliked each other - Greta thought Gable was a wooden actor while Gable in turn thought Greta was a snob.
When she was filmed, if something happened that she was not pleased with she would say, "I think I'll go back to
Sweden!" This would frighten the
movie studio heads, who gave in to her every wish. She was known for always having a closed set to all visitors, and was famous for having various MGM executives and actors ejected from sets. No one could watch as her scenes were shot.
Garbo appeared very seductive as the
World War I spy in the title role of
Mata Hari (1931). The censors complained about her revealing outfit shown on the movie poster. She was next part of an all-star cast in
Grand Hotel (1932), which won the
Best Picture Oscar and featured Garbo as a Russian ballerina melodramatically delivering the line "I want to be alone". Her co-star was
John Barrymore, among the other all-stars, including his elder brother,
Lionel Barrymore.
She then had a
contract dispute with MGM and did not appear on the screen for almost two years. They finally settled and she signed a new contract, which granted her almost total control over her movies.
She exercised that control by getting her leading man on
Queen Christina (1934),
Laurence Olivier, replaced with Gilbert.
David O. Selznick wanted her cast as the dying heiress in
Dark Victory in 1935, but she insisted on being cast instead in another screen version of
Tolstoy's classic,
Anna Karenina (she had made a previous silent version
Love with
John Gilbert in 1927). While
Anna Karenina has its moments, it also has the "glorious airless fishbowl" quality of many MGM epics of the period.
Her performance as the doomed courtesan in
Camille (1936), directed by
George Cukor, was called the finest ever recorded on film; her death scene with
Robert Taylor was particularly memorable. She subsequently starred opposite
Melvyn Douglas in the comedy
Ninotchka (1939), directed by
Ernst Lubitsch, which she herself seemed to enjoy making, and was one of her favourites.
Garbo was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Actress for
Anna Christie (1930),
Romance (1930),
Camille (1937) and
Ninotchka (1939).
Many of her fellow Hollywood actors and actresses were in awe of Garbo's talent.
"Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyse this woman's acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera." â€"Bette Davis
|
Early Garbo portrait from the 1920s |
Greta Garbo was considered one of the most glamorous movie stars of the 1920s and 1930s. She was also famous for shunning
publicity, which became part of the Garbo mystique. Except at the very beginning of her career, she granted no interviews, signed no autographs, attended no premieres and answered no fan mail.
Her famous byline was always said to be:
"I want to be alone", spoken with a heavy accent which made the word 'want' sound like
vont. This quote as noted comes from her role in
Grand Hotel, however Garbo commented later, "I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be left alone.' There is all the difference."
In recent years it has been revealed through countless sources about how common homosexuality and lesbianism were in the early years of Hollywood. Many stars of the silver screen were known to prefer the same sex, but the powerful studios almost always invented a life that would cover the "darker" side of the star's lives from the general public.
Garbo kept her private affairs out of the limelight. According to private letters released in Sweden in 2005 to mark the centenary of her birth, she was reclusive in part because she was "self-obsessed,
depressive, and ashamed of her latrine-cleaner father." [
4]
Some also suggest that Garbo remained single in the United States because of an unrequited love for her drama school sweetheart, the Swedish actress
Mimi Pollak (see [
5]). Garbo's personal letters recently released to the public indicate that she remained in love with Pollak for the rest of her life. When Pollak announced she was pregnant, Garbo wrote:
"We cannot help our nature, as God has created it. But I have always thought you and I belonged together." "Garbo's biographer Barry Paris notes that she was technically bisexual, predominantly lesbian, and increasingly asexual as the years went by", and it has been indicated that Garbo struggled greatly with her sexuality, only becoming involved with other women in affairs that
she could control. (as per [
6]).
Her most famous heterosexual relationship was with actor
John Gilbert. They starred together for the first time in the classic
Flesh and the Devil (1927). Their on-screen "erotic intensity" (see [
7]) soon translated into an off-camera romance and by the end of production Garbo had moved in with Gilbert (see[
8]) Gilbert is said to have proposed to Garbo at least three times (see [
9]) though when a marriage was finally arranged in 1927, she failed to show up at the ceremony (see [
10]).
She was also linked romantically with actresses
Marlene Dietrich,
Eva Le Gallienne,
Claudette Colbert,
Joan Crawford,
Louise Brooks,
Ona Munson, with writer
Salka Viertel, and had a long term and unstable affair with writer/poet
Mercedes de Acosta from 1931 to 1944, which ended badly. [
11] De Acosta reportedly loved her for the remainder of her life, although Garbo did not return that love.
Ninotchka was a successful attempt at lightening Garbo's image and making her less exotic, complete with the insertion of a scene in a restaurant which her character breaks into joyful laughter which subsequently provided the film with its famous
tagline, "Garbo laughs!"
A follow-up film,
Two-Faced Woman (1941), attempted to capitalize by casting Garbo in a romantic comedy, where she would play a double role that also featured her dancing, and tried to make her into "an ordinary girl". The film, directed by
George Cukor, was a failure. It was Garbo's last screen appearance.
It is often reported that Garbo chose to retire from cinema after this film's failure, but already by 1935 she was becoming more choosy about her roles, and eventually years passed without her agreeing to do another film. By her own admission, Garbo felt that after
World War II the world changed, perhaps forever.
In 1941, MGM costume-designer
Adrian also left the studio, later saying:
"It was because of Garbo that I left M-G-M. In her last picture they wanted to make her a sweater girl, a real American type. I said, 'When the glamour ends for Garbo, it also ends for me. She has created a type. If you destroy that illusion, you destroy her.' When Garbo walked out of the studio, glamour went with her, and so did I."
In 1949, Garbo filmed several
screen tests as she considered reentering the movie business to shoot "La Duchess de Langeais" directed by
Walter Wanger, but otherwise never stepped in front of a movie camera again. The plans for this film collapsed when financing failed to materialize, and these tests were lost for 40 years, then resurfaced in someone's garage. They were included in the 2005
TCM documentary
Garbo [
12] [
13], and show her still radiant at age 43[
14]. There were suggestions that she might appear as the "Duchess de Guermantes" in a film adaptation of
Marcel Proust's
In Search of Lost Time but this never came to fruition. She was offered many roles over the years, but always turned them down.
She withdrew from the entertainment world completely and moved to a secluded life in
New York City, refusing to make any public appearances. Up until her death, Garbo sightings were considered sport for
paparazzi photographers.
|
Gravestone of Greta Garbo |
Garbo felt her movies had their proper place in history and would gain in value. On
February 9,
1951, she became a
naturalized citizen of the
United States. In
1954 she was awarded a special
Academy Award for her unforgettable performances.
In 1953, she bought a seven room apartment in
New York City at 450 East 52nd Street, where she lived for the rest of her life. She reportedly never got over the unfinished affair she had with actress
Mimi Pollak in her youth, and in later life became bitter over it.
She would at times jet-set with some of the world's best known personalities such as
Aristotle Onassis, but chose to live a private life. She was known for taking long walks through New York streets dressed casually and wearing large sunglasses, always avoiding prying eyes, the
paparazzi and
media attention.
Garbo lived the last years of her life in absolute seclusion. She had invested very wisely, was known for extreme frugality, and was a very wealthy woman. It is rumored that she wrote an
autobiography just before her death but this book has yet to be published if it even exists.
She died at age 84 as a result of end stage renal disease (ESRD) and
pneumonia in New York and was cremated. She had previously been operated and treated for
breast cancer, which she apparently overcame.
She left her entire estate to her niece, Gray Reisfeld (Mrs. Donald Reisfeld), and nothing to the elderly female companion with whom she lived for many years, Claire.
Her ashes are buried at the
Skogskyrkogården Cemetery in
Stockholm,
Sweden.
Greta Garbo has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard in
Hollywood.
Her height was 5ft 7½" (1.71m).
In 1990
Ninotchka (1939) was added to the
National Film Registry. [
15]
In 1998
Camille (1936),
Grand Hotel (1932) and
Ninotchka (1939) were included in the
American Film Institute's list of 400 Movies nominated for
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies; however none made the final list.
In 1999, Garbo was #5 in the list of women in
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars.
In 2000,
Ninotchka (1939) was #52 in the list of
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.
In 2002,
Camille (1936),
Ninotchka (1939) and
Anna Karenina (1935) were included in the list of
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions.
In 2005, Garbo's famous line "I want to be alone." from
Grand Hotel (1932) was #30 in the list of
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes.
In 2005 both
Camille (1936) [
16] and
Ninotchka (1939) [
17] were included on
Time Magazine's All-Time 100 Movies.
In 2005, near the 100th anniversary of her birth, the
U.S. Postal Service and Sweden Post jointly issued two
commemorative postage stamps bearing her likeness. [
18]
Mr. and Mrs. Stockholm (1920) (short subject)
How Not to Dress (1921) (short subject)
Our Daily Bread (1921) (short subject)
A Happy Knight (1921)
Peter the Tramp (1922)
The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924)
The Joyless Street (1925)
The Torrent (1926)
The Temptress (1926)
Flesh and the Devil (1926)
Love (1927)
The Divine Woman (1928)
The Mysterious Lady (1928)
A Woman of Affairs (1928)
Wild Orchids (1929)
A Man's Man (1929) (cameo)
The Single Standard (1929)
The Kiss (1929)
Anna Christie (1930)
Romance (1930)
Inspiration (1931)
Love Business (1931) (short subject) (appears in gag photo)
Anna Christie (1931) (German version)
Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931)
Mata Hari (1931)
Grand Hotel (1932)
As You Desire Me (1932)
Queen Christina (1933)
The Painted Veil (1934)
Anna Karenina (1935)
Camille (1936)
Conquest (1937)
Ninotchka (1939)
Two-Faced Woman (1941)
*
Barry Paris,
Garbo, New York: Knopf, 1995, ISBN 081664182X
*
Diana McLellan,
The Girls : Sappho Goes to Hollywood, St. Martin's Griffin, 2001, ISBN 0312283202
*A
British sherman tank in
Call of Duty 2 was named Greta Garbo.
*A song on the 2005 album
Magic Time by
Van Morrison is titled "Just Like Greta Garbo". It was inspired by Greta Garbo's seclusion.
*In
Madonna's song "
Vogue" Greta Garbo was the first named, "Greta Garbo and Monroe..."
*
First and oldest Garbo Homepage from Germany - The Berlin Garbo Archiv*
Greta Garbo Biography - Yahoo! Movies*
Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): Greta Garbo*
Greta Garbo: The Ultimate Star*
GarboForever: The Legend Lives On (in German)
*
Greta Garbo: Rare Press Articles, Image Galleries, Complete Biography (in German/parts in English)
*
Greta Garbo - Bibliography, Photographs and Tobacco cards
