Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo
Garbo in a publicity still for Anna Karenina (1935)
Born	Greta Lovisa Gustafsson (1905-09-18)18 September 1905 Stockholm, Sweden
Died	15 April 1990(1990-04-15) (aged 84) New York, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1920–1941
Website	www.gretagarbo.com

Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990), born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress and an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of her films were sensational hits, and all but three of her twenty-four Hollywood films were profitable. Garbo was nominated four times for an Academy Award and received an honorary one in 1954 for her "luminous and unforgettable screen performances". She also won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for both Anna Karenina (1935) and Camille (1936). In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on their list of greatest female stars of all time, after Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman.

Garbo launched her career with a secondary role in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gosta Berling. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B. Mayer, chief executive of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She immediately stirred interest with her first silent film, Torrent, released in 1926; a year later, her performance in Flesh and the Devil, her third movie, made her an international star.

With her first talking film, Anna Christie (1930), she received an Academy Award nomination. MGM marketers enticed the public with the catch-phrase "Garbo talks!" That same year she won a second Oscar nomination for her performance in Romance. In 1932, popularity allowed her to dictate the terms of her contract and she became increasingly choosy about her roles. Many critics and film historians consider her performance as the doomed courtesan Marguerite Gautier in Camille to be her finest. The role gained her a third Academy Award nomination. After working exclusively in dramatic films, Garbo turned to comedy with Ninotchka (1939), which earned her a fourth Academy Award nomination, and Two-Faced Woman (1941).

In 1941, she retired after appearing in only twenty-eight films. Although she was offered many opportunities to return to the screen, she declined most of them. Instead, she lived a private life, shunning publicity.

Childhood and youth

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She was the third and youngest child of Anna Lovisa (née Karlsson, 1872–1944)—a homemaker and later worked at a jam factory—and Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871–1920), a laborer. Garbo had an older brother, Sven Alfred (1898–1967), and an older sister, Alva Maria (1903–1926).

Her parents met in Stockholm where her father visited from Frinnaryd. He moved to Stockholm to become independent, and worked in various odd jobs—street cleaner, grocer, factory worker and butcher's assistant. He married Anna, who recently had relocated from Högsby. The Gustafssons were impoverished and lived in a three-bedroom cold-water flat at Blekingegatan No. 32. They raised their three children in a working-class district regarded as the city's slum. Garbo would later recall:

It was eternally gray—those long winter's nights. My father would be sitting in a corner, scribbling figures on a newspaper. On the other side of the room my mother is repairing ragged old clothes, sighing. We children would be talking in very low voices, or just sitting silently. We were filled with anxiety, as if there were danger in the air. Such evenings are unforgettable for a sensitive girl. Where we lived, all the houses and apartments looked alike, their ugliness matched by everything surrounding us.

Garbo was a shy daydreamer as a child. She hated school and preferred to play alone. Yet she was an imaginative child and a natural leader who became interested in theatre at an early age. She directed her friends in make-believe games and performances and dreamed of becoming an actress. Later, she would participate in amateur theatre with her friends and frequent the Mosebacke Theater. At the age of 13, Garbo graduated from school and typical of a Swedish working-class girl at that time, she did not attend high school. She would later confess she had an inferiority complex about this.

In the winter of 1919 the Spanish flu spread throughout Stockholm, and Garbo's father, to whom she was very close, became ill. He began missing work and eventually lost his job. Garbo stayed at home looking after him and taking him to the hospital for weekly treatments. He died in 1920 when she was 14 years old.

Career

Early career (1920–1924)

She began her first job in 1920 as a soap-lather girl in a barbershop. Eventually, her friends advised her to look for a better job. She then applied for, and accepted, a position in the PUB department store running errands and working in the millinery department. Before long, she began modeling hats for the store's catalogs. Her success led to a more lucrative job as a fashion model for PUB. In late 1920, a director of film commercials for the store began casting Garbo in roles advertising women's clothing. The first film premiered 12 December 1920, and she appeared in several other commercials during the following year. Thus began Garbo's cinematic career. In 1922, Garbo caught the attention of director Erik Arthur Petschler who gave her a part in his short comedy, Peter the Tramp.

Garbo in her first leading role in the Swedish film The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924) with Lars Hanson

From 1922 to 1924, she studied at The Royal Dramatic Theatre's Acting School in Stockholm. She was recruited in 1924 by the prominent Swedish director, Mauritz Stiller, to play a principal part in his classic film The Saga of Gosta Berling, a dramatization of the famous novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf. She played opposite Lars Hanson, a well-known Swedish actor. Stiller became her mentor, training her as a film actress and managing all aspects of her nascent career. She followed her role in Gosta Berling with a starring role in the 1925 German film Die freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street or The Street of Sorrow), directed by G. W. Pabst and co-starring Asta Nielsen.

Accounts differ on the circumstances of her first contract with Louis B. Mayer, at that time vice president and general manager of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM). Victor Seastrom, a respected Swedish director at MGM, was good friends with Stiller and encouraged Mayer to meet him on a trip to Berlin. There are two recent versions of what happened next. In one, Mayer, always looking for new talent, had done his research and was interested in Stiller. He made an offer but Stiller demanded that Garbo be part of any contract, convinced that she would be an asset to his career. Mayer balked, but eventually agreed to a private viewing of Gosta Berling. He was immediately struck by Garbo's magnetism and became more interested in her than in Stiller. "It was her eyes", his daughter recalled him saying; "I can make a star out of her". In the second version, Mayer had already seen Gosta Berling before his Berlin trip and Garbo, not Stiller, was his primary interest. On the way to the screening, Mayer said to his daughter, "This director is wonderful but what we really ought to look at is the girl.... The girl, look at the girl!" After the screening, his daughter reported, he was unwavering: "I’ll take her without him. I’ll take her with him. "Number one is the girl". In any case, a contract was drafted that included both of them and after several months, the two set sail for America on the last day of June 1925.

Films during the silent era (1925–1929)

Stiller and Garbo, who was then age twenty and unable to speak English, arrived in New York where they remained for three months without any word from MGM. She and Stiller then went to Los Angeles on their own but another three weeks passed with little contact from MGM. During this period, the studio arranged for a dentist to straighten her teeth and made sure she lost weight. Although she expected to work with Stiller on her first film, she was cast in Torrent (1926), an adaptation of a novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, with director Monta Bell. She displaced Aileen Pringle, ten years her senior, and played a vamp opposite Ricardo Cortez. Torrent was a hit and despite its cool reception by the trade press, Garbo's performance was acclaimed.

Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1926) with John Gilbert

The success led Irving Thalberg, head of production at MGM, to cast her in a similar role in The Temptress (1926), based on another Ibáñez novel. After only one film, she was given top billing, playing opposite Antonio Moreno. Her mentor Stiller, who had persuaded her to take the part, was assigned to direct. For both Garbo (who did not want to play another vamp and did not like the script any more than she did the first one) and Stiller, The Temptress was a harrowing experience. Stiller, who spoke little English, had difficulty adapting to the studio system, and did not get on with Moreno, was fired by Thalberg and replaced by Fred Niblo. Reshooting The Temptress was expensive. Even though it became one of the top-grossing films of the 1926–27 season, with nearly US$1 million in receipts, it was, because of its cost, the only Garbo film of the period to lose money. However, Garbo again got good reviews and MGM had a new star.

Garbo went on to make eight more silent films and, with the exception of Torrent, all of them were profitable and most were highly successful. She starred in three of them with popular leading man John Gilbert. About their first movie, Flesh and the Devil (1926), silent film expert Kevin Brownlow states that "she gave a more erotic performance than Hollywood had ever seen". Their on-screen chemistry soon translated into an off-camera romance and by the end of the production, they began living together. The film also marked a turning point in Garbo's career. Film historian Mark Vieira writes, "Audiences were mesmerized by her beauty and titillated by her love scenes with Gilbert. She was a sensation". Profits from her third movie with Gilbert, A Woman of Affairs (1928), catapulted her to top Metro star of the 1928-29 box office season. In 1929, reviewer Pierre de Rohan wrote in the New York Telegraph, "She has a glamour and fascination for both sexes which have never been equaled on the screen". Despite her popularity as a silent movie star, the studio feared that her Swedish accent might impair her work in sound and delayed the shift for as long as possible. MGM itself made a slow changeover to sound. Her last silent movie, The Kiss (1929), was also the studio's.

During this period, Garbo began to require unusual conditions during the shooting of her scenes. She prohibited visitors—including the studio brass—from her sets and demanded that black flats or screens surround her to prevent extras and technicians from watching her. When asked about these eccentric requirements, she said, "If I am by myself, my face will do things I cannot do with it otherwise".

Film historian and critic David Denby argues that Garbo introduced a subtlety of expression to the art of silent acting and that its effect on audiences cannot be exaggerated. She "lowers her head to look calculating, or flutters her lips", he says. "Her face darkens with a slight tightening around the eyes and mouth; she registers a passing idea with a contraction of her brows or a drooping of her lids. Worlds turned on her movements".

Films during the "Golden Age" (1930–1939)

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Garbo in Grand Hotel (1932) with John Barrymore

Publicized with the slogan "Garbo talks!", Anna Christie (1930), a film adaptation of the 1922 play by Eugene O'Neill, provided her first speaking role. In her first line, she famously utters, "Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby." The movie was the highest-grossing film of the year and she received her first Academy Award nomination. She was nominated for an Academy Award again that year for her performance in Romance (1930). A German version of Anna Christie was also made in 1930. Garbo had successfully made the transition to talkies and after three less profitable films, Romance (1930), Inspiration (1931), and Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931), she performed two of her most famous roles. In 1931, she played the World War I spy in Mata Hari, opposite Ramón Novarro, and in 1932 she was part of an all-star cast in Grand Hotel in which she played a Russian ballerina.

Garbo in her first talkie, Anna Christie (1930)

Both films were big hits, with the latter winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the phenomenon of "Garbomania" reached its zenith. By this time she was earning $250,000 to $300,000 a film—an unprecedented salary for an actor—and had become a multimillion dollar industry with a fanatical following world-wide.

Although her domestic popularity was undiminished through the early 1930s, high profits from her films after Queen Christina in 1933 depended on the foreign market.

Following a contract dispute with MGM, Garbo signed a new contract with the studio in 1932 which gave her more control over her films and co-stars. She demonstrated loyalty to John Gilbert, whose career was faltering, and insisted, despite Mayer's objection, that he co-star in Queen Christina in which she played one of her most celebrated roles. (Laurence Olivier had originally been chosen to play the part.)

In 1935, David O. Selznick wanted to cast her as the dying heiress in Dark Victory, but Garbo chose Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1935) in which she played another of her renowned roles. Her subsequent part as the doomed courtesan opposite Robert Taylor in George Cukor's Camille (1936) earned her a third Academy Award nomination. Many film critics regard it as her finest performance.

in Queen Christina (1933)

After the disappointing Conquest (1937), Garbo was one of several major stars—including Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, and Katharine Hepburn—called "box office poison" in an open letter published by the National Theater Distributors of America. She then made a comeback in her first comedy playing opposite Melvyn Douglas in Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939). Ninotchka succeeded in lightening her somber and melancholy image and she earned a fourth Academy Award nomination. The film was marketed with the tagline "Garbo laughs!", playing off the one for Anna Christie.

From the early days of her career, Garbo avoided the social functions in Hollywood, preferring to spend her time alone or with friends. She never signed autographs, answered no fan mail, gave few interviews, and refused to give permission to arrange publicity contracts with the studio. She did not appear at the Oscar ceremonies even when she was nominated for the Best Actress award. Her aversion to publicity and the press was undeniably genuine, and exasperating to the studio at first. But MGM eventually capitalized on it for it bolstered the image of the silent and reclusive woman of mystery.

She is closely associated with a line from Grand Hotel, one which the American Film Institute in 2005 voted the 30th most memorable movie quote of all time, "I want to be alone, I just want to be alone", a theme echoed in several other roles. For example, in Love (1927) a title card reads, "I like to be alone"; in The Single Standard (1929) her character says, "I am walking alone because I want to be alone"; in the same film, she sails to the South Seas with her lover on a boat called the All Alone; in Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) she says to a suitor, "This time I rise... and fall... alone"; in Inspiration (1931) she tells a fickle lover, "I just want to be alone for a little while"; in Mata Hari (1931) she says to her new amour, "I never look ahead. By next spring I shall probably be... quite alone"; and in Ninotchka (1939) the motif is lampooned when emissaries from Russia ask her, "Do you want to be alone, comrade"? "No", she says. By the early 1930s, the phrase had become indelibly linked to Garbo's public and private personae.

Last work and early retirement (1941–1948)

With George Cukor's Two-Faced Woman (1941), MGM attempted to capitalize on Garbo's success in Ninotchka by casting her in a romantic comedy which sought to portray her as an ordinary girl. She played a double role that featured her dancing the rumba, swimming, and skiing. The film was a critical, although not entirely a commercial, failure. Garbo referred to the film as "my grave". Two-Faced Woman was her last film; she was thirty-six and had made only twenty-eight feature films in sixteen years.

"Garbo Laughs!" With Melvyn Douglas in Ernst Lubitsch's comedy Ninotchka (1939)

Although Garbo was humiliated by the negative reviews of Two-Faced Woman, she did not at first intend to retire. But her films depended on the European market and when it fell through with the war, finding a vehicle was problematic for MGM. She signed a one picture deal in 1942 to make The Girl from Leningrad but the project quickly dissolved. She still thought she would continue when the war was over though she was ambivalent and indecisive about returning to the screen. Salka Viertel, Garbo's close friend and collaborator, said in 1945, "Greta is impatient to work. But on the other side, she's afraid of it". Garbo also worried about her age. "Time leaves traces on our small faces and bodies. It's not the same anymore, being able to pull it off". George Cukor, director of Two-Faced Woman, and often blamed for its failure, said, "People often glibly say that the failure of Two-Faced Woman finished Garbo's career. That's a grotesque oversimplification. It certainly threw her, but I think that what really happened was that she just gave up. She didn’t want to go on".

Still, Garbo signed a contract in 1948 for $200,000 with producer Walter Wanger, who had produced Queen Christina, to shoot a picture based on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais. Max Ophüls was slated to adapt and direct. She made several screen tests, learned the script, and arrived in Rome in the summer of 1949 to shoot the picture. However, the financing failed to materialize and the project was abandoned. The screen tests—the last time Garbo stepped in front of a movie camera—were thought to have been lost for forty-one years until they were rediscovered in 1990 by film historians Leonard Maltin and Jeanine Basinger. Parts of the footage were included in the 2005 TCM documentary Garbo.

She was offered many roles in the 1940s and throughout her retirement years but she rejected all but a few of them. In the few instances when she accepted, the slightest problem led her to drop out. Although she refused to talk to friends throughout her life about her reasons for retiring, she told Swedish biographer Sven Broman four years before her death, "I was tired of Hollywood. I did not like my work. There were many days when I had to force myself to go to the studio.... I really wanted to live another life".

In retirement

In general, Garbo in retirement led a private life of simplicity and leisure. She made no public appearances and assiduously tried to avoid the publicity she loathed. As she had been during her Hollywood years, Garbo, with her innate need for solitude, was often reclusive. But contrary to myth, she always had many friends and acquaintances with whom she socialized, and later, traveled. Occasionally, she jet-setted with well-known and wealthy personalities, striving to guard her privacy as she had during her career. She has been forever linked to her famous line in Grand Hotel: "I want to be alone." But she later remarked, "I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be let alone.' There is a world of difference".

Garbo signing her US citizenship papers, in 1950

Still, she often floundered about what to do and how to spend her time ("drifting" was the word she frequently used), always struggling with her many eccentricities, and her lifelong melancholy, or depression, and moodiness. As she approached her sixtieth birthday, she told a frequent walking companion, "In a few days, it will be the anniversary of the sorrow that never leaves me, that will never leave me for the rest of my life". To another friend she said in 1971, "I suppose I suffer from very deep depression". It is also arguable, says one biographer, that she was bipolar. "I am very happy one moment, the next there is nothing left for me", she said in 1933.

Beginning in the 1940s, She became something of an art collector. Many of the paintings she purchased were of negligible value, but she did buy paintings by Renoir, Rouault, Kandinski, Bonnard, and Jawlensky. Her art collection was worth millions when she died in 1990.

On 9 February 1951, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1953, she bought a seven-room apartment at 450 East 52nd Street in Manhattan, New York City, where she lived for the rest of her life.

In 1969, Italian motion picture director Luchino Visconti allegedly attempted to bring Garbo back to the screen with a small part, Maria Sophia, Queen of Naples, in his adaptation of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. He exclaimed: "I am very pleased at the idea that this woman, with her severe and authoritarian presence, should figure in the decadent and rarefied climate of the world described by Proust". Claims that Garbo was interested in the part cannot be substantiated.

Later life: Sam Green and walking

The well conected Baron Cecile de Rothschild's summer home was located in Saint-Raphaël, Var on the French Riviera. In 1969, the first summer that Sam Green assisted English photographer Cecil Beaton, Green accompanied him to stay at de Rothschild's house. De Rothschild had been concerned for his isolated friend Garbo, and so began vetting Green to be a new companion for her. On Garbo's birthday - September 18, 1970 - de Rothschild introduced the pair at a birthday party he had arranged at his home in Saint-Raphaël. The following winter, in 1971 de Rothschild invited Green to a party at his apartment in New York, which became the first occasion when Green walked Garbo home. It was not until late 1972 that Green first entered Garbo's apartment, amazed to find that she permenantly covered her artworks to avoid having to uncover them when she was out of town.

Green quickly leart that he and Garbo had little in common but a love of walking and of silliness; but they formed an immediate bond which would last the 15 years. However, in all the years that Green knew Garbo, he never revealed that Mercedes de Acosta's sister Maria was his godmother; Garbo had cut Mercedes de Acosta off after her tell-all autobiography, so Green never mentioned her name. Garbo later also ostracised Beaton, after he claimed in his 1971 autobiography that the pair had been lovers.

Throughout her life, Garbo was known for taking long, daily walks with companions or by herself. In retirement, she walked the streets of New York City; "Garbo-watching" became a sport for photographers, the media, admirers, and curious New Yorkers, but she maintained her elusive mystique to the end. When ever Garbo and Green were both in New York, they would walk twice a week. Whatever the weather, the pair would walk, and Garbo - to avoid autograph hunters - would encased herself in many layers: two hats, large sunglasses, two scarves, ear muffs, two pairs of gloves, three layers of underwear, two sweaters. Green would walk her around the trendiest streets, with her addressing him always as “Mr Green”, and he called her “G”. Garbo also stayed at Green's houses in both Fire Island, New York, and Cartagena, Columbia, isolated locations where she enjoyed bathing naked.

Their main relationship was undertaken by telephone. They had a regular morning call:

You had to ring once, hang up, and ring again! Claire Koger, Garbo's maid, would then pick up the phone and say nothing. You'd identify yourself into the void, and your name would be relayed to Garbo, who was standing by to give Claire the thumbs-up or- down sign.

At an early stage, Green informed Garbo that as an art dealer, he often recorded his telephone calls. Garbo made no immediate protest, and Green never violated the understanding that the recordings would not be exploited in any way during or after her lifetime. In the fall on 1985, while Green was in Columbia, Green's assistant spoke to a journalist working for the American tabloid newspaper, The Globe. On October 29, the headline read "Garbo to wed at 80 - bridegroom will be art dealer 30 years her junior.” On his return to New York, Green rang Garbo to arrange a walk, to which she responded: “Mr. Green, you've done a terrible thing.” The relationship ended at that point, with Garbo's friends later adding that she had heard that Green had played their tape recordings over a diner party, an acusation which Green categorically denied.

Although she became increasingly withdrawn in her final years, Garbo had become close over time to her house-keeper and cook of thirty-one years, Claire Koger. “We were very close—like sisters", Koger said. After her death five years later on April 15 1990, Green learnt that around that period, due to her failing physical and mental health, Garbo had also cut many other close friends out of her life. Green in his last will and testament bequeathed all 100hrs of the tapes to the Wesleyan University, which make up one of the most important records of the last 50 years of Garbo's life.

Relationships

Garbo never married, had no children, and lived alone as an adult. Her most famous romance was with her frequent co-star, John Gilbert, with whom she lived intermittently in 1926 and 1927. MGM capitalized on her relationship with Gilbert after their huge hit, Flesh and the Devil by costarring them again in two more hits, Love (1927) and A Woman of Affairs (1928). Gilbert allegedly proposed to her numerous times. Legend has it that when a double marriage was arranged in 1926 (with Eleanor Boardman and King Vidor), Garbo failed to appear at the ceremony. Her recent biographers, however, question the veracity of this story. In 1937, she met conductor Leopold Stokowski with whom she had a highly publicized friendship or romance while traveling throughout Europe the following year. In his diary, Erich Maria Remarque discusses a liaison with Garbo in 1941 and in his memoir, Cecil Beaton described an affair with her in 1947 and 1948. In 1940, she met the Russian-born millionaire, George Schlee, who was married to fashion designer Valentina. Schlee, who split his time between the two, became Garbo's close companion and advisor until his death in 1964.

Recent biographers and others believe that Garbo was bisexual or lesbian, and that she had intimate relationships with women as well as with men. In 1927 Garbo was introduced to stage and screen actress Lilyan Tashman and strong evidence indicates that the two began an affair; silent film star Louise Brooks stated that she and Garbo had a brief liaison the following year. In 1931, Garbo befriended the writer and avowed lesbian Mercedes de Acosta, introduced to her by her close friend, Salka Viertel, and, according Garbo's and de Acosta's biographers, began a sporadic and volatile romance. The two remained friends—with ups and downs—for almost thirty years during which time Garbo wrote de Acosta 181 letters, cards, and telegrams which are kept at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia. Garbo's family, which controls her estate, has made only 87 of them available to the public. In 2005 Swedish actress, Mimi Pollak, a close friend in drama school, released sixty letters Garbo had written her in their long correspondence. Several letters suggest she may have had romantic feelings for Pollak for many years. After learning of Pollak's pregnancy in 1930, for example, Garbo wrote, "We cannot help our nature, as God has created it. But I have always thought you and I belonged together". In 1975, she wrote a poem about not being able to touch the hand of her friend with whom she might have been walking through life.

Death

Gravestone of Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo died on 15 April 1990, aged 84, in New York Hospital as a result of pneumonia and renal failure. She had been successfully treated for breast cancer in 1984. Garbo was cremated and her ashes were interred in 1999 at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery just south of her native Stockholm.

She had invested wisely, primarily in stocks and bonds, and left her entire estate, $32,042,429, to her niece, Gray Reisfield.

Legacy

Garbo in Inspiration (1931) publicity still

Garbo was an international superstar during the late silent era and the "Golden-Age" of Hollywood and is widely regarded as a cinematic legend. Almost immediately, with the sudden popularity of her first pictures, she became a screen icon. For most of her career she was the highest paid actor or actress at MGM, making her for many years its biggest "prestige" star. It has been said that at the peak of her popularity she had become a virtual cult figure.

Garbo developed an acting style that is thought to have been ahead of its time, one that set her apart from other actors and actresses of the period. About her work in silents, film critic Ty Burr said, “This was a new kind of actor—not the stage actor who had to play to the far seats but someone who could just look and with her eyes literally go from rage to sorrow in just a close up.” Noted film historian Jeffrey Vance said that Garbo communicated her characters' innermost feelings through her movement, gestures, and most importantly, her eyes. With the slightest movement of them, he argues, she subtlety conveyed complex attitudes and feelings toward other characters and the truth of the situation. This approach demonstrated a deep bond with the character, with actions seemingly made on the basis of internal motivation—now referred to as working "from the inside-out". Director Clarence Brown, who made seven of Garbo's pictures, once said. "You could see thought. If she had to look at one person with jealousy, and another with love, she didn't have to change her expression. You could see it in her eyes as she looked from one to the other." Director George Sidney adds, “You could call it underplaying but in underplaying she overplayed everyone else.”

Critics have argued that few of Garbo's twenty-four Hollywood films are artistically exceptional, and that many are simply bad. It has been said, however, that her commanding and magnetic performances usually overcome the weaknesses of plot and dialogue.

Because Garbo was suspicious and mistrustful of the media, and often at odds with MGM executives, she spurned Hollywood's publicity rules. Except at the start of her career, Garbo conducted few interviews (she gave only fourteen in her life), signed no autographs, attended few industry social functions, and turned down all but a few requests for public appearances. She was routinely referred to by the press as the "Swedish Sphinx". Her reticence and fear of strangers perpetuated the mystery and mystique that she projected both on screen and in real life. In spite of her strenuous efforts to avoid publicity, Garbo paradoxically became one of the twentieth-century's most publicized women in the world.

Garbo is the subject of several documentaries, including four made in the United States between 1990 and 2005:

• The Divine Garbo (1990), TNT, produced by Ellen M. Krass and Susan F. Walker, narrated by Glenn Close
• Greta Garbo: The Mysterious Lady (1998), Biography Channel, narrated by Peter Graves
• Greta Garbo: A Lone Star (2001), AMC
• Garbo (2005), TCM, directed by Kevin Brownlow, narrated by Julie Christie

She has been praised in the media and by personalities in cinema and culture, including:

Ephraim Katz (The Film Encyclopedia: The Complete Guide to Film and the Film Industry): Of all the stars who have ever fired the imaginations of audiences, none has quite projected a magnetism and a mystique equal to Garbo's. "The Divine", the "dream princess of eternity", the "Sarah Bernhardt of films", are only a few of the superlatives writers used in describing her over the years.... She played heroines that were at once sensual and pure, superficial and profound, suffering and hopeful, world-weary and life-inspiring.

Bette Davis: Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyze this woman's acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera.

George Cukor She had a talent that few actresses or actors possess. In close-ups she gave the impression, the illusion of great movement. She would move her head just a little bit and the whole screen would come alive, like a strong breeze that made itself felt.

Awards and honors

Garbo was nominated four times for an Academy Award for Best Actress, including twice in 1930, for Anna Christie and Romance. She lost out to Irving Thalberg's wife, Norma Shearer, who won for The Divorcee. In 1937, Garbo was nominated for Camille, but Luise Rainer won for The Good Earth. Finally, in 1939, Garbo was nominated for Ninotchka, but again came away empty-handed. Gone With the Wind swept the major awards, including Best Actress, which went to Vivien Leigh. She was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for her luminous and unforgettable screen performances" in 1954. She did not show up at the ceremony, and the statuette was mailed to her home address.

She twice received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for Anna Karenina, 1935, and Camille, 1936.

She won the National Board of Review Best Acting Award for Camille, 1936, Ninotchka, 1939, and Two-Faced Woman, 1941.

The Swedish royal medal, Litteris et Artibus, awarded to people who have made important contributions to culture, especially music, dramatic art or literature, was presented to Garbo in January 1937.

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A German postage stamp featuring Garbo

In a 1950 Daily Variety opinion poll, Garbo was voted Best Actress of the Half Century,

In 1957, Garbo was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.

In November 1983, Garbo was made a Commander of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star by order of King Carl XVI Gustaf, the King of Sweden.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on their list of greatest female stars of all time, after Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman.

For her contributions to cinema, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard.

She was once designated the most beautiful woman who ever lived by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Garbo appears on a number of postage stamps, and in September 2005, the United States Postal Service and Swedish Posten jointly issued two commemorative stamps bearing her image.

On 6 April 2011, Sveriges Riksbank announced that Garbo's portrait will be featured on the 100 krona banknote, beginning in 2014–15.

Filmography

Film credits

Year	Title	Role	Director	Co-star	Notes
1920	Mr. and Mrs. Stockholm Go Shopping	Elder sister			Swedish: Herrskapet Stockholm ute på inköp; An advertisement. Garbo's segment is often known as How Not to Dress. The commercial premiered 12 December 1920.
1921	The Gay Cavalier	Garbo played an extra.			Swedish: En lyckoriddare; Uncredited. The film is lost.
1921	Our Daily Bread	Companion			Swedish: Konsum Stockholm Promo; An advertisement
1922	Peter the Tramp	Greta			Swedish: Luffar-Petter; A two-reel comedy; Garbo's first part in a commercial film
1924	The Saga of Gosta Berling	Elizabeth Dohna	Mauritz Stiller	Lars Hanson	Swedish: Gösta Berling's Saga; Garbo’s first leading part in a feature-length film, directed by her mentor, the celebrated Mauritz Stiller.
1925	The Joyless Street	Greta Rumfort	G. W. Pabst	Asta Nielsen	German: Die freudlose Gasse; Garbo plays the principal role in this German film made by renowned director Pabst
1926	Torrent	Leonora Moreno aka La Brunna	Monta Bell	Ricardo Cortez	First American movie. All of Garbo's subsequent movies were made in Hollywood and produced by MGM.
1926	The Temptress	Elena	Fred Niblo	Antonio Moreno	Stiller was originally assigned to direct; his directing methods and personality led to conflicts with MGM producer Irving Thalberg who fired him.
1926	Flesh and the Devil	Felicitas	Clarence Brown	John Gilbert	First of seven Garbo movies directed by Clarence Brown and first of four with co-star John Gilbert
1927	Love	Anna Karenina	Edmund Goulding	John Gilbert	Adapted from the novel Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
1928	The Divine Woman	Marianne	Victor Seastrom	Lars Hanson	The film is lost; only a 9 minute reel exists.
1928	The Mysterious Lady	Tania Fedorova	Fred Niblo	Conrad Nagel
1928	A Woman of Affairs	Diana Merrick Furness	Clarence Brown	John Gilbert	The first of seven Garbo films with actor Lewis Stone who, with the exception of Wild Orchids, played secondary roles.
1929	Wild Orchids	Lillie Sterling	Sidney Franklin	Nils Asther
1929	The Single Standard	Arden Stuart Hewlett	John S. Robertson	Nils Asther, John Mack Brown
1929	The Kiss	Irene Guarry	Jacques Feyder	Conrad Nagel	Garbo's, and MGM's, last silent picture
1930	Anna Christie	Anna Christie	Clarence Brown	Charles Bickford, Marie Dressler	Garbo's first talkie and first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress
1930	Romance	Madame Rita Cavallini	Clarence Brown	Gavin Gordon	Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1930	Anna Christie	Anna Christie	Jacques Feyder	Hans Junkermann, Salka Viertel	MGM's German version of Anna Christie was also released in 1930; Salka Viertel, Garbo's close friend, later co-wrote several of her screenplays.
1931	Inspiration	Yvonne Valbret	Clarence Brown	Robert Montgomery
1931	Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise)	Susan Lenox	Robert Z. Leonard	Clark Gable
1931	Mata Hari	Mata Hari	George Fitzmaurice	Ramon Novarro	After the multi-star Grand Hotel, Garbo's highest grossing film
1932	Grand Hotel	Grusinskaya	Edmund Goulding	John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery	Academy Award for Best Picture
1932	As You Desire Me	Zara aka Marie	George Fitzmaurice	Melvyn Douglas, Erich von Stroheim	First of three movies with Douglas
1933	Queen Christina	Queen Christina	Rouben Mamoulian	John Gilbert
1934	The Painted Veil	Katrin Koerber Fane	Richard Boleslavski	George Brent
1935	Anna Karenina	Anna Karenina	Clarence Brown	Fredric March	New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
1936	Camille	Marguerite Gautier	George Cukor	Robert Taylor	New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress National Board of Review Best Acting Award Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1937	Conquest	Countess Marie Walewska	Clarence Brown	Charles Boyer	Because the final cost for this extravagant production vastly exceeded its budget, coupled with its poor box office receipts, the film lost $1,397,000.
1939	Ninotchka	Nina Ivanovna "Ninotchka" Yakushova	Ernst Lubitsch	Melvyn Douglas	National Board of Review Best Acting Award Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated—New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
1941	Two-Faced Woman	Karin Borg Blake	George Cukor	Melvyn Douglas	National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Best Acting Award

Gallery

• 
  The Joyless Street (1925) publicity still
• 
  Wild Orchids (1929) publicity still
• 
  Camille (1936) with Robert Taylor
• 
  Ninotchka (1939) with Melvyn Douglas

Bibliography and further reading

• Bainbridge, John (1955). Garbo (1st ed.). Garden City, NY: Doubleday. 256 pages. OCLC 1215789. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |nopp= ignored (|no-pp= suggested) (help)
  • Bainbridge, John (1971). Garbo (reissued) (1st ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 320 pages. ISBN 978-0-03-085045-5. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |nopp= ignored (|no-pp= suggested) (help)
• Bainbridge, John (10 January 1955). "The Great Garbo". Life. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Bainbridgefirst=John (17 January 1955). "The Great Garbo: Part Two: Greta's Haunted Path to Stardom". Life. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Bainbridge, John (24 January 1955). "The Great Garbo: Part Three: The Braveness to Be Herself". Life. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Barnes, Bart (16 April 1990). "Glory That Was Garbo; An Unparalleled Career and a Permanent Place in the Screen Pantheon". The Washington Post. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Biery, Ruth (April 1928). "The Story of Greta Garbo As Told By her to Ruth Biery, Chapter I". Photoplay. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Biery, Ruth (May 1928). "The Story of Greta Garbo As Told By her to Ruth Biery, Chapter II". Photoplay. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Biery, Ruth (June 1928). "The Story of Greta Garbo As Told By her to Ruth Biery, Chapter III". Photoplay. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Borg, Sven Hugo (1933). The Only True Story of Greta Garbo's Private Life. London: Amalgamated Press. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Broman, Sven (1990). Conversations with Greta Garbo. New York: Viking Press, Penguin Group. ISBN isbn 06708277X. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Carr, Larry (1970). Four Fabulous Faces: The Evolution and Metamorphosis of Swanson, Garbo, Crawford and Dietrich. Doubleday and Company. ISBN 0-87000-108-6.
• Chandler, Charlotte (2010). I Know Where I'm Going: Katharine Hepburn, A Personal Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 119. ISBN 978-1-4391-4928-7. Retrieved 21 August 2011. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Krutzen, Michaela (1992). The Most Beautiful Woman on the Screen: The Fabrication of the Star Greta Garbo. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 3-631-42412-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• LaSalle, Mick (6 July 2005). "Interview with John Gilbert's daughter, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain". San Francisco Chronicle.
• Italo Moscati, "Greta Garbo, diventare star per sempre", Edizioni Sabinae, Roma, 2010.
• "Greta Garbo Back – A Bit Less Aloof: Film Star, Still Showing the Effects of Illness, Consents to 10-Minute interview". The New York Times. 4 May 1936. Retrieved 12 July 2010.
• "Greta Garbo, 84, Screen Icon Who Fled Her Stardom, Dies". New York Times, The. 16 April 1990. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |newspaper= (help)
• Palmborg, Rilla Page (1931). The Private Life of Greta Garbo. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-90-00-00721-9. Retrieved 22 July 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Paris, Barry (1994). Garbo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-8166-4182-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ricci, Stefania, ed. (2010). Greta Garbo: The Mystery of Style. Milan: Skira Editore. ISBN 978-88-572-0580-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Schanke, Robert A. (2003). "That Furious Lesbian": The Story of Mercedes de Acosta. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-2511-X.
• Souhami, Diana (1994). Greta and Cecil. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-250829-4. Retrieved 24 July 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Swenson, Karen (1997). Greta Garbo: A life Apart. New York: Scribner. ISBN 978-0-684-80725-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Vickers, Hugo (1994). Loving Garbo: The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, and Mercedes de Acosta. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-679-41301-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Vieira, Mark A. (2009). Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-26048-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Vieira, Mark A. (2005). Greta Garbo: A Cinematic Legacy. New York: Harry A. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-5897-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Greta Garbo at AllMovie
• Greta Garbo at IMDb
• Greta Garbo at the TCM Movie Database
• Greta Garbo Biography—Yahoo! Movies
• Garbo History
• Greta Garbo at Virtual History
• Reklamfilmer PUB Greta Garbo, commercials done in 1920 and 1922, Filmarkivet.se, Swedish Film Institute