Difference between revisions of "Greta Garbo" - New World Encyclopedia
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==References== | ==References== | ||
| − | + | * Broman, Sven. 1992. ''Conversations with Greta Garbo''. New York: Vikings. ISBN 067084277X ISBN 9780670842773 | |
| + | * Paris, Barry. 1995. ''Garbo''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0283999543 ISBN 978-0283999543 | ||
| + | * Swenson, Karen. 1997. ''Greta Garbo: A Life Apart''. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0684807254 ISBN 9780684807256 | ||
| + | * Wayne, Jane Ellen. 2002. ''The Golden Girls of MGM''. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0786713038 ISBN 978-0786713035 | ||
==External links== | ==External links== | ||
Revision as of 20:15, 23 June 2007
| Greta Garbo | |
 Greta Garbo in 1925 (photo by Arnold Genthe) | |
| Birth name: | Greta Lovisa Gustafsson |
|---|---|
| Date of birth: | September 18, 1905 |
| Birth location: |  Stockholm, Sweden
|
| Date of death: | April 15, 1990 (84) |
| Death location: |  New York City, New York
|
| Academy Awards: | Best Actress Nominated: 1930 Romance 1930 Anna Christie 1938 Camille 1940 Ninotchka Lifetime Achievement Award (1955) |
Greta Garbo (September 18, 1905-April 15, 1990) was a Swedish-born actress during Hollywood's silent film period and part of its Golden Age.
Regarded as one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars ever produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Hollywood studio system. She was known for her intensely private life, strict performing schedule, and extravagant demands, which included closing sets even to the directors. She grew up from poor humbling household in Stockholm and beat the odds as a slightly overweight foreign teenager to become the most sought out actresses of the day and a legend in Hollywood.
Early life
Born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Stockholm, Sweden, the youngest of three children born to Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871-1920) and Anna Lovisa Johansson (1872-1944). Her parents married in May of 1898 and had their first child, a son, Sven in July of that year. In 1903, they had their first daughter, Alva.
Garbo yearned to be on stage at the early age of seven, where should would gaze at the actors going into the Southside Theatre all dressed in their costumes and make-up. When Garbo was fourteen years old, her father with whom she was extremely close, became very ill and it was her who would take him to the clinics and only him who would listen to her dreams of becoming an actress. Unfortunately in 1919, her father died of kidney failure and Garbo was forced to leave school and delay her dreams to work full time as a lather girl in a barbershop.
She then became a clerk at the department store PUB in Stockholm, where she would also model for newspaper advertisements. She appeared in a group of short film advertisements for the department store where she worked, and they were eventually seen by comedy director Eric Petscher. He along with many other actresses would come into the store and Garbo always went out of her way to wait on them. After just reading him a poem, Garbo was cast in his next film which ultimately led her to quitting her job at PUB. This would be her last job she would hold outside of the entertainment industry. She was cast in a big part for his upcoming film Peter The Tramp in 1922. In terms of her future, it was very significant film as it led Petscher to persuade her to apply to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.
From 1922 to 1924, she studied at the prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre. While she was there, she met director Mauritz Stiller and cast her in a major role in the silent film Gösta Berlings Saga in 1924, a dramatization of the famous novel by Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf. She starred opposite Swedish film actor Lars Hanson and then starred in two more movies in Sweden and one in Germany (Die Freudlose Gasse - The Joyless Street). It was him who told her to lose twenty pounds and decided to at first change her name to Mona Gabor, but thankfully settled on the stage name of Greta Garbo.
She and Stiller were brought to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Louis B. Mayer when Gösta Berlings Saga caught his attention. On viewing the film, Mayer was impressed with Stiller's direction, but was much more taken with Garbo's acting and screen presence. Garbo was signed in the spot with Miller, and made her first visit to America on July 6, 1925. According to Mayer's daughter, Irene, with whom he screened the film, it was look and emotions that emanated from her eyes that would make her a star. When they got to New York City, Garbo and Miller were wined and dined for two months waiting on word from Mayer. Garbo the whole time was homesick and wanted to go home, that was when Mayer increased her salary from 100$ to 400$ with a clause that her mother give permission. At the time Mayer did not realize that Garbo was underage, which was the reason for the two month stall in New York City. Upon accepting, she finally moved to Hollywood in September 10, 1925.
Life in Hollywood
Garbo's first film in Hollywood was The Torrent and was a box office success. She played opposite Ricardo Cortez and was hailed as a brilliant actress. With such great reviews, she was cast immediately in The Temptress which was directed by Stiller and also starred Antonio Moreno. Unfortunately the constant disputes between Stiller and Moreno held up production and Stiller was eventually replaced by Fred Niblo.
Her next film, Flesh and Devil starred her with John Gilbert, the American heartthrob and considered counterpart. At the time of this film, Garbo had just found out her sister Alva had died from cancer at the early age of twenty-three. She was depressed, tired, and had no more faith in herself. Gilbert changed that and despite language barriers he seemed the only one to get through to her improving her technique and attitude. When the film wrapped, Garbo moved in with Gilbert. Garbo was a different person with Gilbert and even attended the premiere of Gilbert's movie Bardelys the Magnificent, the only premiere she ever attended.
Having achieved enormous success as a silent movie star, she was one of the few actors who made the transition to talkies, though she delayed the shift for as long as possible. Her film The Kiss (1929) was the last film MGM made without dialog (it used a soundtrack with music and sound effects only).
Her low, husky voice and Swedish accent was first heard on screen in Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie (1930), which was publicized with the slogan "Garbo Talks." The movie was a huge success, but Garbo hated her performance. However, Garbo received her first two nominations for an Academy Award for Best Actressin both The Kiss and Anna Christie. In 1931, Garbo shot a German version of the movie Anna Christie, which she considered one of her best works on screen.
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.
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 in Queen Christina (1933), Laurence Olivier, replaced with Gilbert. In 1935, David O. Selznick wanted her cast as the dying heiress in Dark Victory — filmed with Bette Davis in 1939 at Warner Brothers — but she insisted on being cast instead in another screen version of Tolstoy's classic, Anna Karenina. (She had made a silent version of Anna Karenina entitled Love with John Gilbert in 1927.)
Her performance as the doomed courtesan in Camille (1936), directed by George Cukor, was called the finest ever recorded on film. She subsequently starred opposite Melvyn Douglas in the comedy Ninotchka (1939), directed by Ernst Lubitsch, which she herself enjoyed making, and which was one of her favorites.
Over her career, Garbo received praise from many fellow actors as well as reviewers:
“ 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. ”
Later career
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 critical (though not commercial) 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 MGM. 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; 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.[1] They were included in the 2005 TCM documentary Garbo,[2] and show her still radiant at age 43[3] 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.
Her last interview appears to have been with the celebrated entertainment writer Paul Callan of the London Daily Mail during the Cannes Film Festival. Meeting at the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc, Callan began "I wonder . . ," before Garbo cut in with "Why wonder?," and stalked off, making it one of the shortest interviews ever published. The newspaper gave it a double page spread.
She gradually 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 paparazzo photographers.
Despite these attempts to flee from fame, she was nevertheless voted Best Silent Actress of the Century (her compatriot Ingrid Bergman winning the Best Sound Actress) in 1950, and was also designated as the most beautiful woman who ever lived by the Guiness Book of World Records.
Secluded retirement
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 and Cecil Beaton, but chose to live a private life. She was known for taking long walks through the 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 in New York on April 15th, 1990, at the age of 84, as a result of end stage renal disease (ESRD) and pneumonia, and was cremated. She had previously been operated on and treated for breast cancer, which she overcame.
She left her entire estate to her niece, Gray 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.
For her contributions to cinema, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard. In addition, in 2005 the U.S. Postal Service and Sweden Post jointly issued two commemorative postage stamps bearing her likeness.[4]
Personal life
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 her 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 later commented, "I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be left alone.' There is all the difference."
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."[5]
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.[6] 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." It has been indicated that Garbo struggled greatly with her sexuality, only becoming involved with other women in affairs that she could control.[7]
Her most famous heterosexual relationship was with actor John Gilbert. They starred together for the first time in the classic Flesh and the Devil in 1926. Their on-screen "erotic intensity"[8] soon translated into an off-camera romance, and by the end of production Garbo had moved in with Gilbert. Gilbert is said to have proposed to Garbo at least three times.[9] She reportedly wanted to quit films if they married, but Gilbert wanted her to continue her career. When a marriage was finally arranged in 1927, she failed to show up at the ceremony.[10] After their affair ended, Garbo showed great loyalty to Gilbert after his career collapsed with the coming of sound films, and insisted that he appear with her in 1933's Queen Christina.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Other notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1920 | Mr and Mrs. Stockholm | unknown | |
| 1921 | A Happy Knight | Maid | |
| How Not to Dress | Model | uncredited | |
| 1922 | Peter the Tramp | Greta | |
| A Scarlett Angel | Extra | uncredited | |
| 1924 | The Story of Gösta Berling | Elizabeth Dohna | |
| 1925 | The Joyless Street | Greta Rumfort | uncredited |
| 1926 | Flesh and the Devil | Felicitas | |
| The Temptress | Elena | ||
| The Torrent | Leonora Moreno aka La Brunna | ||
| 1927 | Love | Anna Karenina | |
| 1928 | A Woman of Affairs | Diana Merrick Furness | |
| The Mysterious Lady | Tania Fedorova | ||
| The Divine Woman | Marianne | Only a 9 minute reel steel exists. Source The Mysterious Lady DVD. | |
| 1929 | The Kiss | Irene Guarry | |
| The Single Standard | Arden Stuart Hewlett | ||
| Wild Orchids | Lillie Sterling | ||
| 1930 | Romance | Madame Rita Cavallini | Academy Award nomination - Best Actress |
| Anna Christie | Anna Christie | Academy Award nomination - Best Actress | |
| 1931 | Mata Hari | Mata Hari | |
| Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) | Susan Lenox | ||
| Anna Christie | Anna Christie | ||
| Inspiration | Yvonne Valbret | ||
| 1932 | As You Desire Me | Zara aka Marie | |
| Grand Hotel | Grusinskaya | ||
| 1933 | Queen Christina | Queen Christina | |
| 1934 | The Painted Veil | Katrin Koerber Fane | |
| 1935 | Anna Karenina | Anna Karenina | New York Film Critics Circle Award - Best Actress |
| 1936 | Camille | Marguerite Gautier | Academy Award nomination - Best Actress |
| 1937 | Conquest | Countess Marie Walewska | |
| 1939 | Ninotchka | Nina Ivanovna 'Ninotchka' Yakushova | Academy Award nomination - Best Actress |
| 1941 | Two-Faced Woman | Karin Borg Blake |
Notes
- ↑ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1742796,00.html Timesonline.co.uk Retrieved on 05-23-07
- ↑ http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/movienews/index/?cid=104465 Turnerclassicmovies.com Retrieved on 05-23-07
- ↑ http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/thismonth/article/?cid=102802 Turnerclassicmovies.com Retrieved on 05-23-07
- ↑ http://www.usps.com/communications/news/stamps/2005/sr05_045.htm USPS.com Retrieved on 05-23-07
- ↑ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1567211,00.html Observer.guardian.co.uk Retrieved on 05-23-07
- ↑ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1567211,00.html Observer.guardian.co.uk Retrieved on 05-23-07
- ↑ http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biog1/garb2.html Andrejkoymasky.com
- ↑ http://home.hiwaay.net/~oliver/ggflesh.htm Home.hiwaay.net Retreived on 05-23-07
- ↑ http://home.hiwaay.net/~oliver/gilbert.htm Home.hiwaay.net Retrieved on 05-23-07
- ↑ http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/gretagarbo.html Goldensilents.com Retrieved on 05-23-07
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Broman, Sven. 1992. Conversations with Greta Garbo. New York: Vikings. ISBN 067084277X ISBN 9780670842773
- Paris, Barry. 1995. Garbo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0283999543 ISBN 978-0283999543
- Swenson, Karen. 1997. Greta Garbo: A Life Apart. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0684807254 ISBN 9780684807256
- Wayne, Jane Ellen. 2002. The Golden Girls of MGM. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0786713038 ISBN 978-0786713035
External links
- Greta Garbo at the Royal Acting School
- Greta Garbo's Bibliography 1929-2009
- Greta Garbo 3000 Pictures Gallery
- Greta Garbo at All Movie Guide
- Greta Garbo at the Internet Movie Database
- Greta Garbo Biography. movies.yahoo.com. Retrieved June 1, 2007.
- Greta Garbo in U.S. Passenger Lists. rootdig.com. Retrieved June 1, 2007.
- The Garbo Legend Lives On. www.garboforever.de.vu. Retrieved June 1, 2007.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Garbo, Greta |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gustafsson, Greta Lovisa |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | actress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 18, 1905 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stockholm, Sweden |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 15, 1990 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | New York City, New York, USA |
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