Greta Garbo is arguably the quintessential embodiment of the Hollywood star system. Her beautiful, glamorous, Sphinx-like image–carefully cultivated by her employer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer–captivated American and European viewers of both the silent screen of the 20s and sound films of the 30s. Garbo’s personal decision to leave her film career in 1941 and maintain a notoriously private, reclusive lifestyle has only further enhanced her mystique.
As a young model, she made her first screen appearances in Swedish advertising films and as an extra in features as early as 1921. While attending the Royal Dramatic Theater School, she was chosen by noted film director Mauritz Stiller to play the lead in “The Atonement of Gosta Berling” (1924) and he renamed his protegee “Garbo.” After she gained further acclaim costarring with the legendary tragedienne Asta Nielsen in G.W. Pabst’s “The Joyless Street” (1925), she followed Stiller to Hollywood (and MGM) in 1925.
Metro was primarily interested in the services of Stiller, but at his request they gave Garbo a modest featured player’s contract. She first appeared in two Latin love stories drawn from torrid Vicente Blasco-Ibanez novels. As a Spanish peasant girl in “The Torrent” (1926) and a vamp in “The Temptress” (1926), Garbo received favorable reviews, but she seemed indistinguishable from any number of other Hollywood actresses of the time. However, her breakthrough came when MGM paired her with the silent screen’s most popular leading man, John Gilbert, in the unrestrained romance “Flesh and the Devil” (1927). By all accounts, the two developed an instant and intense romantic rapport that carried over on-screen and encouraged the publicity and gossip about her off-screen life that has followed Garbo ever since. Following the success of “Flesh and the Devil,” Garbo demanded a raise in her salary, from $600 to $5,000 per week. MGM at first refused her terms, so she sailed to Sweden and remained there for nearly a year until the studio’s executives arrived with a new contract. Her indifference to stardom served only to fuel her legend even more.
Upon returning to Hollywood, Garbo was given the ultimate star treatment. She worked only with leading directors, most notably Clarence Brown (seven times), but also Sidney Franklin, fellow Swede Victor Sjostrom, Jacques Feyder, Edmund Goulding, George Cukor and Rouben Mamoulian. More important, MGM captured the expressive, enigmatic nuances of her now-famous face by employing her favorite (and the studio’s best) cinematographer, William Daniels, on almost all of her films. While conceding to working conditions dictated by the star (including closed sets and no overtime), Metro fashioned Garbo’s public image until it was the epitome of the studio’s glamorous excess.
It was during this time that Garbo developed the repertoire of roles that defined her as an actress. Although MGM avoided ruthless typecasting, the parts developed for its leading female star almost invariably presented her in period costume as a melancholy exotic who sacrifices her happiness for an unattainable love. She returned to the screen as the tragic Anna Karenina (again opposite John Gilbert), in “Love” (1927), a role she would reprise for Clarence Brown in 1935. In her six remaining silent features Garbo costarred with Gilbert once (“A Woman of Affairs” 1928), but she continued to shine opposite other leading men (Nils Asther, Conrad Nagel) as the woman who must pay for her extramarital affairs, in her three 1929 films, the lush “Wild Orchids,” “The Single Standard” and Hollywood’s last major silent, “The Kiss.”
Finally, MGM permitted the last of its silent stars to speak on the screen, releasing Clarence Brown’s version of Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie” (1930) with the famous ad line “Garbo Talks!” American audiences and critics responded favorably to her husky voice, even though Garbo despised her performance. (She was much more pleased with the German and Swedish versions of the film that Jacques Feyder directed for MGM’s European release.) After the success of “Anna Christie,” Garbo appeared in a string of banal dramas which critics found redemeed only by her charismatic presence. But her career was again bolstered by the acclaimed “Grand Hotel” (1932), in which she uttered her trademark line, “I want to be alone,” and by “Queen Christina” (1933). In the latter, opposite John Gilbert for the last time, Garbo received her best notices, though she was essentially reprising her familiar role as the tragic diva who sacrifices for her lover. Over the next three years, MGM built three other expensive costume dramas around Garbo in this role–”Anna Karenina” (1935), “Camille” and “Conquest” (both 1937)–but only “Camille” duplicated the radiance of her 1933 performance.
Having made ten silent and a dozen sound films at MGM, all tragic dramas, Garbo concluded her career with a pair of comedies. Her winning performance as a Russian spy in Ernst Lubitsch’s “Ninotchka” (1939) elevated her to a surprising new level of acclaim. But the disastrous attempt to present Garbo as a domesticated American in George Cukor’s “Two-Faced Woman” (1941) slowed her resurgence. Then the divine Duse-figure whose image had captured the public imagination for two decades retired suddenly and permanently. That she shunned publicity ever afterward merely encouraged the mythos which prompted critic Roland Barthes to write, “Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstacy … where the flesh gives rise to mystical feelings of perdition.”
- Also Credited As:
Greta Lovisa Gustafsson
- Born:
on 09/18/1905 in Stockholm, Sweden
- Died:
15-APR-90.
- Job Titles:
Actor, Model, Barbershop lather girl, Salesgirl
Family
- Brother: Sven Garbo.
- Father: Karl Alfred Gustafsson. died of tuberculosis c. 1918
- Mother: Anna Lovisa Gustafsson.
- Niece: Gray Reisfeld. daughter of brother Sven; inherited the bulk of Garbo’s estate
- Sister: Alva Gustaffson. born 1903, died 1926; appeared in “Tva konungar/Two Kings” (1925)
Significant Others
- Companion: Gaylord Hauser. together in 1940s and 50s in a platonic relationship
- Companion: George Schlee. together in 1960s
- Companion: John Gilbert. together in late 1920s
- Companion: Leopold Stokowski. together in mid-1930s
- Companion: Mercedes de Acosta.
Education
- Royal Dramatic Theater School, Stockholm, Sweden
Milestones
- 1921 Appeared in short publicity film, “How Not to Dress”
- 1922 First leading role in comedy feature “Luffar Peter” (“Peter the Tramp”)
- 1924 Discovered by Swedish director Mauritz Stiller, accompanied him to New York City (date approximate)
- 1924 Won first real notice for leading role in “The Atonement of Gosta Berling”
- 1925 Awarded first Hollywood contract (MGM) thanks to Stiller
- 1926 First American film, “The Torrent”
- 1927 Separation from Stiller, who sailed back to Sweden after disagreements with MGM and Paramount
- 1928 Death of Stiller
- 1929 Last silent film, “The Kiss”
- 1930 First sound film, “Anna Christie”, filmed in English by Clarence Brown and in German by Jacques Feyder
- 1939 First comedy, “Ninotchka”
- 1941 Last film, “Two-Faced Woman”; abandoned film career at age 36
- 1991 Garbo’s $20 million estate was all left to her niece, Gray Reisfield (Sven Ake Fredriksson, a retired salesman, had unsuccessfully challenged the will claiming that he is the illegitimate son of her late brother, Sven Alfred Gustafson)
