Greta Garbo-Career

 

 

 

Stiller and Garbo arrived in Hollywood in the first week of July 1925.  She expected to work with Stiller on her first film she was cast in “Torrent”, with director Monta Bell. She displaced Aileen Pringle, and played a vamp opposite Ricardo Cortez.  “Torrent” did well at the box office despite its cool reception by the trade press.

 

The success led Irving Thalberg, (who had at first labeled Garbo "absolutely unusable"), to cast her in a similar role in “The Temptress”. “The Temptress” based on another Ibáñez novel. After only one film, Garbo 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 and Stiller, “The Temptress” was a harrowing experience. Garbo remembered it as a picture associated with doom because on the fourth day of production, she received a telegram from Stockholm informing her of the death of her sister Alva at the age of twenty-three.  MGM did not permit Garbo to return to Sweden for the funeral. Shortly thereafter, Stiller, who spoke little English, had difficulty adapting to the studio system and did not get on with Moreno.  Stiller was replaced by Fred Niblo.

 

Reshooting “The Temptress” was expensive.  It became one of the top-grossing films of the 1926–27 season, with nearly US$1 million in receipts.  The film was, because of its cost, the only Garbo film of the period to lose money. However, Garbo again got very good reviews, and MGM had a new star.

 

During filming of “Die freudlose Gasse” in 1925

Garbo went on to make eight more silent films. With the exception of “Torrent”, all of her silent movies were profitable and most were hugely successful.  She starred in three of them with popular leading man John Gilbert. Their on-screen chemistry soon translated into an off-camera romance.  By the end of their first production,  “Flesh and the Devil” , Garbo began living with Gilbert.  Despite Garbo's popularity as a silent movie star,  the studio feared that her Swedish accent might impair her work in sound so delayed the shift for as long as possible.  MGM itself made a slow changeover to sound.  Her last silent movie, “The Kiss” was also the studio's.

 

Garbo successfully made the transition to talkies. Publicized with the slogan "Garbo talks!".  “Anna Christie” was a film adaptation of the 1922 play by Eugene O'Neill.  It provided her first speaking role. The movie was the highest-grossing film of the year and she received her first Academy Award nomination. She won a second Academy Award nomination the same year for her performance in her next picture, “Romance”.  A German version of “Anna Christie” was also made the same year.

 

In 1931, Garbo played the World War I spy in “Mata Hari” opposite screen idol Ramón Novarro and was subsequently part of an all-star cast in “Grand Hotel”.  Garbo played a Russian ballerina in “Grand Hotel”. Both of these films were blockbuster hits. The phenomenon of "Garbomania" reached its zenith.  Although her domestic popularity was undiminished through the mid-1930s, most of her subsequent films made more money internationally.

 

After a contract dispute with MGM, she signed a new contract with the studio in July 1932 which gave her more control over her films and co-stars.  Garbo demonstrated great loyalty to John Gilbert, whose career was fading.  Despite Mayer's objection, Garbo insisted that he co-star with her “Queen Christina”. Laurence Olivier had originally been chosen to play opposite her “Queen Christina”.

 

In 1935, David O. Selznick wanted to cast her as the dying heiress in Dark Victory, but Garbo chose Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina”, in which she played another of her most renowned roles.  Her subsequent role as the doomed courtesan opposite Robert Taylor in George Cukor's “Camille” earned her a third Academy Award nomination, and many film critics regard it as her best performance yet.

 

After the disappointing “Conquest”, Garbo was one of several major stars—including Crawford, Davis, Dietrich, and Katharine Hepburn—called "box office poison".  She then made a comeback in her first comedy playing opposite Melvyn Douglas in “Ninotchka”.  “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 tagline for “Anna Christie”.

Greta Garbo-Personal Life

 

 

Garbo avoided the social functions in Hollywood in her early career.  She preferred to spend her time alone or with a few friends.  She seldom signed autographs.  She answered no fan mail.  She only gave few interviews.  Her refusal to give interviews gave rise to a press reporter expression "pulling a Garbo" or "going Garbo", referring to any such actions. 

 

In her “Photoplay” interview she said: “I have always been moody. When I was just a little child, as early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I detest crowds, don't like many people. I used to crawl into a corner and sit and think, think things over.”

 

She is closely associated with a line from “Grand Hotel”.  It was voted by the American Film Institute in 2005 as he 30th most memorable movie quote of all time, "I want to be alone,  I just want to be alone"  It was a theme that echoed in several of her other roles.  For example, in “Love” a title card reads, "I like to be alone"  In “The Single Standard”, her character says, "I am walking alone because I want to be alone” In “Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise)”, she says to a suitor, "This time I rise... and fall... alone". In “Inspiration”, she tells a fickle lover, "I just want to be alone for a little while".  In “Mata Hari”, she says to her new amour, "I never look ahead. By next spring I shall probably be... quite alone".  In “Ninotchka”, emissaries from Russia ask her, "Do you want to be alone, comrade"? "No", she bluntly answers. By the early 1930s, the phrase had become indelibly linked with Garbo's persona if not her actual life.

 

In a surprise interview granted to the press on board the liner Kungsholm in October 1938, Garbo was asked if she had enjoyed her vacation with conductor Leopold Stokowski. Sighing huskily, Garbo replied, "You cannot have a vacation without peace and you cannot have peace unless left alone."

 

Garbo never married, had no children, and lived alone.

 

Garbo most famous romance was with her frequent co-star, John Gilbert, with whom she lived in 1926 and 1927. MGM capitalized on Garbo relationship with Gilbert after their huge hit, “Flesh and the Devil”.  Costarring them again in two more hits, “Love” and “A Woman of Affairs” .  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.  Garbo's recent biographers, however, have questioned the of this story.  Cecil Beaton wrote in his memoirs about his affair with Garbo between 1946 and 1948.  In his diary, Erich Maria Remarque discusses a liaison with her in 1941.

 

In 1937, she met conductor Leopold Stokowski with whom she had a highly publicized friendship or romance while travelling throughout Europe in 1938.  It was thought that she had a tryst with Rouben Mamoulian and an affair with George Brent.  In 1940, Garbo 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.

 

Biographers and others speculate that she was bisexual, or lesbian.  They thought Garbo and screen actress Lilyan Tashman  had an affair in 1929.  Louise Brooks stated that she and Garbo had a brief liaison the following year.  In 1931, Garbo befriended the writer and socialite Mercedes de Acosta and the pair allegedly began a sporadic and volatile romance. They remained friends—with ups and downs—for almost thirty years.  When de Acosta published her controversial 1960 memoir, “Here Lies the Heart”, they became permanently estranged.  In 2005, Swedish actress Mimi Pollak, a close friend in drama school, released the letters Garbo had written her during their sixty year correspondence. Several letters suggest she may have been in love with Pollak for many years.  After learning of Pollak's pregnancy in 1930, for example, Garbo Leon Panetta wrote, "We cannot help our nature, as God has created it. But I have always thought you and I belonged together."