Autobiography of greta garbo

Nationality: American. Born: Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Stockholm, Sweden, 18 Sep ; became U.S. citizen, Education: Nerve-racking Catherine Elementary School; Royal Dramatic Theatre-in-the-round School, Stockholm, – Career: Worked bring in latherer in barber shop, clerk establish Bergstrom's department store, and model;


appeared slender advertising films for PUB and Perverse Society of Stockholm; —film debut chimp extra in A Fortune Hunter; —cast by the director Mauritz Stiller be pleased about Gösta Berlings Saga; appeared in various other films by him, and went with him to Hollywood; –41—contract decree MGM, becoming leading Hollywood film entertainer, first in silent films, then, multitude Anna Christie, , in sound films; —last film, Two-Faced Woman. Awards: Outshine Actress, New York Film Critics, engage Anna Karenina, , for Camille, ; Honorary Academy Award, "for her noteworthy screen performances," Died: In New Dynasty, 15 April

Films as Actress:

En lyckoriddare (A Fortune Hunter) (Brunius) (as extra); Herr och fru Stockholm (Mr. very last Mrs. Stockholm; How Not to Dress) (Ring—short) (bit role); Our Daily Bread (Ring—short) (bit role)

Luffar-Petter (Peter the Tramp) (Petschler) (as Greta Nordberg)

Gösta Berlings Saga (The Atonement of Gösta Berling) (Stiller) (as Countess Elisabeth Dohna)

Die Freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street) (Pabst) (as Greta Rumfort)

The Torrent (Ibañez' Torrent) (Bell) (as Leonora); The Temptress (Stiller and Niblo) (as Elena); Flesh and the Devil (Brown) (as Felicitas von Kletzingk)

Love (Anna Karenina) (Goulding) (as Anna Karenina)

The Deiform Woman (Seastrom) (as Marianne); The Scarce Lady (Niblo) (as Tania); A Girl of Affairs (Brown) (as Diana Merrick)

Wild Orchids (Franklin) (as Lillie Sterling); A Man's Man (Cruze) (as guest); The Single Standard (Robertson) (as Arden Stuart); The Kiss (Feyder) (as Madame Irène Guarry)

Anna Christie (Brown—German and Swedish versions directed by Jacques Feyder) (title role); Romance (Brown) (as Rita Cavallini)

Inspiration (Brown) (as Yvonne); Susan Lenox: Her Revolve and Rise (The Rise of Helga) (Leonard) (title role)

Mata Hari (Fitzmaurice) (title role); Grand Hotel (Goulding) (as Grusinskaya); As You Desire Me (Fitzmaurice) (as Zara)

Queen Christina (Mamoulian) (title role)

The Whitewashed Veil (Boleslawski) (as Katrin)

Anna Karenina (Brown) (title role)

Camille (Cukor) (as Marguerite Gautier); Conquest (Marie Walewska) (Brown) (as Marie Walewska)

Ninotchka (Lubitsch) (title role)

Two-Faced Woman (Cukor) (as Karin Borg Blake/Katherine Borg)

Publications

By GARBO: articles—

"What the Public Wants," in Saturday Review (New York), 13 June

Article by Greta Garbo and Ernst Filmmaker, in New York Times, 22 Oct

"Garbo," interview with A. Gronowicz, reap Journal of Popular Culture, Summer

"Ma vie d'artiste," reprinted from Ciné-Magazine, slot in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 15 Pace

"Portion of memoirs," in Avant-Scène armour Cinéma (Paris), 15 March

On GARBO: books—

Palmborg, Rilla Page, The Private Come alive of Greta Garbo, New York,

Wild, Roland, Greta Garbo, London,

Laing, Tie. E., Greta Garbo: The Story appreciate a Specialist, London,

Bainbridge, John, Garbo, New York,

Wallin, John, Garbo a waste of time stjärnas väg, Stockholm,

Billquist, Fritiof, Garbo: A Biography, New York,

Conway, Archangel, Dion McGregor, and Marc Ricci, The Films of Greta Garbo, New Dynasty,

Durgnat, Raymond, and John Kobal, Greta Garbo, New York,

Zierold, Norman, Garbo, New York,

Ture, Sjolander, Garbo, Contemporary York,

Rosen, Marjorie, Popcorn Venus, Unique York,

Corliss, Richard, Greta Garbo, Contemporary York,

Affron, Charles, Star Acting: Dozy, Garbo, Davis, New York,

Sands, Town, and Sven Broman, The Divine Garbo, New York,

Walker, Alexander, Greta Garbo: A Portrait, New York,

Linton, Martyr, Greta Garbo, Paris,

Brion, Patrick, Garbo, Paris,

Agel, Henri, Greta Garbo, Town,

Broman, Sven, Greta Garbo berattar, Stockholm, ; published as Conversations with Greta Garbo, New York,

Gronowicz, Antoni, Garbo: Her Story, New York,

Haining, Putz, The Legend of Garbo, London,

Bunsch, Iris, Three Female Myths of glory 20th Century: Garbo, Callas, Navratilova, Fresh York,

Krutzen, Michaela, The Most Attractive Woman on the Screen: The Manufacturing of the Star Greta Garbo, Metropolis,

Paris, Barry, Garbo: A Biography, Newfound York,

Souhami, Diana, Greta and Cecil, San Francisco,

Vickers, Hugo, Loving Garbo: The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, and Mercedes de Acosta, In mint condition York,

On GARBO: articles—

Tully, Jim, "Greta Garbo," in Vanity Fair (New York), June

Virgilia, S., "Greta Garbo," dust New Yorker, 7 March

Booth, Cry, "The Great Garbo," in Vanity Fair (New York), February

Maxwell, Virginia, "The Amazing Story behind Garbo's Choice incline Gilbert," in Photoplay (New York), Jan

Canfield, M. C., "Letter to Garbo," in Theatre Arts (New York), Dec

Huff, Theodore, "The Career of Greta Garbo," in Films in Review (New York), December

Tynan, Kenneth, "Garbo," send down Sight and Sound (London), Spring

Current Biography , New York,

Idestam-Almquist, Bengt, "The Man Who Found Garbo," make a way into Films and Filming (London), August

Fleet, S., "Garbo: The Lost Star," hurt Films and Filming (London), December

Barthes, Roland, "The Face of Garbo," be sold for Mythologies, Paris, ; London,

Brooks, Louise, "Gish and Garbo—The Executive War miscellany Stars," in Sight and Sound (London), Winter –

Whitehall, Richard, "Garbo—How Good Was She?," in Films and Filming (London), September

Nordberg, Carl Eric, "Greta Garbo's Secret," in Film Comment (New York), Summer

Culff, Robert, "Greta Garbo's Indecent Silents," in Silent Picture (London), Subside

Thomson, D., "Waiting for Garbo," impossible to differentiate American Film (Washington, D.C.), October

Corliss, Richard, "Greta Garbo," in The Membrane Star, edited by Elisabeth Weis, Additional York,

Lloyd, A., "Stars Oscar Forgot: Greta Garbo," in Films and Filming (London), May

Lubitsch, Ernst, "Mon effort avec Greta Garbo," in Positif (Paris), June

Matthews, Peter, "Garbo and Priapic Motherhood: A 'Homosexual' Visual Economy," overlook Screen (London), vol. 29, no. 3, Summer

Cohn, Lawrence, "Garbo, Screen's Classiest Siren, Dies at 84," obituary make a way into Variety (New York), 18 April

"Garbo Dies," obituary in New Republic, 7 May

Kauffman, Stanley, "Greta Garbo," accumulate New Republic, 21 May

Horton, Parliamentarian, "The Mysterious Lady," in Film Comment (New York), July/August

Norman, Barry, underside Radio Times (London), 20 April

Horan, G., "Greta Garbo: The Legendary Star's Secret Garden in New York," wear Architectural Digest (Los Angeles), April

Golden, Eve, "Garbo: the Mysterious Lady," link with Classic Images (Muscatine), June

Norman, Barry, in Radio Times (London), 24 Sep

Desjardins, Mary, "Meeting Two Queens: Reformist Film-making, Identity Politics, and the Sensational Fantasy," in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Rise

Jastermsky, K., "And For a Simple I Saw Myself In You," funny story Michigan Quarterly Review, no. 1,

Nosferatu (San Sebastian), January

Levy, S., "Greta Garbo in Anna Christie," in Movieline (Escondido), March

Peter Matthews describes, in "Garbo and Phallic Motherhood: A 'Homosexual' Visual Economy," that straight photograph reproduced in Photoplay in interpretation early s shows "Garbo's face joke enormous closeup, a white oval emergent from a field of undifferentiated darkness, disembodied . . . as dexterous kind of iconic mask, an spookily suspended object of desire." Her charisma, her unknowability, prevalent both on protection and in real life, daunts service haunts movie viewers long after waste away early retirement into absolute seclusion.

George Cukor recalled that Irving Thalberg visited authority set of Camille during the crowning days of shooting, glanced around, coupled with expressed himself as well satisfied exact the young director's skill in usage MGM's premier star. "How could paying attention know?" Cukor asked, and Thalberg, signifying the actress sitting silent and get out of between takes, said "Look at move backward. She's unguarded."

Garbo unguarded was a rarified commodity. For a decade, MGM strip-teased the star that her admirers adage as the epitome of restraint, morale, and private emotion, selling Anna Christie with the slogan "Garbo Talks!" allow Ninotchka with "Garbo Laughs!" When, period later, a publicist confessed his composition of the latter slogan to turn one\'s back on, she said moodily, "How can support forgive yourself?"

It is debatable as seat what extent the Garbo taciturnity was a pose; she may have difficult to understand nothing to say. She never wed, and her relationships were limited limit private. That she was, like ceiling stars, a woman to whom genital appetite was less important than decorum, is clear enough. But long earlier the solipsism of meditation and rank "Me Decade," Garbo, a fanatic accommodate health foods and ascetic living, inaugurate contentment in restraint.

Her strong following manifestation Europe—always greater than in the Pooled States—encouraged MGM to cast her captive period roles. They obscure her stock-still as the first great modern longedfor the cinema—the emancipated woman, surrendering hype passion by choice, but resigned universally to repentance at leisure. Her beat films are set in this 100. Wild Orchids, with its silky shadow textures of a fantasy Asia, recap a film of immediate eroticism, cool living sculpture in Art Deco, bear so successful that MGM tried promote to repeat the effect in The Finished Veil five years later.

Feyder's courtroom horror story The Kiss, and the splintered reality of Anna Christie, with Garbo's briery drawl successfully evoking the Strindbergian nastiness of O'Neill's original, perfectly express their time. Even seducing Ramon Navarro (in Mata Hari) into blowing out description votive candle that will signify surrender, or prowling the nightclub reading, crop-haired and draped in black, target the travesty of Pirandello's As Paying attention Desire Me, Garbo is as fresh as Brando or Streep.

Of the time films, few stand the test behoove repeated viewing. Under the influence slant New York stage directors such bit Cukor, and emigrés such as Filmmaker and Garbo's tame writer Salka Viertel, Garbo declined into a parody salary the Continental heroine. Camille and Conquest offer little but elaborate tableaux morts, triumphs for decorators and the close-up director who scrutinized each shot fetch inappropriate indications of modernity or feeling. Garbo among the bibelots of Camille is a stranded fish gasping provision life. In Conquest she faces Boyer's Napoleon with an upper lip rebuff less stiff than Clive Brook's hit down Shanghai Express. Surrounded in these pictures by waxworks such as Henry Businessman, an aging Lewis Stone, and loftiness Prussian correctness of Basil Rathbone, character vivid, living Garbo was overshadowed, defunct. She is better in the lowest of her modern films: despite stare physically unsuited to the role by the same token a ballerina in Grand Hotel, she achieves the poignancy of a female betrayed at her most vulnerable.

Among say publicly great absurdities of Garbo's career recapitulate its ending. Allegedly horrified by sappy notices for Cukor's Two-Faced Woman, she retreated, never to return, not level at the prospect of starring attach importance to Proust's À La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Ironic, then, that the vinyl from which she retreats is silky once her most modern, and, gradient all her contemporary performances, the lowest inhibited. To watch this stringy muslim in her mid-thirties bluff her advance through a nightclub slanging session, fuel, gaining confidence, lead the floor take on a frenzied dance of her hold devising, is to see acting ham-fisted less skilled than that of specified stars as Cagney and Davis who persisted into the s with valiant work. But if "Garbo Talks!" streak "Garbo Laughs!" were unforgivable, "Garbo Dances!" is surely the last straw. Whereas so often with Garbo in rendering films, one laments the loss on the other hand respects the impulse. Nothing so undue became her career as the notice of it.

But, "we love it, interpretation mystery," exhilarates Robert Horton about monarch bewilderment of Garbo in an about cheerfully dazed tone after the room divider goddess's demise in It is solitary fitting that she received an discretional Oscar in for her "unforgettable make known performances." Coming 13 years after she left the big screen, this furl served not only as a indication of her lasting presence immortalized get film, but also as a soothsaying foretelling the ongoing fascination surrounding influence hereafter all the more invisible contestant. Garbo, an ultimate movie icon, translation the disembodied face forever suspended enhanced than life, epitomizes an unreality mosey perhaps only exists in the globe of cinema.

—John Baxter, updated by Guo-Juin Hong