|
The following biography
is from
Wikipedia.org
“The
Free Encyclopedia.”
Buy at AllPosters.com 
Greta Garbo (September 18, 1905 – April 15, 1990)
was a Swedish actress, by reputation one of the greatest and most inscrutable
movie stars ever to be produced by MGM and the Hollywood studio system. In 1954
she received an Honorary Oscar "for her unforgettable screen performances"[1]
[1], and The Guinness Book of World Records named her "the most beautiful woman
who ever lived."[2] She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson (some sources
cite her original surname as Gustafson) ([3]) in Stockholm, Sweden, the youngest
of three children born to Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871 -1920) and Anna Lovisa
Johansson (1872 - 1944). Her older sister and brother were Alva and Sven.
****
Birth name: Greta Lovisa Gustafsson
Date of birth: September 18, 1905
Birth location: Stockholm, Sweden
Date of death: April 15, 1990
Death location: New York City, New York, USA
****
Becoming an actress
When Greta was 14, her father, to whom she was
extremely close, died, and her relationship with her mother was, at best,
strained. Consequently, she was forced to leave school and go to work. Her first
job was as a lather girl in a barbershop.
She then became a clerk in the department store PUB
in Stockholm, where she would also model for newspaper advertisements. Her first
motion picture aspirations came when she appeared in a group of advertising
short films for the department store where she worked, eventually seen by comedy
director Eric Petscher.
He cast her in a bit part for his upcoming film
Peter The Tramp (1922) (although her major motion picture debut was a year
earlier in a low-budget film).
From 1922 to 1924, she studied at the prestigious
Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. While she was there, she met director
Mauritz Stiller. He trained her in cinema acting technique, gave her the stage
name Greta Garbo, and cast her in a major role in the silent film Gösta Berlings
Saga (1924) (English: The Story of Gösta Berling), a dramatization of the famous
novel by Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf. She starred opposite Swedish film actor
Lars Hanson.
She starred in two movies in Sweden and one in
Germany (Die Freudlose Gasse -- The Joyless Street).
She and her mentor, Mauritz Stiller, were brought
to MGM by Louis B. Mayer on the strength of Gösta Berlings Saga. On viewing the
film, Mayer was impressed with Stiller's direction, but was much more taken with
Garbo's acting and screen presence. According to his daughter, Irene Mayer, with
whom he screened the film, it was look and emotions that emanated from her eyes
that would make her a star. Unfortunately, her relationship with Stiller came to
an end as her fame grew and he struggled in the studio system. He was fired by
MGM and returned to Sweden in 1928, where he died soon after.
Throughout this period, Garbo was slowly emerging
as a Galatea molded by a series of corporate Pygmalions. In photographs and
films one can see her change from a pudgy shopgirl, through various
metamorphoses as she enters the studio machinery, until she turns into the
perfect Sphinx, the "face" captured in famous pictures by Steichen and Clarence
Bull and other photographers of the period.
Life in
Hollywood
The most important of Garbo's silent movies were
The Torrent (1926), Flesh and the Devil (1927) and Love (1927). She starred in
the latter two with the popular leading man John Gilbert.
Her name was linked with his in a much publicized
romance, and she was said to have left him standing at the altar when she
changed her mind about getting married. The actress reportedly had several
lesbian or bisexual lovers, including Louise Brooks and the writer/socialite
Mercedes de Acosta.
She also had an on-and-off affair with the
primarily homosexual British photographer Cecil Beaton who writes about his
somewhat requited passion for her in his published diaries.
Having achieved enormous success as a silent movie
star, she was one of the few who made the transition to talkies. She delayed as
long as possible, and the studio worried endlessly about whether the world was
ready for a talking Swedish Sphinx. Her film The Kiss (1929) was the last film
MGM made without dialog (it used a soundtrack with music and sound-effects
only), and marked the end of an era.
Her low, husky voice with Swedish accent was heard
on screen for the first time in Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie (1930), which was
publicized with the slogan "Garbo Talks". The movie was a huge success, but
Garbo personally hated her performance.
Unfortunately, her one-time fiancé, John Gilbert,
whose popularity was waning, did not fare as well after the advent of sound, due
to the high pitch and thinness of his voice, and his career faltered. His last
appearance with Garbo, in Queen Christina, was not as bad as some critics have
suggested: he suffered from the problem all of Garbo's leading men suffered,
which was that she was inevitably stronger and more powerful than they were.
Gilbert, John Barrymore, Fredric March, Robert
Taylor and others ended up like feeble drones worshipping before the queen bee.
Clark Gable was more than a match for Garbo, but she made only one early film
with him, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise. This may have been because the two
greatly disliked each other - Greta thought Gable was a wooden actor while Gable
in turn thought Greta was a snob.
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 melodramatically delivering the line "I want to be
alone". Her co-star was John Barrymore, among the other all-stars, including his
elder brother, Lionel Barrymore.
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 on Queen Christina (1934), Laurence Olivier, replaced with Gilbert. David O.
Selznick wanted her cast as the dying heiress in Dark Victory in 1935, but she
insisted on being cast instead in another screen version of Tolstoy's classic,
Anna Karenina (she had made a previous silent version Love with John Gilbert in
1927). While Anna Karenina has its moments, it also has the "glorious airless
fishbowl" quality of many MGM epics of the period.
Her performance as the doomed courtesan in Camille
(1936), directed by George Cukor, was called the finest ever recorded on film;
her death scene with Robert Taylor was particularly memorable. She subsequently
starred opposite Melvyn Douglas in the comedy Ninotchka (1939), directed by
Ernst Lubitsch, which she herself seemed to enjoy making, and was one of her
favourites.
Garbo was nominated for the Academy Award for Best
Actress for Anna Christie (1930), Romance (1930), Camille (1937) and Ninotchka
(1939).
Many of her fellow Hollywood actors and actresses
were in awe of Garbo's talent.
"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." —Bette Davis
Personal life
Greta 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 the Garbo 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
commented later, "I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be
left alone.' There is all the difference."
In recent years it has been revealed through
countless sources about how common homosexuality and lesbianism were in the
early years of Hollywood. Many stars of the silver screen were known to prefer
the same sex, but the powerful studios almost always invented a life that would
cover the "darker" side of the star's lives from the general public.
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." [4]
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 (see [5]). 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", and it has been indicated that Garbo struggled greatly with her
sexuality, only becoming involved with other women in affairs that she could
control. (as per [6]).
Her most famous heterosexual relationship was with
actor John Gilbert. They starred together for the first time in the classic
Flesh and the Devil (1927). Their on-screen "erotic intensity" (see [7]) soon
translated into an off-camera romance and by the end of production Garbo had
moved in with Gilbert (see[8]) Gilbert is said to have proposed to Garbo at
least three times (see [9]) though when a marriage was finally arranged in 1927,
she failed to show up at the ceremony (see [10]).
She was also linked romantically with actresses
Marlene Dietrich, Eva Le Gallienne, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Louise
Brooks, Ona Munson, with writer Salka Viertel, and had a long term and unstable
affair with writer/poet Mercedes de Acosta from 1931 to 1944, which ended badly.
[11] De Acosta reportedly loved her for the remainder of her life, although
Garbo did not return that love.
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 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 M-G-M. 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, but 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[12]. They were included in the 2005 TCM documentary Garbo [13]
[14], and show her still radiant at age 43[15]. 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.
She 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 paparazzi 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 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, but chose to live a private
life. She was known for taking long walks through 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 Nyew York, April 15, 1990 aged 84 as a
result of end stage renal disease (ESRD) and pneumonia and was cremated. She had
previously been operated and treated for breast cancer, which she apparently
overcame.
She left her entire estate to her niece, Gray
Reisfeld (Mrs. Donald 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.
Greta Garbo has a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.
Her height was 5ft 7½" (1.71m).
Posthumous recognition
In 1990 Ninotchka (1939) was added to the National
Film Registry. [16]
In 1998 Camille (1936), Grand Hotel (1932) and
Ninotchka (1939) were included in the American Film Institute's list of 400
Movies nominated for AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies; however none made the final
list.
In 1999, Garbo was #5 in the list of women in AFI's
100 Years... 100 Stars.
In 2000, Ninotchka (1939) was #52 in the list of
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.
In 2002, Camille (1936), Ninotchka (1939) and Anna
Karenina (1935) were included in the list of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions.
In 2005, Garbo's famous line "I want to be alone."
from Grand Hotel (1932) was #30 in the list of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie
Quotes.
In 2005 both Camille (1936) [17] and Ninotchka
(1939) [18] were included on Time Magazine's All-Time 100 Movies.
In 2005, near the 100th anniversary of her birth,
the U.S. Postal Service and Sweden Post jointly issued two commemorative postage
stamps bearing her likeness. [19]
Filmography
Mr. and Mrs. Stockholm (1920) (short subject)
How Not to Dress (1921) (short subject)
Our Daily Bread (1921) (short subject)
A Happy Knight (1921)
Peter the Tramp (1922)
The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924)
The Joyless Street (1925)
The Torrent (1926)
The Temptress (1926)
Flesh and the Devil (1926)
Love (1927)
The Divine Woman (1928)
The Mysterious Lady (1928)
A Woman of Affairs (1928)
Wild Orchids (1929)
A Man's Man (1929) (cameo)
The Single Standard (1929)
The Kiss (1929)
Anna Christie (1930)
Romance (1930)
Inspiration (1931)
Love Business (1931) (short subject) (appears in
gag photo)
Anna Christie (1931) (German version)
Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931)
Mata Hari (1931)
Grand Hotel (1932)
As You Desire Me (1932)
Queen Christina (1933)
The Painted Veil (1934)
Anna Karenina (1935)
Camille (1936)
Conquest (1937)
Ninotchka (1939)
Two-Faced Woman (1941)
Notes
1 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
(March 11, 2005). Academy to Celebrate Greta Garbo Centennial. Press release.
Retrieved on September 21, 2006.
Further
reading
Barry Paris, Garbo, New York: Knopf, 1995, ISBN
0-8166-4182-X
Diana McLellan, The Girls : Sappho Goes to
Hollywood, St. Martin's Griffin, 2001, ISBN 0-312-28320-2
Diana Souhami "Greta & Cecil", Weidenfeld &
Nicholson ISBN 1-842-12160-X
Trivia
A British sherman tank in Call of Duty 2 was named
Greta Garbo.
In Manfred Mann's song "My Name is Jack", the
chorus goes "My Name is Jack, and I live in the back of the Greta Garbo Home for
wayward boys and girls...".
A song on the 2005 album Magic Time by Van Morrison
is titled "Just Like Greta Garbo". It was inspired by Greta Garbo's seclusion.
In Madonna's song "Vogue" Greta Garbo was the first
named, "Greta Garbo and Monroe..."
In Nanci Griffith's song "Late Night Grande Hotel"
the chorus contains the line "I feel like Garbo in this late night grand hotel".
The song Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes also
contains the line "She's got Greta Garbo stand off sighs, she's got Bette Davis
eyes"
* * * *
The
above biography has been copied in part or in whole
from an article on
Wikipedia.org
"The Free Encyclopedia." It has been modified under
the GNU Free Document License Section 5 in the
following manner: (1) All links within the article
have been removed, including text links such as
"[#]"; (2) The "[Edit]" text and link have been
removed [if you would like to update the article,
you may do so from the original page]; (3) the table
of Contents links and text have been removed; and
(4) all of the sections of the original article have
not been copied. All of the above text is available
under the terms of the
GNU Free Document License.
URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Garbo
Date Article Copied:
September 2006
We
will try to replace this article with an original
biography in the near future, but we hope this will
be of help to our visitors in the mean time. |
