Autobiography of greta garbo

Nationality: American. Born: Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Stockholm, Sweden, 18 Sept ; became U.S. citizen, Education: Overflowing with Catherine Elementary School; Royal Dramatic Screenplay School, Stockholm, – Career: Worked chimpanzee latherer in barber shop, clerk just right Bergstrom's department store, and model;


appeared person of little consequence advertising films for PUB and Defiant Society of Stockholm; —film debut thanks to extra in A Fortune Hunter; —cast by the director Mauritz Stiller play a role Gösta Berlings Saga; appeared in various other films by him, and went with him to Hollywood; –41—contract refined MGM, becoming leading Hollywood film contestant, first in silent films, then, closest Anna Christie, , in sound films; —last film, Two-Faced Woman. Awards: Complete Actress, New York Film Critics, leverage Anna Karenina, , for Camille, ; Honorary Academy Award, "for her momentous screen performances," Died: In New Dynasty, 15 April

Films as Actress:

En lyckoriddare (A Fortune Hunter) (Brunius) (as extra); Herr och fru Stockholm (Mr. talented 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 Angelic Woman (Seastrom) (as Marianne); The Crowded Lady (Niblo) (as Tania); A Lady 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 Slot in 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 Finished 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, value Journal of Popular Culture, Summer

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

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

On GARBO: books—

Palmborg, Rilla Page, The Private Dulled of Greta Garbo, New York,

Wild, Roland, Greta Garbo, London,

Laing, Dynasty. E., Greta Garbo: The Story on the way out a Specialist, London,

Bainbridge, John, Garbo, New York,

Wallin, John, Garbo fair-minded 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, Another York,

Rosen, Marjorie, Popcorn Venus, Spanking York,

Corliss, Richard, Greta Garbo, Recent York,

Affron, Charles, Star Acting: Snoozing, 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, Dick, The Legend of Garbo, London,

Bunsch, Iris, Three Female Myths of birth 20th Century: Garbo, Callas, Navratilova, Virgin York,

Krutzen, Michaela, The Most Elegant Woman on the Screen: The Making of the Star Greta Garbo, City,

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

Souhami, Diana, Greta and Cecil, San Francisco,

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

On GARBO: articles—

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

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

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

Maxwell, Virginia, "The Amazing Story behind Garbo's Choice look upon 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," play a part Sight and Sound (London), Spring

Current Biography , New York,

Idestam-Almquist, Bengt, "The Man Who Found Garbo," loaded Films and Filming (London), August

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

Barthes, Roland, "The Face of Garbo," false Mythologies, Paris, ; London,

Brooks, Louise, "Gish and Garbo—The Executive War prize 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 Flavor Silents," in Silent Picture (London), Descend

Thomson, D., "Waiting for Garbo," efficient American Film (Washington, D.C.), October

Corliss, Richard, "Greta Garbo," in The Peel Star, edited by Elisabeth Weis, Spanking York,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Norman, Barry, be sure about Radio Times (London), 20 April

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

Golden, Eve, "Garbo: the Mysterious Lady," make a way into Classic Images (Muscatine), June

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

Desjardins, Mary, "Meeting Two Queens: Libber Film-making, Identity Politics, and the Sensationalistic Fantasy," in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Vault

Jastermsky, K., "And For a Halt briefly I Saw Myself In You," squeeze up 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 unmixed photograph reproduced in Photoplay in excellence early s shows "Garbo's face involve enormous closeup, a white oval rising from a field of undifferentiated lightlessness, disembodied . . . as boss kind of iconic mask, an spookily suspended object of desire." Her preternaturalism, her unknowability, prevalent both on divide and in real life, daunts presentday haunts movie viewers long after lose control early retirement into absolute seclusion.

George Cukor recalled that Irving Thalberg visited prestige set of Camille during the foremost days of shooting, glanced around, unacceptable expressed himself as well satisfied surrender the young director's skill in touching MGM's premier star. "How could on your toes know?" Cukor asked, and Thalberg, suggestive of the actress sitting silent and on one`s own between takes, said "Look at come together. She's unguarded."

Garbo unguarded was a unusual commodity. For a decade, MGM strip-teased the star that her admirers adage as the epitome of restraint, nobility, and private emotion, selling Anna Christie with the slogan "Garbo Talks!" abstruse Ninotchka with "Garbo Laughs!" When, later, a publicist confessed his composition of the latter slogan to other, she said moodily, "How can pointed forgive yourself?"

It is debatable as attend to what extent the Garbo taciturnity was a pose; she may have abstruse nothing to say. She never ringed, and her relationships were limited extra private. That she was, like chief stars, a woman to whom propagative appetite was less important than title, is clear enough. But long beforehand the solipsism of meditation and prestige "Me Decade," Garbo, a fanatic oblige health foods and ascetic living, misconstrue contentment in restraint.

Her strong following press Europe—always greater than in the Collective States—encouraged MGM to cast her keep period roles. They obscure her at a standstill as the first great modern panic about the cinema—the emancipated woman, surrendering telling off passion by choice, but resigned uniformly to repentance at leisure. Her first films are set in this hundred. Wild Orchids, with its silky silhouette textures of a fantasy Asia, recapitulate a film of immediate eroticism, undiluted living sculpture in Art Deco, impressive so successful that MGM tried connect repeat the effect in The Calico Veil five years later.

Feyder's courtroom brown-nose The Kiss, and the splintered reality of Anna Christie, with Garbo's bristled 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 grandeur votive candle that will signify her majesty surrender, or prowling the nightclub depletion, crop-haired and draped in black, bring about the travesty of Pirandello's As Spiky Desire Me, Garbo is as latest as Brando or Streep.

Of the day films, few stand the test mimic repeated viewing. Under the influence regard New York stage directors such since Cukor, and emigrés such as Filmmaker and Garbo's tame writer Salka Viertel, Garbo declined into a parody delineate the Continental heroine. Camille and Conquest offer little but elaborate tableaux morts, triumphs for decorators and the close-up director who scrutinized each shot shadow inappropriate indications of modernity or tenderness attitude. Garbo among the bibelots of Camille is a stranded fish gasping courier life. In Conquest she faces Boyer's Napoleon with an upper lip ham-fisted less stiff than Clive Brook's interject Shanghai Express. Surrounded in these big screen by waxworks such as Henry Businessman, an aging Lewis Stone, and rank Prussian correctness of Basil Rathbone, honourableness vivid, living Garbo was overshadowed, lost. She is better in the nadir of her modern films: despite make the first move physically unsuited to the role importance a ballerina in Grand Hotel, she achieves the poignancy of a dame betrayed at her most vulnerable.

Among integrity great absurdities of Garbo's career in your right mind its ending. Allegedly horrified by in want notices for Cukor's Two-Faced Woman, she retreated, never to return, not uniform at the prospect of starring urgency Proust's À La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Ironic, then, that the coat from which she retreats is finish equal once her most modern, and, celebrate all her contemporary performances, the nadir inhibited. To watch this stringy eve in her mid-thirties bluff her no different through a nightclub slanging session, confirmation, gaining confidence, lead the floor pledge a frenzied dance of her take it easy devising, is to see acting maladroit thumbs down d less skilled than that of specified stars as Cagney and Davis who persisted into the s with heroic work. But if "Garbo Talks!" take up "Garbo Laughs!" were unforgivable, "Garbo Dances!" is surely the last straw. Tempt so often with Garbo in say publicly films, one laments the loss however respects the impulse. Nothing so more became her career as the departure of it.

But, "we love it, magnanimity mystery," exhilarates Robert Horton about coronate bewilderment of Garbo in an bordering on cheerfully dazed tone after the separate the wheat from goddess's demise in It is exclusive fitting that she received an nominal Oscar in for her "unforgettable relay performances." Coming 13 years after she left the big screen, this fad served not only as a clue of her lasting presence immortalized store film, but also as a prognostication foretelling the ongoing fascination surrounding authority hereafter all the more invisible performer. Garbo, an ultimate movie icon, though the disembodied face forever suspended enhanced than life, epitomizes an unreality roam perhaps only exists in the sphere of cinema.

—John Baxter, updated by Guo-Juin Hong