Greta Garbo in the full bloom of her youthful
beauty when she little dreamed of the tragic
love life before her

Greta Garbo has more than beauty, more than genius. She has a startling love story which has done more than anything else to make her what she is today, and which is far more thrilling than any she has ever played on the screen. You will find it vividly told in the amazingly frank biography

At the last moment of her creation, the gods poured
into her the divine fire. They made her women, “even
as you and I”; then added genius

The
TRUE LOVE LIFE
of
GRETA GARBO

THE world has called Garbo a mystery.
    Yet the true story of Greta Garbo will dispel that mystery. It is the tragic saga of a woman torn between two great forces.
    Upon one hand, her love for a man and her great consuming desire for motherhood. Upon the other, the career which lifted her from poverty to a lonely pinnacle, her passion for her art, the art which has made her the greatest of all screen idols.
    A lovable, loving, almost childlike creature, she was built by the hand of Nature to be the mother of sons. And if Garbo had those children of which she has so often dreamed, if Fate had allowed her to fulfill the first destiny of womanhood, there would be today a different woman in place of the solitary, mysterious figure who lives alone by the sea. But there would be no motion picture star named Garbo.
    At the last moment of her creation, the gods poured into her the divine fire. They made her woman, “even as you and I”; then added genius. Her whole life has been a struggle between those two forces, sometimes known to herself, sometimes wrapped even from her eyes.
    That there might be nothing lacking to make the drama of her story complete, the gods sent into her life two men who loved her. Maurice Stiller, a man much older than Garbo, a famous Swedish film director known everywhere in Europe, who discovered Greta Gustafsson, when she was an unknown, penniless little student, gave her her great chance, trained her and brought her at last to Hollywood. And John Gilbert, handsome young American, romantic idol and screen star.

Greta Garbo and Jack Gilbert enjoying a picnic lunch
in the hills beyond Hollywood during the days of their
great romance

The love story of their greatest success pales in
comparison to their own. Here we see them in a
scene from their sensational film. ‘Flesh and the
Devil.'

It was a sweet mad love filled with the greatest
happiness and beauty either of them ever knew.
The screen never saw more realistic love scene
that those in the M.G.M. production, “Love.”

THOUGH she followed him from Sweden to Germany, from Germany to America, and for years obeyed his slightest wish; though she called him “Master”; though he had over her some strange power which did not end even with his tragic death, Garbo never loved Stiller. Only one man ever had her heart. That man was John Gilbert. It might well be said that Stiller, the director, was the mate of her genius; that John Gilbert was the man for her womanhood and when life tore them apart, it separated Garbo from many things and her life since that day has been one long effort to find peace and compensation in her work.
    For, while the great Garbo has everything; fame, money and freedom, power and position, she has not the things which the humblest woman in the world may posses–a man of her own, a child of her own.
    History can show no greater and no more tragic story than that of those two romantic screen stars, Gilbert and Garbo. For it was a sweet, mad love, filled with the greatest happiness and beauty either of them ever knew, but it was heartbreaking, for all that, and its end was written in the stars long before they met.
    Often it has been asked did Gilbert and Garbo really love each other?
    They loved each other from the moment they met, a dramatic meeting known to very few. It is prophetic that even at that first meeting Maurice Stiller was present, watching those two young things with unfathomable eyes. In spite of everything, of lovers' quarrels, deep misunderstandings, temperamental differences, Jack and Greta loved each other.

UPON a certain bright clear morning, some time in the year 1928, when both of them were famous stars, these two sat upon the breast of a hillside and gazed down over the pretty gardens and rambling houses of Beverly Hills to the glittering Pacific beyond.
    It is easy to picture them there, for those who saw them so often upon the screen as lovers. The slanting rays of the sun touched Garbo's long straight hair to a luminous gold about her beautiful, tragic face and etched Jack's dark head against the sky like some bit of Greek statuary.
    They were silent, not looking at each other. Between them lay the great question of both their lives.
    Should she marry Jack Gilbert, her great love, the gay, dynamic, adorable sweetheart who had literally saved her life, who had brought her natural, human joy after the long, hard years with Stiller?
    When rumors that these two popular idols were in love and might soon marry; when newspapers almost daily printed headlines saying they were or were not engaged; when it was whispered that they were already married, nobody knew the terrific struggle that was going on behind the scenes of this much-discussed love affair.
    To Garbo, marriage with Jack Gilbert meant retirement from the screen, complete and final.
    To most screen stars it would not have meant anything like that, but to Garbo it did.

They loved each other from the moment they met.
Their love-making in their great success “Love”,
stirred audiences throughout the world

A close-up from “Flesh and the Devil.” Nobody
knew the terrific struggle going on behind the
scenes of their much discussed love affair

Between them lay the great question of both their lives.
Should she marry this gay, dynamic, adorable sweetheart?
Here they are in another passionate moment in “Flesh and the Devil.”

QUITE frankly she had told Jack that only one thing would bring her to take the marriage vows, which Stiller had long taught her were death to an artist. Not love–for a woman like Garbo may love where she chooses. Not conventionality–she cared nothing for conventions. Not position nor money–she had all of both she wanted, in her own right.
    Children. They alone, in her eyes, justified marriage. The only reason for marrying was to protect children in the critical eyes of the world.
    So as they sat upon the hillside, talking not at all, but thinking of things which faced them, Garbo thought of this one thing. If she married it would be only to this man, and only to bear him children. Not one child, or two. No small modern family. But many sturdy sons and daughters, black-haired and vivid as the man beside her, tall and blonde like herself, children who would learn to ride and swim, who would run free in the great open spaces from early dawn until kindly night shut them within the nest.
    It seems strange that when the world looks upon the sadness of Garbo's face, upon the mystery of her glorious eyes, it has not seen there the yearning hunger of a woman without children, a woman made for love and for its greatest glory, motherhood.

BUT Garbo knew, and said honestly, that she dared not attempt them both. She would not cheat either her husband and children, nor the art to which Stiller and her own genius hand bound her with bands of steel.

From the beginning there has been much talk of Garbo's attitude toward the motion picture, her famous “I go home now.” People have said and written that Garbo cared nothing for her career; that at any moment she might forsake Hollywood and go home to live as a hermit upon some Swedish island. The real point of her actions has always been missed and therefore has led to misunderstandings of what is really very simple.
    Everything that Garbo did was done to protect her art. Every time she said, “I go home now,” it was because she did not like certain stories, did not believe in certain parts. Garbo might easily have forsaken Hollywood, and it is easy to understand, when the true story of her first tragic days there is known. But there will never be any question now of Garbo forsaking the art which she loves with all her soul–the art of acting.
    Only once did she ever consider forsaking the thing to which she had dedicated her life; the work which she had promised to carry on for the “Master”, who then lay dying.

Greta Garbo as she appeared in her first
performance on the stage in Sweden

Arriving in America with Maurice Stiller, the director
who discovered and developed her, and whom she
worshiped as “Master.”

THAT was when she thought of marrying John Gilbert and retiring from the screen.
    So many things to be considered. Upon one hand, marriage, children, love. Upon the other, the greatest career a modern woman had known, with the world at her feet.
    Ah, if that had been all, the choice would have been easy. The screen would have lost the great Garbo. But there were many other things to consider, many things pulled and tugged at Garbo, things forgotten and yet not forgotten, buried deep, but still poignant.
    All those things were with her when she turned at last to Jack Gilbert and said quietly, “Yacky, I do not know. I cannot say. We must wait a little yet.”
    And so, upon that morning in 1928, she prolonged the drama; so left room for the amazing last act and the entrance of another woman.
    The Garbo we see upon the screen; the Garbo Stiller ruled; the Garbo Jack Gilbert loved; all of them are one, and all of them were born in a bleak, ugly house upon the South side of Stockholm, Sweden, on September 18, 1905. It is almost impossible to realize that this woman is not yet thirty, that it is only a little more than ten years ago when she, a shy unformed girl, first met the great Stiller. What emotions and experiences have been packed into those ten years! And how important were he years that went before! Without them, without the struggle for success, without the hardships, she would not be Garbo. Without them she would not have known and loved John Gilbert.

GRETA GUSTAFSSON, as all the world now knows, was born in a fourth-floor room in a poor house in a poor neighborhood.
    The Gustafssons were of the lowest class of Swedish people; uneducated, hard working, everyday people of the masses. Her father was a workingman, her mother a “hausfrau,” and they and already two children; a pretty little girl named Alva and a boy named Swen. There was nothing notable about the arrival on this planet of the woman who was actually to influence an entire generation in appearance and character, and stir the whole world to profound admiration. The heavens did not sound trumpets of thunder nor send up rockets of lightning, as they did when Napoleon was born. The third child of this ordinary family, a few neighbors remarked that Mrs. Gustafsson had another baby and that it was a girl. That was all there was to it.

Above is the first photo of Greta Garbo taken in Hollywood.
What a contrast to the photo on the left of the great actress
of today, sitting before the mirror in her luxurious dressing
room on the M.G.M. lot

    The short, stout Swedish woman who was the mother of the great Garbo worshipped her children and she was a good mother. She did for them every thing within her power to do. She made all their clothes and kept them clean, and she saw that they had warm garments against the cold winters. In that house there was always good Swedish food, plenty of Swedish hardtack; bruna bonor , those delicious brown beans cooked with pork and brown sugar; home-made coffee cake, cheese and fish. But there were no luxuries. Even though the three youngsters slept in one room, that room was immaculate, the floor shone and the sheets were sweet and clean. All the furniture was plain, but it was kept polished until it fairly glittered and though there were few ornaments, there was a homelike air about the little place.
    Mother Gustafsson was fanatical about cleanliness. She flew at dirt like a veritable whirlwind, and was never too tired to scrub and wash. Little Greta's long straight baby-gold hair was always shining, and her little face, already showing the strongly marked chin and the amazing eyelashes, shone from frequent scrubbings. Greta still has that same passion. Untidy as she is, careless as she is about clothes, she must have complete and shining cleanliness about herself and her home.

IT was a good-natured, happy, though rather silent household, and there was much love among its members. A particularly close bond existed between Greta and her pretty older sister, a bond whose final severance added the last bitterness to Greta's first year of suffering in Hollywood.
    But there was neither time nor knowledge for any so-called child psychology and there was little gayety. Money was always scarce, but the family knew the ways of real economy, and practiced them as a matter of course.
    Mrs. Gustafsson was, in fact, never able to overcome the training of those early years.
    When Garbo had become a great star and was earning thousands of dollars a week, she said to her friend and countryman, Nils Asther:
    “I send my mother money and tell her to buy herself fine clothes. But she doesn't do it. I want her to move to a fine apartment in the best part of Stockholm, but she will not leave her old neighborhood. No matter how much money I earn, it will never make my mother happy. She cannot learn how to spend it.”
    Nor has Greta, herself, ever quite overcome the habits she formed in her childhood, nor has she learned the easy extravagance of the picture stars. What she really wants–a comfortable isolated home, travel, a few beautiful tapestries and art treasures–she will pay for. But she rides in the same limousine year after year; often drives herself about in a small Ford; she is extremely careful of household expenses and keeps a minimum of servants for actual comfort.
    Shopkeepers in Hollywood and Beverly Hills and Santa Monica know that they cannot overcharge Garbo with impunity. It is part of her Swedish self-respect to get the most for her money, and never to waste any of it. There is no record in Hollywood of a single instance where Garbo has done one of the recklessly extravagant things which have marked the history of so many screen favorites. She owns no jewels, and it war not until she made her first memorable trip back to Sweden, after a bitter quarrel with John Gilbert, that she bought a fur coat. And then she explained it to a friend by saying, “I will need it. At Christmas it is very cold in Sweden.”

SHE was an unusually silent child and preferred to sit close to her father, whom she worshiped, and say nothing. None of them were talkers in the Gustafsson family. They were economical of words as well as money. And really there was not much to talk about. The mother has been to market. Something, perhaps, had happened to Swen at school. A few of the neighbors sometimes were mentioned, plain folk like themselves, with whom they were friendly.
    Sometimes Greta enlivened things a little by some practical joke. She was always fond of practical jokes, even as a child. When they sat down to dinner she would pull Swen's chair from under him an a few moments of childish tussle would ensue. But for the most part they sat quietly after they had finished supper and washed up the dishes, which Greta and Alva took turns in drying for the mother. If it were warm, they opened the front windows and gazed out into the ugly little street while their father smoked his big pipe. Then they went quietly to bed, for they were early risers in that simple household.

“AND where is Greta?” the mother would say, when Swen and Alva came rushing in from the cold winter days as dark shut down, their cheeks rosy with cold, bits of snow clinging to their heavy coats. Greta? She had been with them a little while ago. She would be along in a minute.
    Sure enough, in a few minutes, Greta would come rushing in pell-mell, ravenously hungry, tingling with cold.
    “And where have you been, Greta?”
    “To the bridge, to look at the lights on the snow. Oh, Mama, it was so beautiful!”
    “Such a one!” the mother would say, half puzzled, half proud. “Always on the bridge to look at something.”
    And so she was. The wild free spirit was already aflame, already yearning for something which she knew only in a awakening imagination.
    Years later, Greta Garbo said to the famous Swedish journalist, Ake Sundborg, with whom she talked more freely than she has ever done with any one since she became a great star, “We all do the same things. We go to school, we learn, we grow up–one much as another. Some are born in mansions, some in cottages, but what differences does it make in the long run? What does it matter who my parents were, or what they did?
    “We gradually find our true aim in life any try to fulfill its mission. This is the true significance of life. The result of our life should bear witness to what we are; what we will do; what we can achieve. And our work tells this best in its own language. Mine happens to be the language of the motion picture screen.”
    There is great courage in those words, but they are not altogether true of any one. Many things in Garbo's childhood helped to mold her life to its great ends, to contribute to the mystery around her, to the glamour that surrounded her in American eyes.
    One day when she was racing through the hills with Jack Gilbert, during those days when he had forced her to make a fight against the anemia which threatened her career and her life, she cried to him, “Oh, Yacky, I have not been so happy since I was a little girl in Sweden, and ran through the snow.”
    That was one of the things which left the deepest imprint upon her character and most affected her later. Her passion for the snow and the cold. When summer time came, and the grass grew green in the vacant lots near the Gustafsson dwelling which were the neighborhood playground, Greta was never quite happy. Then the ugliness of the street and of the house with its flat face and blind window eyes was plain to see.
    Butt in winter, the Snow Queen veiled the world in breathless beauty. Into the pure whiteness of that world, a child might weave fairy tales, and there was nothing to say her nay. Little Greta was a true child of Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen. She was never indoors. Greta ceased to be the outsider; the silent child who cared little for playtime. There was no one on the South Side who could skate more swiftly than Greta Gustafsson, no one who was so recklessly daring upon a sled. Even Swen dared not attempt some of the wild feats that little Greta loved. How she loved to throw snowballs at respectable citizens passing by, and how she loved a fight, with snowballs for ammunition!
    That Greta Gustafsson was a veritable imp, so the neighbors said, when there was snow upon the ground.
    The moonlight on the snow called to her, and she would creep from her bed and kneel at the window for hours, watching it, until little Alva would sit up in bed and say, “Greta, you will be cold. Come back beneath the warm quilt.”
    But Greta would only laugh, and whisper, “Come and see how the flakes are whirling down in the moonlight. It is like nothing else in the world.” It filled her child's soul with some austere, lonely thing that was never to leave her, it somehow spread a sheen of the snow over the hot, passionate nature of the girl, and gave her a peculiar charm.
    And when, once or twice, she went out into the country, to visit relatives who had a farm, and was allowed to have a pair of skis and a big sled, “It is a wonder she doesn't break her neck,” they all said, watching her.
    That love of the snow, of cold, of white sweep and swirling snow drops, was to drive her almost mad when she found herself doomed to the bright hot eternal sun of Southern California, where day after day the blue sky shows never a trace of cloud, and the air is almost tropical.
    From the beginning, she hated routine. Above all, she hated school. Unlike most children she never yielded to the authority; never grew accustomed to the drab lessons and long confining hours.

ONCE she carried that rebellion home, and startled her mother by declaring loudly that she would never go back to school again–she couldn't!
    “I hate it!” she said proudly. “I hate even the recesses when we must play exactly so, exactly as the teachers say. I will not play so. I would rather stand by myself and do nothing.”
    Mrs. Gustafsson knew not how to deal with this sudden revolt of her idolized youngest. Bewildered, she could only wait until the father returned, and then place the whole matter before him. But he only laughed and pulled Greta's straight hair over her ears and told her that education was a necessity. Did not the state provide schools for that purpose? His Greta must grow up to be a fine woman, and know more than her parents. Perhaps he had ambitions for her, but surely the quiet man never dreamed that some day this child who begged not to go back to school would be known in every city and village in the civilized world, and millions of people would pay to look upon her face.
    Greta Garbo never go more than the rudiments of an academic education. She went only as far as what, in America, would be the end of grammar school. Even today, her knowledge is deep but narrow. She understands people. She knows the art of acting and the theater and drama; for in time she became a student at the Royal Dramatic School of Stockholm. But she knows little else. Never, until the past year, when she traveled extensively in Europe, had she much opportunity to broaden herself. But she was always keenly eager to learn, always going out of her way to pick up strange bits of information, to look upon strange ways of life.
    At fourteen she went to work. At eighteen she had never been outside of Stockholm. During her first four years in Hollywood, she seldom went anywhere except from her Santa Monica home to the studio and to Jack Gilbert's wonderful home on the hill. For years she saw almost no one but Stiller–and then Gilbert.
    To understand the true story of Garbo, to dispel for all time the mystery of her, it is necessary to remember that Greta Garbo was born in Sweden; that she is essentially Swedish, by birth and training.
    Garbo herself ways “I am a Swede. I love my country. I shall always love it.”
    In the prosperous, busy, orderly country of Sweden, the people are by nature inclined to go about their own business, to live their won lives. Except for the sailors who, by the very nature of their calling, must venture across the Sven Seas, the Swedes are not travelers. As a race, they have always been a self-controlled, quite, well-organized folk. Display in any line is not encouraged.

THE Grand Duchess Marie, former wife of Prince William of Sweden, in her splendid autobiography says, “In Sweden, I found much to admire; her great civilization, her spirit of order, her immense capacity for organization. This civilization, developed to the point where individual effort no longer counted, where there was no longer room to exercise the imagination, weighed upon me.”
    It was in this land of order and efficiency, if civilized emotional conduct that Garbo spent the formative years of her life. The people around her behaved according to tradition. Strong, silent people, realists, their emotions are deep and powerful, but not easily expressed, lacking utterly the color and excitability, the flaming words and violent emotions of the Latin races.
    Thus Greta Garbo, with all her fire and genius, all her fertile imagination, early learned the Swedish habit of self-control and the tradition of concealing her feelings.
    Perhaps that was one reason she was so mad about Jack Gilbert, with his swift, excitable speech, his dashing movements, his wild gayety and charm, his violent emotions. Often she used to sit and look at him in honest amazement when he laughed, shouted, argued, orated–all over nothing very important.
    “I wish I could be like that,” she would say wistfully. “Yacky, you are so vonderful!”
    It may be that it was because of all this that the theater appealed to her so strongly. There, and only there, she could let down all barriers, give full reign to her tumultuous feelings, express herself freely, allow her vivid imagination to run riot–as some one of the great characters she was creating.
    At eight or nine she had her first glimpse of the theater.
    Not far from the Gustafsson home was the old South Side Theater, where a stock company or traveling players gave performances.
    That theater soon began to exercise an irresistible fascination for little Greta Gustafsson. On summer evenings, as soon as supper was over, she would disappear as silently as a little ghost, saying nothing to any of her family. If only she had money for a ticket; to go through those front doors and she what went on behind. With great eyes wide and eager, she would watch the crowds go–and long with all her heart to follow them. But there was no money in the Gustafsson household for such things as theater tickets.
    At last Greta found her way to the stage door. The actors and actresses who went in and out sometimes noticed a thing, fair-haired girl who stood silent, watching them. Sometimes they spoke to her, but she seldom answered, only began to tremble violently and her long lashes fell upon her cheeks.
    Then Greta made her first conquest. The stage doorman, a gruff old Swede who had presided over that sacred portal for years, began to be aware of the little girl who came night after night, and stood so quietly. She wasn't a nuisance, like most kids. Just stood there, watching and watching. At last, one night, he spoke to her.
    “Like the theater, little girl?” he asked.
    Greta Gustafsson looked at him, almost frozen with embarrassment. Finally she crept nearer, and said, very softly, “I have never been inside. What is it like inside?”
    “Never been to a theater?” the old man said.
    They became friends, after that. And before long he opened the stage door and let her in, let her see what a theater was like inside, let her peep into the dressing rooms and stand, lost in glorious amazement, in the wings while the performance went on.
    Immediately there awakened within her a great desire. Oh, if she could only be an actress! No one in the Gustafsson family had ever been on the stage. It is doubtful if Greta's mother and father were ever inside a theater ten time in all their lives. They knew no one remotely connected with the theatrical world. But in their youngest child's heart had been born a great ambition,. which she kept utterly secret from every one but Alva. To her, sometimes in the night, Greta whispered of her Dream–to be an actress, to play in a theater.

IMMEDIATELY the tiny flat was filled with Greta's own conception of a theater. She recruited Swen and Alva for her company. She wrote strange little plays. She dressed everybody up and turned the furniture upside down.
    Nearly all children, at one time or another, play “theater.” Exactly that same way, the Gustafsson children in faraway Sweden in the dim little flat, played it. Only Greta took in more seriously. She astounded her brother and sister with gusts of emotion that they could not understand. And Greta, who was the youngest, but had always been somehow the leader, grew positively angry if they didn't take their work seriously enough; if they wanted to go out and play games; if they refused to spend time and attention on their costumes and props.
    Day by day her childish dream grew. But no one took much notice. It was just children's stuff. As for Greta's becoming an actress, such a though never entered any one's head at that time.
    Suddenly, all play-acting stopped. At twelve Greta became conscious of something else that affected her whole life.
    Today the great star is a tall woman, taller by some inches than the average woman. Her height is pure beauty and grace. There has never been a more stunning couple in Hollywood than John Gilbert and Greta Garbo. They were not often seen in public, and when they were it was not only their fame and the intense curiosity about their romance which made every one turn to look at them. It was the perfection of manly and womanly beauty which they exemplified, which so trilled theater audiences in their first film together, “Flesh and the Devil.”
    Suddenly, when Greta was a little past eleven, she began to grow.
    “I grew,” she once told a friend, “exactly like your Alice in Wonderland.”
    At twelve, she was a tall as she is today. It was a bitter cross that caused her many tears, many heartaches. No more theater plays. No more wild pranks. No more of Greta's practical jokes.
    “Everywhere people seem to be whispering about my size, my awkwardness,” she told Sundborg.
    She towered above other girls of her own age. And she was awkward, with the awkwardness of any young animal. Her consciousness of her height added to that awkwardness. And she did not mature as she grew taller, so that her figure was without curves, without the beauty that it was later to acquire. All this bred in her a self-consciousness, a dread of being stared at, a lack of social ease which she has never overcome to this day.

THIS may be one reason that there are no childhood romances to record of Garbo; but only one reason.
    The fact is that, like most of her countrywomen, she was very slow to awaken to sex and to her own womanhood. The siren who was to make men's hearts beat faster all over the world, the woman who today represents our idea of sec appeal, never had a youthful crush. She cared nothing whatever for boys; never exchanged notes in the schoolroom nor sauntered home beside some blond Swedish youngster. Perhaps the fact that she was taller than most of them had something to do with this. But mostly it was because there seemed to be in her mind nothing of sex, because of her shyness, her reserve kept her from those instinctive flirtations, those wordless romances, that mark most childhood.
    Then, when she was fourteen, her father died, and Greta Gustafsson experienced her first great overwhelming emotion. And that great overwhelming emotion was grief!
    He died suddenly. That shock found its way to the very depths of the girl's soul.
    Alone the crept into the room where he lay so still, so peaceful. Alone she stood beside him, frozen, tearless, overcome with the bewildered sorrow and the nameless fear which comes to an imaginative child upon the first close contact with death. What was this that lay so quiet before her–which was her father and yet not her father? Only yesterday he had reached out to stroke her hair as he had always done. And now he lay still; even when at last she called to him; even when at last she fell upon her knees beside him and her hot tears fell upon his face.
    Blackness descended upon her, a panic of anguish and loneliness unspeakable. So close, then, were life and death. So quickly could those we loved be torn from us. There was no one to comfort her, no one to tell her in wise kind words that death is life's great adventure. She had no religion upon which she might rest.
    The family, grief stricken, knew nothing of this shock which, for years, was to send its cold echoes through her brain. Such a shock, coming to a supersensitive tense young thing at fourteen, made a deep impression and there was no one to understand and talk this thing out with her. Even, yet, Garbo has moments in the night when she cannot sleep, and the memory of that hour comes back to her and sets her trembling.
    Her father's death changed everything. They had been poor before. Now they were destitute. There was no money. There would be no weekly earnings coming in to take care of the little family. They clung together, the window and her orphaned children, the mother bewildered and heartsick, pretty Alva in tears, young Swen, the man of the family now, trying hard to take his father's place, and the silent, frozen Greta. And in those hours there was welded an bond of deep family love and affection that has never been broken, and today is the sweetest and most normal thing in Greta's life.

IT was necessary for them to look after themselves–and at once. No time to wait and grieve. Alva and Swen got small jobs, which brought in a little income. The mother, too, found that it was possible for her to add a little by an occasional day's work.
    And Greta? Ag, no one was more anxious than Greta to get out into the world and help look after herself and her family. Why, she was big and strong–the biggest and strongest of them all, though she was only fourteen. She would do wonders. Her mother was not to worry. Soon Greta would find something and look after them all.
    To her amazement she ran into a storm of protest. And it began with the little mother whom, above all others, she wished to protect.
    “Greta? No, no. Greta is but fourteen. Still a baby. It was always the papa's wish that Greta should go to school. How bad he would feel id he knows that she goes to school no mire, that she does not go into the high school.”
    White-hot rebellion swept the girl. Was she to be the only one dependent? For years, Swen and Alva had always come to Greta with their little troubles, it had always been Greta who was told their secrets. Now was she to sit by and let them support her?
    For a time she gave in, rather than hurt her mother further during those first days of sorrow. The she could stand in no longer. Her papa would understand. Everything was different now. They were quite alone in the world.
    Without telling her mother or sister, Greta went out after her first job.
    Not far from the house on Blekingetan where she had been born and lived all her life, was a barber shop. Her father had patronized it. Then men of the neighborhood went there. Often Greta had passed it on her way to market.
    One morning the barber looked up to see standing in his doorway, a tall young girl whose face was white as chalk. He did not dream of the courage it had taken for her to get inside that door, of the number of times she had walked around the block, of how often her hand had dropped nerveless from the knob, at the thought of facing this stranger in such a strange place. He only noticed that she was trembling and that a pair of enormous eyes, clear and steady, met his. Why, surely, it was the Gustafsson girl, whose father had died not long ago.
    So he said, “Good-morning little one. What can I do for you?”
    Whit a gasp, she told him. She wanted work. She needed the money. Didn't he sometimes have a girl to make up the lather and wash brushes, wipe razors and fold towels? She could do that very well indeed.
    “I am young,” she said, “but I am clean and a good worker, and I will work very hard. I know how everything should be kept, nice and clean.”
    Under the spell of those compelling eyes, the barber fidgeted a moment. She wasn't what you'd call a pretty girl, this Gustafsson girl. If you had a girl in the barber shop it was good for business, if she was pretty. Still there was something about her eyes–maybe she might do–and the family probably needed the small bit of money he could pay for such work.
    “All right” he said, “you may come then. What is your name.”
    “My name is Greta,” said the tall girl.
    So after that the customers of the little shop came to know the girl Greta, and there must be men in Stockholm today, who went into that barber shop in 1919 and can remember her moving quietly about the shop, keeping everything neat as a pin. And it must give them a thrill beyond words to get into a packed cinema house and see the glamorous Garbo, the exotic and alluring Garbo, and realize that those lovely hands once patted lather upon their unsuspecting chins.
    That was Garbo's first job.

SHE explained to her mother that it was all right, because she could still go to school part of the day, and report to the barber shop only in the afternoon.
    But it did not satisfy Greta Gustafsson long. There wasn't enough money in it. Nor could she see any future. Her dream of being an actress had been relinquished, with many tears in secret. If her father had lived–and who could dream that such a fine, strong man would die before he was fifty?—it might gave been possible for her some day to go to the Royal Dramatic School, to try to get work in the theater. Now she must put all that aside and think of something where she could earn enough money so that her mother need not work.
    She thought about it a long time. When the school term was ended, Greta went to her mother. Tenderly, with her arm around the plump shoulders, her fresh young cheek against the faded one, she explained how she felt and begged her mother to let her try to get a job–a real job. This time her mother yielded.
    The next day she walked across Stockholm and, taking her courage in both hands, entered the department store of Paul U. Bergstrom, one of the largest emporiums in the Swedish capital. No one paid any attention to her. They saw a tall, badly dressed girl, with a pale face and a rather melancholy air. For since her father's death, the melancholia that had sometimes attacked Greta as a child and sent her off by herself to dream strange and sometimes gloomy day-dreams, had grown upon her.
    And she was terribly frightened. Not a soul greeted her. No once could possibly dream, if he watched her stand, twisting her worn gloves upon her shaking hands, that this girl was to spread the name of Bergstrom's department store around the world and that the store would one day be famous because Greta Garbo worked there.
    Alt last a young man, who appeared to be in a terrible rush and who certainly was not particularly impressed by this applicant, spoke to her.
    She wanted a job.
    Very well, she might leave her name and address.
    No, he couldn't tell. There weren't any vacancies at that moment. If she would leave her name and address, they would communicate with her. How old was she? Fifteen? She looked older. Had she ever done any word of this kind before? No? Then she couldn't hope for much to start with. They preferred girls with experience. However, if anything did turn up, they would let her know. And he hurried away, apparently bent upon some more important business than interviewing so humble an applicant for a job.

NATURALLY he could not known that some day that young applicant was to make the Bergstrom establishment world famous.
    Heartsick and weary, Greta walked the long distance back across Stockholm to the South Side. Maybe it would be hard to find work. Perhaps, after all, she wouldn't be able to get anything to do.
    No word came the next day. The next Garbo started out again and applied at two more stores without success. But the third day, there in the mail box was a letter. Printed in the upper left hand corner were the magic words, “Paul U. Bergstrom Department Store.” Whirling like a dervish, Greta dashed up the four flights of stairs. Her mother and Alva were both at home. Together they read the printed slip enclosed. Miss Greta Gustafsson was to report to the employment bureau at once.
    It was too late that day, but the next morning Greta was on hand long before the doors opened. An hour later, she was sent to the ladies' coat department.
    Thus fifteen-year-old Greta became a shopgirl in a Swedish department store. The childish dream of the little Gustafsson girl that she might some day be a great actress had been sacrificed upon the altar of her love for her mother and sister and brother.
    The year 1920! Maurice Stiller, coming from Finland to Sweden, had already scored a sensational success as a motion picture director. Already the European papers were hailing him as a genius. Already great actors and actresses were bowing before him.
    Thousands of miles away in Hollywood, John Gilbert was the most popular and promising of the screen juveniles. Only twenty-one, his brilliant acting and his handsome dark face and dashing air had gained him the applause of audiences everywhere. He was a great drawing card, and women wrote him hundreds of fan letters.
    Neither of them had ever heard of Greta Garbo, who was to change both their lives and, perhaps, break both their hearts.
    How could they? For there was then no such person as Greta Garbo. There was only Greta Gustafsson, and if you had mentioned to either of these brilliant, successful men that a little Swedish shopgirl, then only fifteen years old, a tall awkward young thing with enormous eyes, was to be the great love of both their lives, they would have laughed.
    The points of that thrilling triangle, which was to come together later in love, jealousy, hatred and heartbreak, were then widely separated; Jack Gilbert in Hollywood, Stiller a famous director in Europe, Greta hard at work in the store.

YET at that very moment and for all the months while Greta sold hats and coats in a store which he passed many times, Stiller was searching everywhere for the girl who was to become Garbo.
    The great Stiller was seeking all over Europe for the girl–the one girl–who might be perfect clay in his hand, the beauty who would be the slave of his genius.
    For Maurice Stiller had been born so ugly that never could be carry out his supreme desire to be the word's best actor. He knew and felt everything. Within him trembled every emotion man could know–from saint to devil. He understood every tone and gesture and feeling necessary for acting. But with all his gifts, some cruel fairy had played a hideous joke upon him and given him a face that could never appear upon stage or screen. He must be content to be the director, to pull the strings that made the puppets dance as the wished.
    So, as every one knew, Stiller continually looked for the beauty who would be his other self; who, ruled by his master hand, would startle all Europe. It was his supreme ambition to find a young, inexperienced girl whom he could make into the world's greatest actress.
    After years of weary search, one day in the spring of 1923 he walked into his apartment in Stockholm and found waiting for him a tall, badly dressed young girl named Greta Gustafsson. And he knew instantly that he had found her .
    At that very moment began a new, strange, modern story of Beauty and the Beast, of Garbo and Stiller.
    She was seventeen. He was nearly forty. She was an unknown ignorant Swedish girl. He was a famous director and man of the world.
    It was inevitable that as she became his dream in the flesh, he should love her madly, and believe that she belonged to him entirely and forever. It was inevitable, too, that the girl should be his slave, and blindly worship and obey the “Master.”
    Neither of them, naturally, considered a dark and dashing young American named John Gilbert who, in time, was to come into their lives.

The next installment of this fascinating story of the queen of the movies reveals for the first time, in all its thrilling details, and amazing relationship between those two extraordinary individuals, Garbo and Stiller and what happened when Jack Gilbert came between them. You will find it in the November TRUE STORY Magazine–On Sale Everywhere October 5th