She found herself struggling between her loyalty to, and
worship of the man who made her, and her suddenly
awakened passion for the handsome, dashing screen idol

The
TRUE LOVE LIFE
of
GRETA GARBO

Here in this intimate biography of the cinema's greatest star, is revealed the amazing drama of passion and jealousy and violent emotions that went on behind the scenes as Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, became, in fact and on the screen, the “great lovers.”

In the Preceding Installment:
THE first part of this amazing human document revealed the story of Greta Garbo's childhood. It told of her humble birth as Greta Gustafsson in a fourth-floor room, in a poor house in a poor neighborhood in Stockholm; of her girlhood dreams; of the death of her father; of her having to take a job as lather girl in a barber shop; of her apparently hopeless ambition to be an actress; of her finding work in a department store; her meeting with Maurice Stiller, the great Continental moving picture director, and how he took her, a young, inexperienced girl, and slowly and patiently developed her into an actress who captured the admiration of the American movie makers and brought both of them to Hollywood where she met John Gilbert–a meeting that was the beginning of one of the strangest emotional triangles in history.

The Story Continues:
STILLER and Garbo!
    Gilbert and Garbo!
    Only with those two names has Garbo's ever been coupled, and what pictures, what romances, what heartbreak, lie in the very sound of them.
    Other men have loved Greta Garbo, man other men.
    There was the boy at the Royal Dramatic School who worshiped her from afar and never forgot her. There was young Einar Hansen, the handsome Swedish actor, who went with Stiller and Garbo to Constantinople, followed them to America and was killed in an automobile accident one night after leaving, some say because he found his great love so hopeless. There was young Sorensen, wealthy play boy and intimate friend of Prince Sigvard of Sweden, who followed her to America after her first visit home. And Gavin Gordon, who played opposite her in “Romance”, and for days bore the agony of a broken arm rather than give up his part and the moments when he might be her screen lover.

BUT for Garbo there have been only two men, Stiller and Jack Gilbert. For many months all three of them were in Hollywood and Garbo found herself torn between the old love and the new, the complete control that Stiller had so long exercised over her life and mind, and the hot, romantic young love of Gilbert. She found herself struggling between her loyalty to and worship of the man who had made her, and her suddenly awakened passion for the handsome, dashing screen idol.
    Few people have ever understood the torture Greta Garbo endured in her first months in Hollywood, and how from that unhappiness grew much of the mystery legend surrounding her. Few people knew of Stiller's tragedy and how it crucified and bewildered the girl whose life was so bound up with his. And few, except the three who were involved in the drama of passion and jealousy and violent emotions, knew of the battle for Garbo's heart that went on behind the scenes as Garbo climbed to screen fame and Gilbert and Garbo became, in fact and on the screen, the “great lovers.”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, she found herself
in Jack Gilbert's arms and the face of the
world changed

    It all had its beginning from the moment Stiller and Garbo arrived in Hollywood, the land of promise, the land of opportunity, the land of gold and fame.
    They arrived in the late summer of 1925; the great director whom Mr. Mayer had brought from Europe, where for so long he had been hailed as a genius and worked as absolute dictator of all he surveyed, and the unknown Swedish actress who was his constant companion and pupil.
    It had never occurred to either of them that they could be separated, of that any one but Stiller would ever direct Garbo, or that Stiller would ever direct any one but the young girl upon whom for years he had centered all his thoughts and ambitions; the girl who was to be his masterpiece as the world's greatest actress.

YET Stiller never directed Garbo in a motion picture after they came to Hollywood.
    It never occurred to either of them that anything could come between them, or break the tie that bound them so closely together.
    Yet, within six months of that first brief meeting between Garbo and Gilbert, the girl found herself swept into a new romance that was utterly beyond her control.
    Garbo has never forgotten those first dreadful, lonely months in Hollywood. Like mad nightmares, they return to grip her by the throat. And they are responsible for many, many things which the world calls mysterious, in Garbo's career.
    Three things affected her vitally–and since at that time no one in Hollywood was interested in her, since she was not at first considered even a possibility for stardom, they were allowed to have their way with her and to leave scars which long quivered at the slightest touch.

FIRST, she spoke not one word of English nor could she understand it.
    Second, her pride was ground into the dust by the things that happened in the first three months before she even had a chance to make a motion picture.
    Third, she was helplessly bewildered, lost and frightened by American ways, American studios, the noise and hurry and confusion of the new surroundings in which she found herself.
    All that might easily have been overcome. But suddenly Stiller, her god, the guiding star of her existence, was a god dethroned, a god powerless to help her in this inferno of strangers who spoke an unknown tongue and behaved in unknown ways.
    Every one meant to be kind, but no one understood.
    Greta Garbo? Oh, yes–that new Swedish girl! Mr. Mayer must have been a bit balmy when he signed her. Why, she was so timid she started if you spoke to her, and so awkward she couldn't get out of her own way. Then there was her size. Who ever heard of a girl as tall as that on the screen? Stars were all little–like Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford and Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford. Of course, it was explained that Mr. Mayer had to give her a contract to get Maurice Stiller, but then who in the world was Stiller? They'd heard of him only vaguely, as one of those foreign directors. Well, they'd do all they could for him, but of course this was Hollywood, not Europe, and he'd have to learn American ways.

Love come to Garbo, and lifted her into such
happiness as she had ever known; had never
dreamed could be possible

BEFORE this perfectly natural attitude, which her sensitive instinct soon felt, all Garbo's timidity, all her shyness, all her self-consciousness and lack of confidence in herself, which Stiller had spent months in overcoming, returned in a terrifying flood. She reverted to the days before she met Stiller, so that when Jack Gilbert came to know and love her he was often amazed at her childish ways and fears.
    Here again was the bugaboo of her youth–the thing that had tortured her through two years of her childhood–her size. She was too tall. Beside the dainty, exquisite, perfectly groomed American stars, with their poise and self-possession, and perfect clothes, she felt awkward and gauche. There was no one to tell her that she was to set a new fashion in motion picture stars; that in time those very American stars would attempt to imitate her grace and lure, that her very name would become a symbol for a world fashion in beauty and that women everywhere would attempt to be Garbo-esque.
    If she had understood the language it might have been different. It was, in truth, a friendly place, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot, but it was a busy place, too, and the girl was unimportant and silent, and met any overtures with almost sullen hauteur. How were they to know that this was only a defense thrown up by her fears?

THEY lived, she and Stiller, as close to the sea as they could get. Stiller hat rented a house at Santa Monica, and Garbo had taken a room at the Miramar Hotel, high up on the Palisades, where she could see the vast sweep of the Pacific in all its changing moods and colors; where she could hear the waves speaking a language that she understood; where she could breathe the salt air of the ocean that was like a breath of home.
    Only when she was alone could she return to her dreams, escape from the reality that was smothering her. It had never been easy for her to make friends, she had always lacked social ease because of her early environment, she was afraid of strangers. It was better to be alone, to walk by the sea and dream. So the habit grew upon her and she grew to love loneliness as a protection, and as a joy that her soul understood.
    Jack Gilbert was her first friend in America. But their love melted all barriers at once.
    A passion of homesickness overcame the girl. She clung passionately to Stiller, the only thing that was her own in this wilderness. But Stiller was almost as confused as Garbo, herself. And he was fighting, as he soon knew, for his very existence. He was no longer king, he was no longer dictator.
    In her life story of Garbo, Rilla Page Palmborg quotes Stiller as saying, “They get me over to make pictures because they like my methods. They say they are different. Then they will not let me use my methods. Instead they try to tell me how to make the picture.”

There was in him an almost gypsy-like charm,
a hot love of life that was almost irresistible

    In part, this was true. But it was also true that Stiller arrogantly refused to listen or to learn. His fiery temperament, his artistic ego, rose in rebellion. His whole life in Hollywood was one long rebellion. And, in the end, he lost!
    For months, while Stiller battled with the studio and attempted to come to terms which would give him the same complete power over his productions which he had had in Europe, Garbo waited. There was no thought of using her in a motion picture. No one wanted her. But, after all, she was receiving a salary, and so they used her as they used dozens of actresses under contract, for publicity pictures.

GRETA GARBO posed with a lion for a publicity still.
    Greta Garbo posed for advertisements–for trick stuff.
    Then one day Paavo Nurmi, the great Olympic Game hero, visited the lot. They wanted to get pictures of him, of course.
    “How about the Garbo girl?” somebody said. “She talks his language.”
    “Oh, no, she's not a Finn,” said some one else, “she's a Swede.”
    “Same thing,” said everybody.
    So Garbo, in running shorts, posed for a picture with Nurmi.
    No one noticed her face as she walked away. No one saw the outraged sorrow in her eyes. No one noticed the fact that the Garbo girl had gone white with anger and crushed idealism.
    That night, when they were dining together in Stiller's little house by the sea, she said, “When I am a great star, I will never pose for such pictures. That is not the part of an actress. I am not a runner. It is a terrible thing to do. This is a strange place, where they ask artist to do such things! But some day they will be sorry.”
    In the end, it appeared that Garbo got her chance by sheer accident. But it was inevitable, of course. Some one was bound to glimpse that divine fire sooner or later.

She was a woman made for love and
for its greatest glory–motherhood

He loved life, he loved laughter, he loved people, and he
loved–love. And an hour after he first took her in his arms
upon a motion picture set, he loved Garbo

THEY were testing some new lights for Miss Lillian Gish and Miss Gish was too busy to spend hours sitting beneath lights, just to see their effect. So some one sent for the Garbo girl. She was a blonde, too, and would do well enough.
    A few days later Monta Bell, the brilliant young director who had received his training under Charlie Chaplin and was always looking for new things, asked the cameraman to run those light tests for him. Perhaps he could use them in his next picture. But Monta never saw the light effects. Instead, he saw Greta Garbo.
    Ten minutes later he was in Mr. Mayer's office. “I want that girl Greta Garbo to play the big part in my next picture,” he said.
    “You're crazy,” said the powers that be.
    But Monta was determined. “At least, let me make a test of her,” he pleaded.
    Test were made. They were terrible. “You see!” they said to Mr. Bell. But this was more than Stiller could bear. His own failure to get a picture to direct was bad enough. But to have the girl whom he knew to be a great genius rejected because of test which he, at least, knew were unfair to her, was too much.
    Beside himself with rage, Stiller stormed the sacred precincts and demanded to make the Garbo tests himself.
    “You do not understand her, you do not know what to do with her,” he shouted in German. “I will show you that she is a great actress. I will show you that she is more beautiful than any star here.”
    His violence carried conviction. On a beautiful garden set, away from all noise and confusion, once more beneath the master's hand, once more listening to the inspiring voice she knew so well, now angry, now tender, Garbo made another test. All the fire and beauty and genius of the girl burst forth to justify Stiller's faith.

THIS time there was no question. She was cast for “The Torrent.”
    The days on the set during that production were sheer, unadulterated torture, Monta Bell was a great director, but she could not understand one word he said to her. In spite of the best efforts of a brilliant young interpreter, Sven Borg, who had been hired for her, it was dreadfully difficult to work for a director she could not understand; with actors who spoke an unknown tongue. Never before in her life had she played an important part in any picture, except for Stiller.
    So each night, exhausted by the long day's work, bewildered by the speed with which they worked, the gigantic sets, the new lights, the distances of the vast stages, she went home to Stiller. And each night for hours, while outside the winter surf pounded and the cold, reviving air poured in upon them, Stiller and Garbo worked. Poring over the script, which had been translated into Swedish for them by Borg, they went over together every scene, every gesture, every emotion. And the next day Garbo would return to the set, able to go on. The master's hand was still guiding her destiny.
    When the powers that e saw “The Torrent,” they knew at last what they had in Garbo. Through their amazement, they realized that here was something new in screen history. Was this beautiful alluring woman actually the tall, awkward, young Swedish girl who wandered about the lot dressed in a cheap suit that needed pressing? Could this glorious creature, vibrating with a passion that stirred every one who saw it, moving with the grace of a panther, her whole being glowing with fire, really be the Garbo girl they had been using for publicity stills?
    “I have told you,” said Stiller quietly. “Over and over I have told you. That is what it is to be an actress–an artist.”
    Great news! Wonderful news! The studio had decided to star Garbo in a picture, and Stiller was to direct. Their chance had come.
    “The Temptress” it was called. Again Stiller was king. Soon they would see what he could do. Soon on this lot, as in Europe, the other directors would be going into the projection room to see his magnificent technique, his new angles, the power of his work. Again he was Stiller, and again Garbo was happy.
    But it was not to be. How could he direct actors and actresses who did not understand what he said? How could he handle his electricians, his cameramen? How could he produce perfection when no one know what he was talking about, and when he, himself, did not understand and refused to consider the methods employed in this new place? He grew excited, confused, and raved in mingled English and Swedish.
    They laughed at him.
    It was a terrible and tragic thing for Garbo to behold, and incredible thing. Her heart was wrung with pain and pity, though she never lost faith in the genius of the man. She knew, if these others did not!

THAT pain and pity, that memory, had much to do with her feelings late, with her refusal to give Stiller up for Jack Gilbert, with her final promise to Stiller that affected her whole future.
    Came the final, crushing blow.
    Stiller was taken off the picture.
    Garbo was frantic. What could she do? She went almost wild. She could not bear it. She could not make another picture without him. She wept and pleaded, and begged Stiller to give up this dreadful venture and go back with her to Sweden.
    “Let us go home, Stiller,” she pleaded. “Let us go home at once.”
    But Stiller would not go home. The day must have come when he remembered that night, remembered her plea and his answer, with unbearable bitterness. For if they had gone back to Sweden then, together, the story would all have been different, and Garbo would never have known and loved the young American.
    Stiller could not give up his determination to succeed. And he showed, too, his great love for the girl and his utter belief in her, and his almost fanatical worship of her art as an actress.
    “It is here you must make pictures, little one,” he said. “It is only here in America that you will have the chance to be known throughout the world. We will stay here.”
    Under his orders, and with his help, Garbo went back and finished the picture. Hurt and humiliated as he was, Stiller led her carefully, gave her all he had. For her success meant as much to him as his own; she was his creation, they were one in his mind.
    One more deep and poignant sorrow was to find its way to Garbo's heart before she began life anew; before John Gilbert came to bring joy and love into her experience.
    News came from Sweden of her sister Alva's sudden death.
    At first she could not believe it, could not comprehend what it meant.
    “I shall not see her again?” she said to Stiller, staring at him with great, questioning eyes. “When I go home to Sweden she will not be there to meet me? My little sister, she is gone like Papa?”
    No tears came to soften her grief. She went about in a daze, unable to thing or weep. At last she thought of her mother, and of those sad moments which the little mother had borne alone, and the tears came in such passionate floods that they left her weak and exhausted.
    Never, after that, did she speak Alva's name. In Garbo's home there is no picture of the little sister who was the only friend of her childhood; whom she had often dreamed of bringing to share her exile in this strange land. She kept that sorrow buried deep in her heart, where it still lives.
    So it was a weary, heartbroken girl, bewildered with suffering, who came to Jack Gilbert. In spite of the triumph of her two pictures, in spite of the fact that the studio now hailed her as the coming great star and she had succeeded in her greatest ambition, she had borne too much sorrow in those months to rejoice yet. She cared nothing for any of the things that fame and money could bring her–she had never in her life cared for them, and never would.
    Stiller, defeated and miserable. Little Alva dead. She, herself, lonely in a strange land, where the work which was her only consolation was torture. Could there ever be any happiness in her life now?
    The suddenly, unexpectedly, she found herself in Jack Gilbert's arms and the face of the world changed and life flowed back into her heart in a great flood.
    Love came to Garbo and lifted her into such happiness as she had never known; had never dreamed could be possible.

HE was only twenty-seven, and already a great screen star. His never-to-be-forgotten performance as the American boy in “The Big Parade”, greatest of all war pictures, had just swept the country. He was dark and handsome, with the freshness of youth, yet with the delightful ways of a polished man of the world. There was in him and almost gypsy-like charm, a hot love of life that was almost irresistible, and a gay impetuosity that all women and most men found lovable.
    Into those brief twenty-seven years he had crammed more living than most men have seen at fifty, yet always his cry was, “More life–more life!” Good or bad, tragic or glorious, heartbreak or happiness, but always more life. Never to miss anything, any emotion, any sensation, any danger or fun, that was Jack Gilbert's creed.
    His speech was a swift as his movements.
    Everything intrigued him. Women and romance, men and friendship, wit and fun, all sorts of pranks and gayety, music and nature, work and play, he loved them all. He had himself a quick, ready wit, his mind was broad and well trained, both by life and education. He had been twice married, and twice divorced; the first time to a girl who had been his youthful sweetheart in a small town, then to Leatrice Joy, herself a beauty and a screen star. Often he had been in love, not very seriously perhaps, and always he had enjoyed it.
    As definitely as Garbo did not, Jack Gilbert belonged to Hollywood; was part of its inner life. Coming from the stage, which he had known in his youth, with his mother, who was a fine actress, Jack had been in pictures since he wore his first long trousers. Most of his young manhood had been spent in Hollywood and he knew well all its people, all its ways, all its faults and virtues. At twenty-one, he had been a star. Besides, all the temperament, all the glitter, all the glamour of Hollywood, were part of his very being. His bachelor house on the hill, a lovely, rambling Spanish place with a swimming pool and tennis court, spreading gardens and beautiful views, was the center always of a gay group. Wine and laughter flowed, conversation sparkled and swept from wisecrack and wit to deep discussion.
    There was no more popular man in Hollywood, no more sought-after figure in Hollywood society, no more glittering idol upon the American screen than John Gilbert when first he and Garbo came together.
    He loved life, he loved laughter, he loved people and he loved–love.

AN hours after he first took her in his arms upon a motion picture set, he loved Garbo.
    They were to co-star in a picture called “Flesh and the Devil.” Garbo did not want to make it. She did not feel able to make another picture just then. She was worn out with the struggle, the strangeness, the unhappiness, of the last months. Her heart still ached with the sudden death of her sister. But at last, perhaps because she was too tired to battle, perhaps because Stiller told her that she must go on with her great career she agreed to do it.
    The fact that John Gilbert was to play opposite her pleased her, for she had always thought him a really great actor. But that fact, alone, could not lift her from the mood of melancholy into which she had fallen.
    She went to the studio for the first day of the new picture. Carefully, as Stiller had taught her, she put on her make-up; but her heart was not in it, her heart seemed to lie cold and dead in her breast. An assistant came and led her to the stage where they were to work, for she could never find her way about among the enormous stages on the great lot.
    Motion pictures are not made in sequence as they are shown upon the screen, but according to a shooting schedule which takes into consideration sets, casting and many other problems.
    The first scenes to be shot in “Flesh and the Devil” were passionate love scenes between John Gilbert and Greta Garbo. They had met but once before, in that brief moment when Garbo's admiration led her to greet him so impulsively on the lot.
    Clarence Brown, the director, introduced them on the set. Half an hour later they were in each other's arms.
    A long kiss held them, their lips crushed together, their arms about each other. Garbo's eyes closed. The world swung dizzily and melted away beneath her. There was nothing left but the wild bating of her heart; those strong young arms that held her so close; the fresh young lips pressed upon her own.
    Slowly the long lashed moved upward, lifted like silken curtains, the great blue eyes gazed up and saw the dark, handsome young face bending above her, the fine, dark eyes that were all aflame as they looked into hers.
    Garbo saw youth and love for the first time. She saw romance for the first time, with all its glamour and sweetness. And she knew that she was lost!
    It had come upon her like a torrent, as unexpected as a flash of lightning, as unsought as the burgeoning of spring. Youth and love, which she had never known. The first young passion of her life, as sweet and natural as the mating of birds.
    How different was this vivid impulse of the heart from her idolatry of Stiller, which had been fed by ambition and dreams of greatness, by gratitude for all that he had done for her and by the association of their work and their art. How different this young, handsome and happy man from the man with the ugly face and the many strange moods who had dominated her, stirred her imagination, taught her as a master.

THE picture was one long dram for them both, one long, never-to-be-forgotten ecstasy.
    The Garbo spell was upon Jack Gilbert. As she loved him for his impetuous, boyish madness, for his gayety and laughter, his dashing ways which were new to her, he loved her for those things which he had never seen before–her vast depths of hidden emotion, her shyness, her withdrawals, her honesty and her sudden surrenders.
    In the beginning, it was only passion that stirred them. That unexplainable urge that says to one man and one woman “You are mine, I desire you, I desire to hold you in my arms, to be close, to be touching, to be one.”
    It was that passion which swept through Garbo's timidity, her reserve, and her natural, instinctive withdrawal from other human beings. There was not time for any of that, no time for her to think of herself or Stiller, or to become the victim once more od her self-consciousness and shyness. Had there been, they might never have found themselves deeply in love, for Garbo would perhaps have fled from him, would have refused this new and vital emotion. But Gilbert swept her off her feet, gave her no time for thought, broke down every barrier with the warmth of his wooing.
    From that first passion grew love.
    In everything, they were poles apart. In everything, they were as different as any two people who ever lived–in background, training heredity and temperament. Yet they grew to love each other dearly, at first, for those very differences. And neither of them dreamed that, in time, from them would grow quarrels and bitter agony and separation.
    Each day on the picture set, each day of passionate love scenes, brought them deeper into the whirlpool of emotion. Nor could they hide it from any one; from each other, from every one on the set.
    “I am getting the greatest love scenes ever filmed,” Clarence Brown told the studio officials. “I am photographing, not acting but the real thing. You will see love-making at its highest point. They are in a blissful state of love themselves.”
    No love scene ever filmed, ever seen upon the stage, ever written or painted, thrilled the world as did the first love scenes that flashed upon the screen between Gilbert and Garbo.
    Stiller had been right when he told Garbo not to act, but to be .
    To herself, over and over, the girl whispered, “I am in lofe. I am in lofe.”
    That it was a secret from the whole world she believed, and she wanted to keep it a secret. Why should any one intrude upon those first divine moments? Those first hours of stolen glances, of whispered words, of breathless expectation? Why should any one be permitted to know of those first evenings, when she went so shyly to his beautiful house on the hill and wandered from room to room, wide-eyed with excitement and delight?

WHO should be privileged to share those exquisite hours when they sat before the big window while the cool night winds brought them the scent of the hills? Mostly they sat in silence, for they did not speak the same language, they could not talk in words. But their eyes spoke, and their hearts responded to a universal language of love, and they held hands and kissed as young lovers have done since the world began.
    “My Yacky.”
    She never could quite say his name, and he would burst into roars of delighted laughter, and tease her and make her laugh, too.
    “Fleka.”
    That was her own name from the beginning. It means “little girl,” and she taught it to him carefully, and loved to hear him say that one word in Swedish. It was the only Swedish word he ever learned. But gradually, with many adoring laughs, with many pauses to kiss her for her mistakes, he taught her English.
    Probably he taught her first to say “I lofe you” in that deep, husky, wonderful voice that is like no other woman's voice.
    Oh, there was much laughter and much fun in those first English lessons, while painfully, then gaily, she learned a few words of his language, and said them with childish pride. And there were long moments when no words were necessary. And others when they sat in happy silence, not caring that there was no way for them to communicate their thoughts, sharing them through some understanding of the spirit.
    All of it was a new, rich life to the girl. It was the best part of childhood which she had missed. The young love she had never had; the freedom and joy she had never known. It was youth, youth, youth! And somewhere along the road, necessity and gate had allowed her to miss much that is youth's birthright.
    To Jack, she was everything he had ever dreamed a woman might be. How amazed he was when first he saw that rollicking, romping side of her come to the surface, when she played jokes on him and began to tease him in return. At first he had seen only the siren, the famous screen temptress, with all her strange allure, her sex appeal, her unbelievable beauty. That had attracted him, that and the love of conquest which had always been his.
    But this shy, slightly awkward, sometimes self-conscious young thing–how infinitely appealing she was! It was amazing to realize that she was only a little over twenty, only a girl, and that most of those twenty years had been spent in poverty and hard work. This gentle rather pathetic, lonely young thing, who cuddled against him like a young puppy, holding his coat in her two hands, asking to be petted, yearning for simple, human affection–this romping, boisterous, Viking maid, who would wrestle with him and roughhouse like a boy–this woman who would suddenly grow silent and look out at him from enormous, unfathomable eyes, like the Sphinx–there had never been any one like her, and never would be again.
    No wonder Jack loved her!
    So, for just a little while, they kept their secret, except from the people who saw them on the set. Any one else knew was that Gilbert and Garbo were making a picture together.
    But where was Stiller, what of Stiller, during those days when Jack and Greta were falling so madly in love?
    It was a desperate and busy time for Maurice Stiller. He was almost distracted by the many troubles connected with his career. He and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had never been able to reach any agreement. Stiller would yield nothing of his demands, felt he could yield nothing, while the studio executives could not see their way clear to meet those demands.

HE knew that Greta was working very hard on this new picture; and when she worked it was essential that she should see no one, think of no one but her role. Many times he had told her that, and always she had been obedient. If he did not see her quite so often, if when they rehearsed her scenes together or talked of this new part, she was silent and distrait, is he seemed more than usually absorbed in her work, that was splendid. After all, nothing mattered but the work.
    Probably she did not consciously deceive him. It was not in the girl to deceive any one. Deceit of any kind was abhorrent to her honest soul. She would not, could not, have lied to Stiller But she would, and probably did, keep silent, as she has done in so many crises of her life. There was no need to speak yet. And somewhere deep within her she must have felt that she had a right, as every woman has a right, to those first moments of love untarnished by the thought of any other human being.
    Then Stiller was loaned to Paramount to make a picture called “Hotel Imperial”, with Pola Negri. His chance had come; if not with Garbo, as he had dreamed and believed, with another actress who, too, had much to offer. He was heartbroken, of course, that it could not be as he had hoped, but since it could not he must do for himself the best he could.
    When Stiller was directing a picture, he would see no one. Even his friends dared not speak to him. The only exception there had ever been to this rule was Garbo. It is perhaps a little difficult to realize the fantastic devotion of this man to his work, his art. It was his very heart and soul. He had loved Garbo so completely because she was part of that work, she was his highest expression of that art. They were inseparably bound together in his mind–the great art of the motion picture in which, as a director, he still believed himself supreme, and Greta Garbo, the instrument upon which he had hoped to play his greatest melody.
    All these things must be understood to understand what happened later, to understand the legacy he left to Garbo, to understand why his voice had such power over her in the big decision of her life.
    Her concentrated violently, bitterly, on this new picture. He would show them–these narrow, blind fools! He would show them what Stiller could do. And so, since they were working on different lots on different pictures, since his purpose was to make a picture which would prove his right to direct Garbo once more, he forgot everything even Garbo, in his fanatical devotion to his work.
    But, in time, it had to come!

JUST how and when Garbo told Stiller of this new thing that had come into her life, probably no one knows but Garbo. But, knowing the essential honesty of the girl, it is almost certain that she told him herself, rather than allow him to learn from strangers what at last was becoming known to all Hollywood.
    Then began for Garbo a period of terrible emotional upheaval, of soul agony of opposing forces, of desires that pulled her first one way and then another, and in the end left her so beaten and so exhausted that if almost threatened her life.
    She found herself involved in a long battle with the studio; not altogether a battle for the higher salary she deserved, but a battle for stories that she believed in, for parts that she felt were worthy. Better, she felt, not to make any pictures, better to go back to Sweden and leave all this new-found, devastating fame that was pouring in upon her, than to do pictures in which she had no faith.
    But that was not the great thing in her life at that time. The great thing was her honest love for two men, and the many deep emotions that tore at her, the many feelings that swept over her from the past and in the present.
    What could she do? What was the answer?
    She worshiped Stiller. There is no question of that. They were bound together by the strongest ties that could not be broken without leaving her shattered and bleeding. Part of her was actually his creation, part of her belonged to him, and always would. How could it be otherwise? In him she had found companionship that had endured for years. And she owed him everything–everything! That must never be forgotten. She owed him the very fact that she was on the screen, that she had come to America at all.
    They were raving now about her mysterious allure. Of course, it hat always been there, but who had taught her to express it, to project it upon the screen? They praised her acting, calling her the greatest of all screen artists. Who had taught her to act, who had set the spark to the divine fire within her? Even her make-up, even the way she photographed, the way she moved and held her head, the way she wore her clothes-who had taught her all those things?
    The answer was always the same. Stiller.
    If he had succeeded in America! If he had been as successful as she was, if he were on the road to the heights! But he had failed; he was sick with wounded pride, sick unto death with the agony of his failure. His proud and arrogant soul was quivering with hurt. This land which now offered her everything, which was now the land of golden opportunity for Garbo, was a land of misery and desolation for Stiller.
    Could she forsake him? Even if she had not still cared for him with a deep affection, could she add the final blow of her disloyalty? Could she betray him now, when he who had done all for her needed her for the first time?
    All the loyalty, all the deep kindness in her nature, rebelled at the very thought. The two virtues which were mostly truly part of her nature, which every one who has ever known her or worked with her has found so strong, her loyalty and her kindness, refused to allow her to break with Stiller.
    It was impossible.
    Yet she loved Jack Gilbert. For the first and only time in her life, she was in love. And in her love, it seemed, lay happiness. That way lay escape from the melancholy that sometimes overcame her; that way lay laughter and joy; that way lay the goal of every woman's heart. Nothing bound her to Jack Gilbert but love. But was there anything more powerful in life than love?

AND Jack loved her. She was his happiness, too. She owed him nothing–except love, the gift of her love which he had every right to demand.
    “Nothing in the world should be as important to you as our love,” he said. And she knew he was right. But that changed nothing in what she owed to Stiller.
    Over and over she told Jack that she did not love Stiller, had never loved Stiller in the way she loved him.
    And over and over she must have told Stiller that this new love did not alter her devotion to him, did not change their relationship that he was still the master.
    But neither man would be content with that answer. Neither man would share her love, or grant one jot or tittle of it to the other. Neither would understand, or believe in, or be content with things as they were.
    And so began months of torment, of indecision, of mad scenes and wild words, of actual physical illness, when she grew thin and pale and hollow-eyed, and had hardly the strength to walk.
    At one time she would decide to leave all this strife and unhappiness, this trouble with the studio, this strange land where she had been so miserable and so happy, and go back to Sweden with Stiller.
    At another, she would decide to stay and, perhaps some day, marry John Gilbert.
    There was one evening when she promised to marry Jack, when it seemed that all had been decided between them; when shyly, half tearful, half smiling, all gentleness, she told him that she would.
    Then she saw Stiller, and the next day came back, white and haggard, her eyes staring straight ahead, her lovely mouth set, and in a choked, dead voice said, “I cannot marry you, Yacky. I shall never merry any one, never!”
    Then he knew that Stiller had spoken again, that Stiller had poured forth his creed that an artist must never marry. Marriage, Stiller would say, was fatal to the artist. It meant the end of all art; it meant the sacrifice of that individuality which is the very soul of art, it meant a divided heart, and the artist must have a single thought, a single eye, a single heart.

THERE was the night when Greta had promised to go with Stiller to see a preview of his new picture. And Jack had rebelled.
    “But, Yacky, I must go! It means so much to him, he is so alone,” the girl cried.
    But Jack was afraid, desperately afraid, of Stiller's influence, of that power which had so long dictated Garbo's life; afraid that now, in the end, it would still rile her. He stood firm–and in the end she did not go.
    There were days when heaven was in their hands, so it seemed. Exquisite days on Jack's new yacht, The Temptress , when they sailed a blue sea, and saw the magic island of Catalina lying before them like a paradise of the Pacific, or watched the white and green coast of Mexico slip by. Then troubles seemed to melt away in the bracing salt air and nothing existed but this boat that was bearing them away from everything but each other. The world, which was always their enemy, was well lost for love.
    But they returned. Inevitably they returned–to Stiller. Once more that voice would call, that old love, which was not love, but some strange, vital devotion which the girl could not betray, would demand its dues, and she would go to him and they would talk once more of going back to Sweden.
    There were wild tales, too, of meetings between the two men, of a night when Gilbert went to Stiller's little house by the sea, of a night when he climbed by means of vines and window ledges to Garbo's room, after they had quarreled. There were days when Gilbert and Garbo did not speak; days when she did not see Stiller, but shut herself away from them both and prayed only to be alone–alone.
    Then, suddenly, Jack left for New York. Stiller and Garbo were once more always together. What had happened? Had Stiller won? Was the flaming romance of the screen's great lovers over? Would Garbo actually go back to Sweden as she threatened, and never make another picture in America?
    But Jack came back, and there was a passionate reconciliation. The separation had been agony to them both, even though they had quarreled before he went away.
    “Do not go away, Yacky, do not go away again!” cried the enchanting, husky voice. “I cannot bear it!”
    Things could not go on. It was impossible. They all knew it. There must be a climax to this rising tide of emotion.
    It came, that climax, with unbelievable swiftness. And it was Stiller who brought it to pass. Stiller who, in one magnificent gesture, found the answer.
    He decided to go back to Sweden.

BUT Garbo, the great Garbo, was to stay in America without him, to go on with her dazzling career, to become in truth the greatest actress in the world.
    She would have gone back. Almost certainly, had Stiller demanded it, she would have returned with him to Sweden.
    But in the end he had only one thought, as he had had only one thought in the beginning. Her work–her great art. That was the all-important, the paramount, thing.
    Her contract troubles with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had been settled. A new influence had come into Garbo's life, a quiet, amazingly clever little man named Harry Edington who, as her business manager, was to become the power behind the Garbo throne, who was to have the strongest possible effect upon her future career. He had won for her every demand she made, he had smoothed out all the difficulties, he had arranged everything just as she wished. Her salary seemed to her incredible. But more important, she was to have a voice on all her stories, she was to have something to say about what parts she played.
    “You must stay,” said Stiller. “I shall go home–I am not happy here, I can do nothing.
    “Yet this is the center, this is the place where great pictures must be made and sent out into the world. Everything lies before you. As long as there is Garbo, my work will be justified. But it is for you to carry on, for you to be the greatest actress in the world. You can do it now, alone. I have taught you everything I know, and you will remember everything and follow everything as we had planned. But unless you do this, everything I have dreamed, everything I have worked for, is lost. You must stay here, where this great future lies before you. And you must never forget me and what I have told you.”
    He left her. He made the great sacrifice for the girl he had created. Garbo had proved a greater artist than her master.
    But before he went, before with a broken heart he said good-by to the weeping girl, he asked her for one promise. She must never give up her art. He could bear anything, everything, but that. It was all he had left. She must promise to carry in the work they had started together, she must never forsake the great art to which they had dedicated their lives, she must be true to their dream.

SHE promised. Of course she promised, from a heart that ached to see him go away, alone and defeated.
    Thus the master returned alone, leaving the girl he loved with a man who had won from her a love greater than she had ever been able to give Stiller; returned alone to die!
    Before he went, did he also ask her to promise that she would never marry?
    Or did he know the great Garbo so well, he who alone understood her completely, that he did not need to ask that?
    Did he realize, as he sailed away to those last, lonely days, that he had bound Garbo to a promise that would in truth be the vital influence in her love for Jack Gilbert?
    Stiller was gone. There was now only Garbo. Not the awkward, unknown Swedish actress, but the great motion picture star, the screen enchantress, the most successful actress in America. Garbo and John Gilbert.
    Did Stiller know the extraordinary end of that love story, and understand in his heart what he had done, even though Jack and Greta did not? Did he foresee what lay ahead for Garbo?

You will be completely enthralled by the utterly amazing and vivid, dramatic conclusion to this great true love story in the January TRUE STORY Magazine–On Sale Everywhere December 5th