Greta Garbo - Press Articles (The Movie

GARBO

Of all the silent stars in the Hollywood galaxy, Garbo's was. the voice that excited most speculation. Millions of her adoring fans around the world anxiously awaited the screen goddess's first talking film, hoping for a true insight into the secrets of her elusive personality

Greta Garbo gave maturity and passion to the Hollywood heroine. Instead of being petite and childlike, everything about her was large – her hands, her mouth, her feet. She filled the screen with a powerful physical presence. She portrayed love as a glorious rapture, freely given, not an unwilling submission granted a suitor with the reluctance of a miser parting with small change. Where others simpered pretty endearments or coyly fluttered their eyelashes, Garbo's entire body expressed love with a vibrant intensity that came as a revelation to American audiences.      Greta Garbo was born Greta Gustafsson, the youngest of three children, in Stockholm, on September 18, 1905. Her father's death, when she was 14, forced her to seek work in a department store, where she modelled fashion for magazines and short advertising, films. These led to her being cast in a two-reel comedy Luffar-Petter (1922, Peter the Tramp). made by director Erik Petschler. She obviously enjoyed the experience for she then applied to, and was accepted by, Stockholm's famous Royal School of Dramatic Art.
     She soon came to the attention of Mauritz Stiller, one of Sweden's two leading film directors, who cast her in a supporting but pivotal role, that of Countess Elizabeth, in Gosta Berlings Saga (1924. The Atonement of Gosta Berling). He also changed her name to the shorter and more evocative Garbo – a Spanish word meaning ‘graceful'.
     Their next film was to have been shot in Istanbul, but the backing company, Trianon, went bankrupt before filming began, and Garbo travelled instead to Berlin to appear in G.W. Pabst's Die Freudlose Gasse (1925, The Joyless Street), opposite the Danish star Asta Nielsen. As both the Stiller and the Pabst films were major works by major film-makers; and her roles in them were significant, her career, was now securely launched. However, she was destined to be more than a European celebrity. Louis B. Mayer, vice-president and general manager of MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), was talent hunting while on holiday with his family in Europe. and signed up both her and Stiller for Hollywood.

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I never said, ‘I want to be alone.' I only said.
‘I want to be let alone.' There is all the difference.
Greta Garbo
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She arrived in Los Angeles in the late autumn of 1925 with Mauritz Stiller, her discoverer, director and mentor. It is generally said that her presence was part of a package deal: to get Stiller, Mayer also had to take the – great man's protégée. But biographies of Mayer suggest that he signed her, quite independently of any other deal, to a standard seven-year contract at a starting salary of $400 per week for the first year, rising to $600 per week in her second year.
Having found her, Hollywood at first appeared unsure of how to handle her. She was not eager to throw herself into the activities that were standard procedure for building a starlet – publicity photos with performing seals, tame lions and visiting sportsmen; press interviews, parties and other social functions – and - indeed, once her English became good enough for her to understand what was being asked of her, she firmly refused to ‘perform'.

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I was the one who insisted on closed sets for
her. No visitors, and so on, no one present
except the director and the crew, and no
executives. I was trying to help her, especially
because it took her a time to speak
English, and she was so shy, so shy …
William Daniels
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     But although MGM was still working out what to do with Garbo, her public was already waiting. This audience, who had worshipped the romantic heroines of the early silent screen, now wanted something new. The Twenties, after all, were the time of Prohibition, bobbed hair and the New Morality. The war too had changed people's attitudes. The men who had fought in Europe had come home with new ideas. They still wanted to see their fantasies on the screen but their fantasies had changed, and the old stars did not fulfil them any longer.
     MGM finally cast Garbo as a Spanish peasant girl in The Torrent (1926), a romantic melodrama starring Ricardo Cortez. The announcement that it was to be directed by Monta Bell came as a blow to both Garbo and Stiller. William Daniels was the cameraman on The Torrent. It was the start of a long relationship – he was to make 19 films with Garbo. In Hollywood Cameramen, by Charles Higham, he recalled:
     ‘My memory of my first meeting with her is very clear ... They asked me to come in one Sunday morning and do some tests of a Swedish girl. She had just arrived ... There she was, in the midst of a strange people and a strange language, and it must have been a horrifying experience for her ... We lit very much to find [an actress's] best features and accent those features strongly. Especially eyes. And Garbo had magnificent eyes …'
     The success of The Torrent showed that public and critics alike were in no doubt about Garbo's qualities. Motion Picture said: ‘Making her debut in the film, she registers a complete success. She is not so much an actress as she is endowed with individuality and magnetism.' Her range of mood and expression was also immediately apparent in this first film as the New York Herald Tribune observed: ‘She seems an excellent and attractive actress with a surprising propensity for looking like Carol Dempster, Norma Talmadge, ZaSu Pitts, and Gloria Swanson in turn. That does not mean she lacks a manner of her own, however.'

Left: Greta Gustafsson (left) in her first film role in Peter the Tramp. Right: Mauritz Stiller, her friend and mentor, directs Garbo and co-star Antonio Moreno in The Temptress. Sadly MGM disliked Stiller's approach and took him off the film

Reactions to her next film, The Temptress (1926), with co-star Antonio Moreno, were just as warm. The Life critic announced that Miss Garbo had knocked him for a loop, and the New York Times noticed that 'with a minimum of gestures and an unusual restraint in her expressions, she makes every scene in which she appears a telling one. The New York Herald Tribune felt that ‘she is a magnetic woman and a finished actress. In fact, she leaves nothing to be desired. Such a profile, such grace, and most of all, such eyelashes ... not a conventional beauty, yet she makes all the other beauties seem a little obvious.'

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By being worshipped by the entire world,
she gives you the feeling that if your
imagination has to sin, it can at least
congratulate itself on its impeccable taste.
Alistair Cooke
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The public thought so too, copying her natural makeup, loose hair styles and casual clothes. They loved her remoteness, her diffidence, the looks she cast, the emancipated way she acted and reacted, and the halting, hesitant, half-awkward, coltish way she moved. It was not that she rebelled against the established conventions, but that she seemed so at home outside them. She came across on the screen as an erotic, mysterious being who coolly dominated situations, yet became sublimely feminine and tender in solitude.

Left: Garbo and John Gilbert were a smash hit in Flesh and the Devil, especially when rumours spread of their real-life romance

     Filming of The Temptress started under the direction of Mauritz Stiller, but shortly after shooting began he was replaced by Fred Niblo. It appears that Stiller's working methods were not those of the studio. He did not understand its insistence on strict shooting schedules and budgets. He left MGM and went to Paramount where he made three films during the following year. He then returned to Sweden but died soon afterwards.
     While the sophisticated, world-famous Stiller was buckling in the face of studio demands, the shy, 21-year-old Garbo was calmly incurring the studio's wrath rather than play another temptress in Flesh and the Devil (1927). She received telegrams and letters ordering her to report for costume fittings – first from the director of publicity and then from studio production head Irving Thalberg. Finally Louis B. Mayer himself, in a letter that alternated between commanding and wheedling, ordered her to report for work, telling her how difficult it was to find suitable roles for her. It is interesting to note that all these letters stressed that failure to observe these orders should not be interpreted as a termination of her contract with the studio. Mayer would cut off her salary but would not risk losing her to a competitor.
     Garbo finally gave in, but it was to be the only battle with the studio that she lost. In future, she would be able to sit out such storms or else threaten to quit with the famous words, ‘I t'ink I go home'.
     In this case it was fortunate that Garbo had to accept her role in Flesh and the Devil as the film was crucial in making her a top star. It was skilfully directed by Clarence Brown who became her favourite director, guiding her through six more films. In an interview for Focus on Film he recalled:
     ‘I made six pictures with her. Nobody else could make over two. I had a way with Garbo that didn't embarrass her. Garbo is a very sensitive person, and, in those days directors used to yell from behind the camera. I never gave her directions in front of anyone else.'

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Garbo is marvellous, the most alluring
creature you have seen. Capricious as the
devil, whimsical ... and fascinating.
John Gilbert
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In her third American film she was teamed with two male stars – John Gilbert and Lars Hanson. Gilbert was the nation's romantic idol; for the first and only time she had to settle for second billing.
The public were about to get something more than three of their favourite stars in a triangular tale of love and tragedy – they were to witness a real love story. It seems Gilbert had fallen madly in love with Garbo and she with him. `In their scenes together', said Clarence Brawn ‘it was working with raw material. They were in that blissful state of love which is so like a rosy cloud that they imagined themselves hidden behind it.' They co-starred in only four films; three came at the height of their affair – Flesh and the Devil and Love (both 1927), and A Woman of Affairs (1928).

	Garbo's enigmatic image made her an ideal spy, both in Mata Hari (left) and in The Mysterious Lady (right)
After the romance ended, Garbo went on to other heights, while Gilbert's popularity started to wane. However in 1933 , when Gilbert had severe problems in both his personal life and his career, Garbo insisted on him being her co-star in Queen Christina, although she had already approved the younger and more suitable Laurence Olivier. That she should have had this request granted says much about the power of her position at MGM, for all Hollywood knew that Mayer hated Gilbert, and Garbo's decision was clearly offensive to him. Her position at the studio was already clearly established in 1927 when, after Flesh and the Devil, she refused to play a similar role in a film called Women Love Diamonds. She also insisted that her $600 per week salary be increased to $5000. This was not such an unreasonable request, as Gilbert was earning $10,000 per week at the time. By 1936 she had become the highest-paid woman in the United States commanding a fee of $250,000 per film. Garbo's silent films established her as MGM's most prestigious asset and one of their leading box-office attractions with legions of adoring fans around the world. ___________________________________________ Grand Hotel (1932): In spite of the brevity of her appearance ... Garbo dominates the picture entirely, making the other players merely competent performers ... giving the tricky, clever film a lift, a spring, such as pictures without her, without that intense, nervous vitality she's got, cannot possess. John Mosher in the New Yorker, 1932 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The studio made her first talkie when the day could be put off no longer. It was a subject of as much concern to the company's stockholders as it was eagerly awaited by her fans. She was 25 when she made her sound debut in 1930. Having risen on a string of clichéd plots, the choice of Eugene O'Neill's play Anna Christie had less to do with the fact that it was written by a great American playwright, than that Anna was Swedish, and thus Garbo's accent would be in character. ‘Garbo talks!' shouted hoardings throughout the country. Her first spoken words – ‘Gimme a visky, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy baby' – became much quoted that year.
	Left: Garbo and Gable were passionately teamed in Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, but critics complained of the ‘poorly developed episodes'. Right: MGM cleverly east her against type in the light satire Ninotchka, where she revealed a superb flair for comedy. The advertising proclaimed ‘Garbo laughs!' – and audiences warmed to her enchanting personality
Great care had been taken to ensure success, but as an extra precaution, since she was an enormous favourite in Europe, a simultaneous but different, grimly realistic German version was directed by the Belgian Jacques Feyder. Both were highly successful and her subsequent pictures, though she made no more foreign versions, showed that her accent was no hindrance to the roles she played. She was English in The Painted Veil (1934): Russian in Grand Hotel (1932), Anna Karenina (1935) and Ninotchka (1939); Polish in Conquest (1937); Italian in Romance (1930) and As You Desire Me (1932); French in Camille (1936): a Dutch-Javanese spy in Mata Hari (1932) and American in Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1931). Reviewing Romance, the magazine Picture-Play commented: ‘What matter if Garbo's accent only occasionally suggests the Italian's efforts to speak English: The Garbo voice itself is not of Italian quality or inflection, but for all anyone cares Rita Cavallini might as well be Portuguese or Rumanian, for it is her emotions that are conveyed by Garbo to the spectator.'
	Left: Rouben Mamoulian told Garbo to make her face ‘a blank sheet of paper' on which each member of the audience could write his own ending to Queen Christina. Right: Two-Faced Woman was MGM's misjudged attempt to ‘modernize' Garbo's image by turning her into a sophisticated comedienne
She spoke in the manner of her close-ups – with a voice that was dark, deep, and resonant. Garbo's style was to some degree influenced by the celebrated Danish film star Asta Nielsen, with whom she starred in Berlin, and, later in America by Jeanne Eagels who was working at MGM when Garbo's own career was beginning to take shape. She shared with them a casual, almost off-hand delivery and a restlessness in manner and movement, epitomizing the spirit of a modern woman. Few of her films were ever totally satisfying in creating a suitable environment for her, but they all had their moments, such as her entrance in Anna Karenina when she appears to the waiting group on the train station through a cloud of mist and steam. In Grand Hotel, where she plays the ballerina Grusinskaya, she tells the jewel thief she loves, ‘Is it money you want? I have money', with such guileless simplicity that it becomes possible for him to refuse her offer, even though it will cost him his life. In Mata Hari, her manner of cupping a young officer's face in her hands for a kiss signifies a secret understanding, shared by the spectator, that by accepting a human love she also takes with it a human fate that will demand her sacrifice. Queen Christina (1933), Garbo's only film with Rouben Mamoulian, contains two of her most memorable scenes. The first occurs when, alone with her lover at the inn, she wanders about their bedroom delicately touching the furniture, in order to fix the room forever in her memory. The other scene is the film's finale: Christina, her lover dead, moves to the prow of the ship, bound for Spain. As music swells to a crescendo, the camera holds Garbo's immobile face in one long close-up – an unforgettable illustration of the power of her countenance to awake and suggest emotions in the audience. ____________________________________________ Anna Karenina (1935): ... It is Greta Garbo's personality which makes this film, which fills the mould of the neat respectful adaptation with some sense of the greatness of the novel. No other film actress can so convey physical passion that you believe in its importance, and yet there is no actress who depends so little on her own sexual charm. Graham Greene in the Spectator, 1935 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Critically, she was unassailable. The New York Film Critics twice gave her their award of best actress for Anna Karenina and Camille. Writers composed great speeches for her and so began to limit her to the depths in her voice at the expense of the vistas opened up by her gestures; the sort of films that would have created opportunities for visually expressive acting failed to materialize. Typical of the films in which she was cast was Conquest, a lavish saga that ran two hours and had only a few dramatic moments. By the end of the decade she had become a cliché of doom – poetic, tragic, but unwelcome. This distanced her from a public who had seen in her, and required of her, more than that. ____________________________________________ Camille (1936): Her own performance as Marguerite instilled humour and vitality into a flyblown romance ... If she is capable of such creation, she should be appearing on her own account in roles which she alone can play. But perhaps her magic is only a freak of nature which leads our imagination to make of her an ideal which she can never be. Cecil Beaton's Scrapbook, 1937 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Garbo's career could have gone on, had she wished, but to remain at the top she would have needed the box-office authority to get her own way, and that would have required a change of image from the stereotype she had become. Realizing the necessity for a change of tack, MGM took the risk of casting her in a comedy, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, called Ninotchka. The advertising proclaimed ‘Garbo laughs!' as once it had promised ‘Garbo talks!' – despite the fact that she had been laughing in her films for more than ten years. The studio's gamble paid off, however – audiences rapturously received her first American light role, hailing her as past mistress of comedy. ____________________________________________ Ninotchka (1939): Garbo's Ninotchka is one of the sprightliest comedies of the year, a gay and impertinent and malicious show which never pulls the punch lines (no matter how far below the belt they land) and finds the screen's first lady of drama playing in a deadpan comedy with the assurance of a Buster Keaton ... Frank S. Nugent in the New York Times, 1939 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Ninotchka was a box-office hit, Garbo's first for some years. It encouraged MGM to cast her in a second comedy, Two-Faced Woman (1941). It was severely mauled by the critics – Time called it ‘An absurd vehicle for Greta Garbo ... its embarrassing effect is not unlike seeing Sarah Bernhardt swatted with a bladder.' On completing Two-Faced Woman, Garbo took a sabbatical. It was never to end. Rumours persisted about the films she might appear in as they did 'about romances she supposedly had, but she neither married nor returned to the screen. Only once did she appear before a movie camera – for a silent, black-and-white makeup test that she made in 1948 for the proposed Max Ophuls version of La Duchesse de Langeais. In take after take she moves her head from side to side with no more animation than a slightly bemused smile on her lips. There seems to be nothing of interest until, near the end of the reel, the off-screen cameraman apparently asks her to remove her distracting little skull cap. In compliance, her hands go up into frame as her head tilts back; something he said must have amused her, for she laughs. And the small screen lights up – one is excited and expectant. There was magic, without the aid of lines or even the simplest of motivations. Better than anything, it reveals the one thing about her – her ability to transcend what people wrote for her and what she acted in. The only screenwriter Garbo needed was the camera, and the camera produced the legend. JOHN KOBAL
Filmography 1920 En Lyckoriddare (extra). '21 Herr och Fru Stockholm (adv film). '22 Konsumtionsföreni-ngen Stockholm med omnejd (adv film); Luffar-Petter (USA/GB: Peter the Tramp). '24 Gosta Berlings Saga (USA/GB: The Atonement of Gosta Berling/The Legend of Gosta Berling). '25 Die Freudlose Gasse (GER) (USA: Streets of Sorrow, reissued with post-synchronized sound in 1937 as The Street of Sorrow; GB: The Joyless Street). All remaining films USA unless specified: '26 The Torrent; The Temptress. '27 Flesh and the Devil; Love (trade-shown in GB as Anna Karenina). '28 The Divine Woman; The Mysterious Lady; A Woman of Affairs. '29 Wild Orchids; A Man's Man (as herself); The Kiss; The Single Standard. '30 Anna Christie (English version); Anna Christie (German version); Romance. '31 Inspiration; Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (GB: The Rise of Helga). '32 Mata Hari; Grand Hotel; As You Desire Me. '33 Queen Christina. '34 The Painted Veil. '35 Anna Karenina. '36 Camille. '37 Conquest (GB: Marie Walewska). '39 Ninotchka. '41 Two-Faced Woman.


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