GARBO TO WED–AT 80

By LEON WAGENER

GRETA GARBO has decided at last to marry–at the age of 80–and the bridegroom-to-be is a wealthy art dealer in New York who is more than 30 years younger than she is, say insiders.
     Sources close to the couple say that the aging screen legend and Sam Green, who has been her constant companion for more than a decade, will be wed at Christmas in Paris–at the home of Baroness Cecil de Rothschild, an old friend.
     “Sam and Miss Garb are very close indeed,” Green's former secretary, Bart Gorin, told GLOBE.
    “Their relationship has always been private, but Sam has cared deeply for her for years. They get along very well together, and I think they make a perfect couple.
    “Sam, of course, was with her in Paris to help her celebrate her 80th birthday last month. He had to come back to New York before she did, but he made sure he was there to meet her plane when it landed at Kennedy airport.”

'Mr. Garbo'

     Garbo–famous for having said: “I want to be alone”–reached her decision to marry only after long, careful consideration, says another insider. She didn't feel she knew Green well enough to do so until she'd spent almost all her time with him for 10 years, the insider adds.
     Garbo herself once said she wouldn't marry because she had never met a man who could put up with being called “Mr. Garbo.”

Dependent

     She also explained: “The particular problem that faces a film star is this: Have I the peculiarity of genius and temperament that makes matrimony a holy, lasting bond? Can I make a success of married life?”
     But the mutual friend adds: “In the years that Sam and Greta have been close, most of her old friends have passed away. Director Cecil Beaton, who introduced them in the early 1970s, died, and so did Gaylord Hauser, the nutritionist who taught Garbo her strict regimen of diet and exercise.
     “As a result, she has drawn closer an closer to Sam. He protects her and look after her every need, and she has become very dependent upon him.
     “When she is with Sam, she has no fear of the photographers who have hounded her since her retirement in 1928. She's terrified if she's alone, but with him, it's a joke.
     “They laugh and run like kids.
     “Also,” the couple's friend adds, “she has decided she does not want to spend the rest of her years alone, sad and lonely.”