While working as a film an television producer form the United Nations in the early 1960s, Raymond Daum met Greta Garbo. The Swedish star had not made a movie since 1941, when she was 36. After World War II, Garbo considered several film projects, all of which fell through for lack of financing or because producers failed to meet her artistic demands. She had become a near recluse, turning up only for certain events, for special friends. One such occasion was a party at actor Zachary Scott's apartment in New York's Dakota on New Year's Day, 1963. Daum was also among the guests.
     She was sitting alone on an ottoman, and Daum asked a mutual friend, businessman George Schlee, to make the introductions. “GHe was taken aback by my request at first,” says Daum, now public affairs officer and curator of the Gloria Swanson Archives at the University of Texas in Austin. “George said what you'd expect–that Garbo wanted to be left alone. But I persisted. Garbo looked up, and for some reason we hit it off perfectly. ‘Sit down, Mr. Daum,' she said. ‘And Schleeski, get me a vodka.' We talked until late in the evening. Certainly it still counts as my most memorable New Year's Day.”
     The two struck up a friendship that thrived on long walks through the city, often winding up back at one or the other's apartments. “We discussed everything but her career in the movies and her legend,” says Daum. “Everything about life interested her–religion, art, politics. She's very compassionate about human beings. We also chatted about day-to-day events–what was on television, what she saw while shopping at Altman's.” Garbo's opinions, even her reports of solo walks and favorite recipes, fascinated Daum, who though the years kept detailed notes of their conversations.
     Hiding under a head scarf and dark glasses, Garbo–now 84–still walks around Manhattan, usually undetected. But Daum vividly recalls the afternoon a man followed them for blocks until, taking evasive action, they ducked into a Greenwich Village pub. When the man also entered, Garbo said, “I heard him whisper my name.” She and Daum bolted, eventually losing her admirer on the crowded sidewalk. “Such things were a nuisance to her,” says Daum, “but they weren't cause to ruin a day.”
     What follows are snippets of Garbo's conversations, taken down by Daum over many years, often poignant self-revelations that offer insights into her fragile personality.

Are you shot? Wasn't that fantastic. … It was an enormous walk. I'm alone now and I'm having a whiskey. I wonder how many blocks we made–120? I don't how we did it. I haven't done that since the world began. … The best thing is not to think, just trot, don't ask questions.

I trotted out to get some things and looked at the human beings today a little more. I usually just race through looking at the soot under my feet, to see that I don't step into to many puddles. The face are really they way you think … that people here are all being killed off by the air pollution. They all look absolutely pale and putty. I took out my mirror and said, “You look the same?” and I said, “Yeah.” Well, poor little people. Poor little people. I saw a man standing there selling hot dogs and he looked so sad. He looked so awful. He was pudgy and you know probably he's 20 and he eats all his life only hot dogs, nothing else. Ah, I felt so sad for him, somebody's son being born and the mamma says he'll probably be President one day.

Can you make good coffee? I don't perk nuttin'. … I could no more stand and wait for a percolator. I'm not made that way. I throw it in a casserole. I boil the water and when it's boiling I take it off and put the coffee in and let it stand for a few minutes with a cover on it. Then I heat it up and strain it and it's ready. Delicious … no percolator or stuff like that. Right smack in the pan. Couldn't be simpler. I'm just as much a bachelor as you are. I don't how to cook–I have the same old dinners I always have … steaks, lamb chops and hamburgers, that's all I do. I never buy frozen food, I don't know what to do with it.

I have no idea where one can go, to pack up and go, but to run from place to place is not what I'm looking for. I can't take it. If I was 20 probably I could, but I can't now. It's just not possible … you have to show passports, and someone might say, “Oh, That's the one who used to be in the movies.”
     I went once on a freighter … ah, I was a young strapping boy when I went on that month in solitude. [Garbo once explained that she referred to herself as “boy” because “girl” sounded so silly.] I was leaving from Sweden, and I didn't have anyone, so I went alone. I don't know what made me do that. It's too long ago for me to know why I did it. I went through the [Panama] Canal and ate alone on the deck in a lifeboat. They brought me a little tray. I never went to the dining room.
     I like being on the sea … there was a strom at one time, and there was a huge deck for the freighter business. And I went down there and walked. It was enormous. I walked and walked, and the captain came by and he said, “My God, you're a good sailor,” because I was the only one out. I adored it. The ship went up and down. Had I been in the cabin, I probably would have been ill. I got off somewhere alone and that's that.

If anything ever happened to me over the weekend–my girl doesn't come over the weekend–nobody in the world would know, nobody. I wasn't going to have a Christmas tree this year, and do you know someone sent me one, quite unnecessary. It's about four feet tall, doesn't smell nuttin' … trees only smell if you have living candles to heat them up a bit, but then you set the house on fire. I just put some lights on it. … I had the lights so I stuck them on there. The rest of it is naked. I never look at it, I don't go in there, I go in my other room, and there I sit.

Garbo surprised audiences by kicking up her heels in a giddy rhumba with dancer Bob Alton in the 1941 comedy Two-Faced Woman , her last film.

     There's something in the air this time of year, which is nice, makes people a little more gay. It's sweet … I wish I could be that way too. [I'm a] sour little creature. [On New Year's] I go to bed, and if I go to sleep, I go to sleep, and if I don't or if I wake up, I say Happy New Year, Miss Garbo.

I wish to God I was religious. I wish I were assured, then I wouldn't be in such a mess, and 50 billion billion other people wouldn't either. If I only knew what to focus on.
     You don't have to go to church, if you have it in you, you don't need nuttin' … imagine the money they could save building churches. All you have to do is have it inside your small little chest. I envy people who do … they have something, they seem so unafraid, they have something. Otherwise it's a bloody old mishmash of brushing your teeth and going through the slush and coming home and have a whiskey.

What I believe in firmly is that you are made the way you are by fate … and what is inborn in you is there. Since I was very young I believed that we are made in a certain way. You're born with very good glands and you function very well; you can go out to nightclubs, go do whatever you want to do and nothing affects you. … Still, no matter how well made you are, one hasn't got the ultimate, a sureness that nothing can harm you.

A person once said to me, “What you are suffering is inertia.” I didn't know what that meant so I had to look it up in the dictionary, and as far as I remember it means somebody that doesn't move. Mollusk, you know what a mollusk is, isn't that somebody that doesn't move either, an animal that doesn't move? It sits there. Me, I'm suffering from inertia.

I happen to have been born with a very thin skin. Many people make me nervous. They're a little hectic. They want to emphasize things: “Isn't it marvelous,” or this or that instead of being quiet. It isn't the talk, it's the way they emphasize things that makes me nervous. I get nervous. It's not necessary to be emphatic always. One can be very quiet with human beings and still talk, but if they constantly say, “Oh, isn't it great to be out” or “Isn't it a wonderful day,” then I think the other person is not at ease. And then I get nervous because I don't like uneasy things.

I can't stand people who hum. The moment there's a little pause, they start humming. Once I saw a couple. They hadn't been married more than a month. I think, and when there was a slight pause, either one of them started to hum. And I said, oh boy, that's not going to last.

If somebody gave me a million dollars I wouldn't write anything about myself, I just couldn't. Some people are willing to pay money if you have been a little bit known or something, if you'll scribble down whatever it was. Well, I wouldn't do it for anything under the sun. I don't think it's worthwhile. I don't think it's very interesting.

I've always wanted two lives–one for the movies, one for myself.