In the late 1980s, while Garbo was in Klosters/Switzerland, a paparazzo made some candid pictures form her. Those appeared in many magazines all around the world. Marlene had a German magazine with a printed picture from that moment. It showed an aged Garbo.

Marlene printed a note onto the picture reading: AGE IS REAL UGLY!

After MD died, this magazine article and her remark on GG came to light and magazines wrote about it.

In 2012, German actor Maximilian Schell released his autobiographie Erinnerung Ich fliege über dunkle Täler. Mein Leben, and recalls an interresting little new information for all GG and MD fans.

He talked about his last conversation with MD on the phone in April 1990. It was the day after GG died (April 16th) and Schell was asked to write some kind of obituary for Dietrich for Münchner Abendzeitung, in case she would die soon too. So, he asked MD via phone what he should/could, in case MD would die too.

Marlene picked up the phone but imitated her French maid "Madame n'est pas là, Madame est en Suisse." After MD found out it was Schell she excused herself and said that so many people are calling her today because Garbo died and ‘She was so stingy!’

Schell said that this was her obituary for GG. He never understood what it meant but that was Dietrich.

Source:
Maximilian Schell’s autobiographie Erinnerung
Ich fliege über dunkle Täler. Mein Leben (Germany 2012)

Dietrich always denied having made silent pictures. She was quo ted as saying "Only Garbo and Lilian Gish made silent pictures!"

 
“Finally Acosta went to Garbo's house, ” said Marlene Dietrich. “And there she found that Garbo had gone away with Mamoulian instead of her. Acosta was crying, so, of course, I took her in and fed her."

Dietrich was riding a train from Berlin to Prague when she was interviewed by a Czechoslovakian reporter in the early 1930s:

“Where did you learn English?” asked the reporter. “Only in Berlin,” answered Dietrich. “How about Greta Garbo?” asked the reporter. “How is her accent?” “She has one but it is very charming. She has made a hit of it all the way.”

“Did you meet Greta Garbo?” the reporter asked. “Not even once,” replied Marlene, who had apparently been advised by Josef von Sternberg to downplay any connection she might have with the Mercedes de Acosta circle. “She doesn't go any place and I don't go anywhere either. There is no possibility of our meeting.”

The reporter sensed something. “Marlene is a lady, but just the same she has something of the real bohemian about her. Of course an artist must have some bohemian characteristics.... She glances at her red-colored fingernails, her boyish costume and cloak.”

"The films of Garbo and me made history."

Marlene was distressed about the steady comparisons between her and Garbo, during an interview given to The Times.

"If they had only shown 'The Blue Angel first',” said Dietrich in a Los Angeles Times interview, “then people would not say these things. There I was not a very nice girl, a little tough. I was not like Garbo. I was myself.

"In 'Morocco' it is different. Maybe I do look a little like her, but I don't try to. If I do, I can't help it, and I think that it is cruel of people to say such things."

When Mercedes de Acosta wrote to Dietrich that she is going to write a 'Joan of Arc screenplay' for Garbo, Dietrich told her husband about it:

“What stupidity! Can't you just see Garbo – hearing voices? Being ever so religious á la Swede?"

  “I envy Garbo“ , said Marlene Dietrich. “Mystery is a woman's greatest charm. I wish I could be mysterious like her. I don't want people to know everything about me! Garbo never gives interviews. I wish I could do the same.“

  “She must think that I am trying to imitate her, but there is nobody like Garbo.”

A collection of previously unseen journals of Leo Lerman (the late, flamboyant Vanity Fair magazine editor who was a lifelong pal of Dietrich) – in his book, from Knopf, Lerman reveals an unappetizing secret about the hygiene of sex icon, Greta Garbo:

"Marlene says Garbo has only two suits of underwear. They are made of men's shirting. She wears one for three days, then washes it, does not iron it. Then she wears the other," Lerman writes.

"Marlene says she doesn't mind the not ironing, but three days! Garbo uses only paper towels in her bathroom, has two pairs of men's trousers, two shirts, and little else in her wardrobe. She is very stingy."

Marlene took the role Garbo had turned down in The Garden of Allah (1936). Josh Logan quoted Dietrich speaking at the first script meeting:

“It's twash. Garbo wouldn't play this part. They offered it to Garbo and she said she didn't believe the girl would send the boy back to the monastawy. She is a vewy clever woman, Garbo! She has the primitive instincts–dose peasants have, you know.”

  “Who is Marlene Dietrich?”

In her legendary interview for Sweden TV in the early 1970s, Marlene Dietrich said that she NEVER met Garbo.

 "I don't want to talk about Garbo. Okay, we both arrived in America without knowing much about Hollywood, and we both had a hard time, adapting to their way of doing things.  She never talks about me. Come to think of it, she never talks about anything..."

 
In the famous documentary film (1984), actor and director Schell talked with Marlene about the Oscars and he said that it is sad that she never won one for Witness for the Prosecution (USA 1957).

Marlene replied (in German) totally indifferently: "Die Garbo hat auch keinen!" (Garbo has also none)! Watch the film to hear it.

 
While making promotion in Germany for her book on Marlene, Maria Riva (Dietrich's daughter) told German TV, what Marlene said after Garbo died in 1990 due of natural causes.

What Marlene may have said is truly too nasty to post here and since we have no real prove what exactly she said, we will not post it here.