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Interview with C. Parker: |
Garbo made me what I am today. She is responsible for my being on the screen. I'd thought of becoming a movie actress when I was in high school. I suppose almost all girls brought up in Hollywood think about it. Then I saw Garbo on the screen. I saw her again and again and again. I knew that I would have to follow in her footsteps, however humbly I might walk. And so I started in. I was just sixteen when I signed with Central Casting. I got extra work to do. One day a casting director saw me and offered me a screen test.
I guess it was successful because I became a 'heroine' in several Western pictures. I played opposite George O'Brien, Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, Rex Bell and others. I made Jungle Mystery, Lost Special, Tombstone Canyon, Secret Sinners, and others.
In 1934, I was co-starred in High School Girl. Then M-G-M signed me to a long-term contract. Shortly there after they needed a blonde girl who resembled Greta Garbo enough to play her sister in The Painted Veil. Just imagine - you girls in your teens - how you would feel if you were told, suddenly, that you were to work with Garbo. Why, if anyone had intimated that when I was in high school a few years ago (I went to Hollywood High and the Convent of the Immaculate Heart), I would have thought he had gone completely insane.
The most thrilling thing! |
"It was the most thrilling thing that ever happened to me, except," said Cecilia, in her quietly dignified little way, "of course, love." She didn't talk to me very much. She doesn't talk to anyone very much. She doesn't need to. Which is one of the many things I learned from her - how much time and energy most of us waste in silly chatter that means nothing. There is something more potent in Garbo's silence than in the words most of us pour forth in a week.
Hers are what my mother calls 'telling silences.' Garbo taught me the great beauty of silence. She and I did have one conversation. It was about mountains. I happened to be saying that I have a little cabin up in the hills where I like to go off by myself. Garbo overheard me and said that she loves mountains, too. She told me what they mean to her - grandeur and everlasting patience and a dwarfing of the silly frets and fervors of little human beings. I think that she was, unconsciously, describing herself in a symbolic way.
There is something cool and remote and unassailable about her that does dwarf the frets and fervors of most of us. I'd just been a little girl full of crazy notions when I started to work with her. I'd had most of the usual fantastic ideas. I thought I should act sort of temperamental, thinking that it made an impression. I took on the mannerisms of stars on the screen. I thought it was all right to be late on the set now and then. I'd seen some stars keep a company waiting for an hour or more and thought it indicated a certain superiority, a defiance of rules and regulations which are for 'ordinary people', not actresses."
Garbo taught her.... |
"Garbo taught me to be myself, to behave according to the dictates of my own nature. She taught me that to be true to yourself is to not only be a great artist but a great human being. She is so simply, starkly herself that once you have come in contact with her any little affectation or pose which you may have acquired seems cheap and rather tawdry by comparison.
It wasn't really me to put on airs, to be excitable and fluttery, to be late when I'd been brought up to respect punctuality. I hate crowds. I never go to big parties, I don't even like double dates. I really could say "I tank I go home" myself -- and mean it. In fact, I often do. But most girls experiment with themselves for a time, try different airs and graces and poses, as they try on clothes. It's all right if the airs and graces don't stick and become a part of you.
She taught me not to borrow from other people. She taught me not to borrow their mannerisms, their eccentricities, their fads, any more than I would borrow their clothes, their cars, their jewels and keep them for myself."
Garbo on set! |
"Garbo is always on time on the set – to the minute. She would make anyone else seem pretty silly if he were not at least equally prompt. She taught me consideration for others. Like many girls, I thought that actresses were sort of special, were exempt from conventional creeds and customs.
Garbo taught me how young and ignorant that point of view really is. By her unfailing promptness, by her courtesy to the men working on the sets, by being always letter-perfect in her lines and by her generosity to those working with her, she gave me a standard I know I shall never lose. She has no petty fears about footage and camera angles and whether or not she is getting more, as star, than members of the supporting cast.
She does her work thoroughly and she expects others to do the same. "Whatever simplicity and honesty I put into my role in 'Ah, Wilderness' is due to her. I don't think," said Cecilia, "that I would have been up to it if I hadn't had the experience of working with Garbo."
She taught me poise, too. She taught me how much more beautiful and impressive it is to bear yourself quietly and with dignity and without circus show-off tactics. And she taught me, how to relax. Between scenes Garbo always retires to her dressing-room or sits on the sidelines watching, relaxed in every nerve and muscle.
Garbo can be more still than any human being! |
"She can be more still than any human being I have ever seen. Her composure is more beautiful than the most animated motion. When she goes into an emotional scene, she is like a being charged and recharged; she is all alive and there is fire and force and depth back of it.
She hasn't frittered it all away on nothings. She taught me to save myself for emotional scenes, in real life as well as on the screen. She taught me not to break myself up into little pieces for trivialities."
Garbo and Beauty...
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"She taught me to be immaculate, which is quite a different thing from being 'dressy'. I have never seen anyone more immaculate than Garbo, Her shining, brushed hair, her clean strong hands, without nail polish or benefit of beauty parlor – if ever I thought it amusing to paint my nails or frizz my hair I got well over it, thanks to her.
No, she doesn't "fix up" in the beauty parlor sense of the word, but she is so shiningly groomed that it makes all that seem cheap by comparison. She taught me the beauty and wisdom of tact. She never gives advice to younger, newer players who are working on her pictures. I know some actresses and actors who are always telling you that you should do a scene this way or that way or hadn't you, perhaps, better try it the other way; they really serve mostly to make you self-conscious.
Garbo is Silent! |
Garbo is silent. She never gives one an inferiority complex. She seems to expect people to live up to what they are supposed to do. "I can't ever be like Garbo physically," said Cecilia regretfully, "even though I did resemble her enough to play her sister. I do have almost exactly the same colouring, though. I have gray eyes and so has she. We have the same shade of pale brown hair. Our skin is much the same in tone and texture. People tell me we have something of the same quality in our voices. I am short whereas she is tall. Even though I can't look much like her, I can try to be like her inside, and I do."
I am a Garbo Fan!
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"I know that I sound like a Garbo fan. Well, I am a Garbo fan. Of course, being a Garbo fan means loving and admiring Garbo and only by intense admiration are we ever stirred enough to try to be like the object of our admiration. I know that I've lost all temptation to copy or imitate anyone.
What I am trying to do is to be as honest in my work and in my personal life as Garbo is in hers, to have in my own way the same integrity and courage she has in hers. She taught me not be afraid of anything - not even humdrum practical truths about oneself. I'm a good cook, for instance. When I'm not working I keep house for my mother, my brother and myself. A few weeks ago a director called me from the studio and asked me to come over for an interview.
He said, "Are you busy? What are you doing?" I told him I was scrubbing the kitchen floor. He thought he hadn't heard me right! Well, there was a time when I wouldn't have admitted to this. I would've thought that a movie actress shouldn't let it out that she even knows there are floors to be scrubbed and meals to be cooked.
But Garbo would admit the practical truths about herself, I'm sure of that - she would never be ashamed of any honest work she did, no matter what. "But for yourself?" this interviewer asked Cecilia. "You don't really want to live the solitary life of Garbo, certainly? Doesn't love enter into your scheme of things? Don't you want marriage and babies and a home?" Of course I do. I want children more than I want anything else. I want to marry and have a home. I'd gladly give up my career for home and marriage if those things come to me...
I hope things work out happily and successfully for me. If they don't, I hope I will have learned from Garbo to take loneliness with courage, and heartbreak with dignity."
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