| Greta & Cecil were invited to see N. Gunzberg's Balzacesque apartment
This story was originally published in one of Beaton's diaries. 
New York 1946-1948: Greta liked it not only for having a highly civilized style and patina that is rare in New York, but also for being somber and cozy. She seemed to be relaxed and enjoying herself. Then Natasha (the Russian friend of Beaton ) started to retell the latest New York scandal of the little grass widow from Paris who, in the absence of her hostess, a woman of violent temperament, went to bed with her host.
The wife's discovery of the two caught in flagrante is a classic farce situation, but made melodramatic in this instance by the wife's bringing out a whip. We all had our contribution to add to the saga which had been on many lips, especially since it had been alluded to in the columns. I noticed that Greta had become silent, and when we left the apartment she said: "Oh, Mister Beaton, I've still got to teach you so much! How can you degrade yourself to the level of telling such ordinary, boring details of gossip? Why did it interest you? What's so funny?"
Greta considered it unworthy to take cognizance of the fact that two people, a man and a woman, were found in bed together. "It's not important! It's a natural thing to do - it's the law of nature! The poor little man suddenly feels in need of a woman and so he goes to bed with one. The fact that it gets into the papers is the reason why you are so interested, but it's not interesting really. It's a biological fact, and it happens all the time; behind all these windows it's going on now," and she waved her arm at the surrounding skyscrapers. "It's nothing - of no importance; it's just a biological fact".
Like a night fairy |
Matteo Spinola was on the most popular press-agent in Italy. He had connection with many actors and celebrities and had knew Garbo in New York: It was winter 1963. It was evening, I was coming back to my hotel and I had stopped in front of a shop-window on the Fifth Avenue. And there suddenly I saw a woman reflected in the window. I recognized that woman. She was Greta Garbo.
As I turned myself towards her, she vanished, like a night fairy. I really wanted to met her, to talk to her. The day after I telephoned to Fredric March, who co-starred with her in Anna Karenina and with whom I have had some contacts for the launching of one of his movies in Italy. I asked him if there was a slight chance to see Garbo.
Fredric and his wife told me that sometimes Garbo got in touched with them. "Maybe... who knows...we'll see". A few days later March telephoned me: "Come today at noon. Garbo will come to visit us. We have lunch together and then she'll leave at 2 o'clock because she has to buy some seeds in a market. I recommend you: never talk about your job, you know nothing about newspapers, no compliments about her movies, no questions about Hollywood. These are the sort of things she dislikes".
I run at the house of March, it was midday and 20 minutes later the bell rang. There she was. She wore an old coat, she had glasses in her hands. She was very cleaned, she reminded me someone who had just had a shower but she was far away from the lady I had known on the screen.
Fredric March |
We sat at the table - silent. In the end, while drinking coffee, finally Garbo talked: "You know Mr March, I am looking amazed at your shirt since ten minutes. Now you must tell me what is your secret, how can you always make them so white". There was an embarrassed pause, Fredric did not know what to say.
Then she said again: "Do you remember while filming Anna Karenina? It was the last shot, it was late afternoon, because I always asked to play the most difficult scenes in the late afternoon, when the actor is more inside the part. I begin to rehearsal, I say my first line, Mister March replies to me and at that point I am blocked, hypnotized by your shirt, Mr March. So white, just like the one you wear today. The studio was paralysed, they did not know what was happening to me. So I asked you to wear the jacket or to leave the stage, otherwise I could not go on with the filming".
Garbo was the only one to be amused. We were quite perplexed. Again silence. After short time, Garbo decided it was time to leave and to go to buy her seeds. She got up, she put on her coat, she embraced Florence, shaked hands with March and smiled at me. I must confess I was deeply disappointed. When I came back home in Italy my friends asked me: "How is Garbo? What did she say?".
Maria Callas |
I tried to hesiste, I did not want to say that she had disappointed me so much. Later, when I met Maria Callas, on the set of Medea by Pasolini, I understood that these extraordinary creatures of the screen and of the theater, in the reality, in the daily routine, are rather insubstantial, meaningless.
They have the wonderful gift to become the characters they play in the fiction. But outside these magic cirlces, they are elusive human beings.
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