Night magazine: What compelled you, when you were twenty nine years old, to make love to Greta Garbo?
Massimo Gargia: I wanted to do it. I was a boy coming from Naples. The mentality of a boy from Naples was very special at that time. Young people now don't understand. It was another time. If you go out with a woman, after one month, especially if she is a big star like Greta Garbo, you must f*** absolutely.
Otherwise you are not macho. It is a mentality. It is like a shame. It is the mentality of a playboy. You are just like a professional killer who has to kill his victim.
He can not sleep until the person is dead. It is the same for a playboy if he does not go to bed with a woman. After it is done, all is quiet, and he can confess to his friend, he can do everything, he has his pride. But until he goes to bed with the woman the story is not finished. I raped her almost. She was sixty. She was drunk and I forced the situation.
Night magazine: Was Greta Garbo vocal during your love making?
Massimo Gargia: She was not responsive. She wanted to get rid of me from the bed. She did it like a duty. I had the impression that she went to bed with me because she did not want to lose me taking care of her. She liked me because I was taking her in my car.
I was accompanying her. She was very lonely. I was paying for her dinner. She was very cheap. When we went to a restaurant she didn't dare to order anything expensive. There was a real stinginess in her mind. I never saw her counting out one dollar. She even suffered for the person who spent money for her. In a way she was a very sad egoistic woman. Otherwise she would not have been alone the rest of her life. She could stick only with people who could give to her. Like Cecile de Rothschild, who was very rich and gave her everything.
Or George Schlee, who was a very rich businessman. Or Valentina, who was a very rich woman. Garbo was not a woman who was a giver. She was a receiver, in character. She thought, in the beginning, for a few moments, that I was the ideal successor...that I could have the same place in her life as George Schlee – a slave taking her around.
The only thing was that I was not in love with her like George Schlee was in love with her. I stayed with her for nothing, in a way. Because I was not in love with her, let's say the truth. It was infatuation because she was a great star but I was not in love at all. You can't be in love with a person who does not like you physically. Who sends you away. For me, especially for my sign, which is Leo, the physical attraction must be reciprocal. If the person doesn't like you physically then, for me, love is already finished.
Night magazine: Why did Greta Garbo visit Napoleon's Tomb in Les Invalides every day?
Massimo Gargia: Because he had the same end as her. He was lonely in the end. She felt lonely, too. He was very famous and had a terrible end. It was really the same end as Garbo. Perhaps she thought he was a great personality. I never asked her why she was fascinated by Napoleon. I was not so intellectual at that time. Today I would ask her. But at that time I was more frivolous. I was too young. I didn't even know the story of Napoleon at that time, to tell you the truth. I went to school, I went to university, but I was not very cultivated.
Night magazine: Were you offended, during your youth, when someone was not sexually attracted to you?
Massimo Gargia: I was offended once. I wanted to be an actor and I tried any way I could to go to bed with Luchino Visconti. I tried everything. He did a screen test of me and he said I was very bad as an actor. He said, "The camera is your enemy."
And I tried many, many, many possibilities to go to bed with Luchino. But he didn't like me. He went to bed with all of my friends but not with me. Because, at that time, Luchino Visconti, in Rome , was really a great, great power. Even people who people don't imagine he went to bed with, he went to bed with. He went to bed with Marcello Mastroianni...nobody knows that...the most famous actor in Italy ...Alain Delon...to go to bed with Visconti opened your career. I tried every possibility.
I tried sentimental ways. I almost put myself in his bed. He didn't like me at all. That was another time I heard, "No!" from a person.
Night magazine: Did you ask Luchino Visconti if Luchino Visconti wanted to have sex with you?
Massimo Gargia: I almost asked. I touched him. I almost did everything. I said, "Luchino, for me, you are the most beautiful, attractive man." But you must understand what Visconti was at that time...he was the top. He was very good looking, too. And, besides that, he was a duke. He had a big house. A lot of money.
