Through George Cukor, Kate learned that "a new beau" was waiting in Hollywood, and it was Garbo herself. No sooner was Kate installed in her new California home than she deserted Laura (Laura Harding was Kate's friend-and lover, according Porter)) once again to slip off to accept a secret invitation, delivered through Cukor, from her favorite actress, Garbo.
When Laura returned home from the beauty parlor late one Saturday morning, she found a note from Kate. "Gone for the weekend. See you Monday morning. Much love." At that very moment, Kate was at Cukor's house waiting for Garbo to show up. "She told me she likes you and that one doesn't talk to many people," Cukor told Kate. Three hours late, Garbo finally showed up in Cukor's driveway behind the wheel of an old black Packard limousine she called, "the bus."
Kate later remembered being impressed with the star's outfit of dark navy blue sailor pants and a smartly tailored white jumper. A white tennis visor concealed her eyes, and her hair looked freshly washed, hanging straight. In those days, her English was far from precise, and she spoke with a heavy Swedish accent. She made many mistakes in grammar and often invented words to describe her feelings—that is, on the rare occasions when she made her feeligs known. Garbo drove Kate to a charming cottage overlooking the ocean.
Kate was amazed to find the front door unlocked. Garbo told her that the house belonged very dear and close friend. She claimed that escaping to this cottage was only refuge in this horribly bleak country. "California is a bad place where I must work and play bad women to make money. I will make lots of money and go back to Sweden. Sweden is where I go belonging." No one knows exactly what transpired between Garbo and Kate that week-end from fragments that Kate later and rather tantalizingly reported to Cukor and Kenneth.
By the end of the weekend, regardless of what had transpired between them, a friendship was formed for life, even though they would go for years without each other, confining their relationship at times to speaking on the telephone every two or three months. Kenneth felt that the relationship between Garbo and Kate "was not one of equals. Kate being a worshipper at Garbo's temple." Kate remembered being surprised when Garbo put on a phonograph record, her favorite tune, "Daisy, You're Driving Me Crazy." She invited Kate to dance. But one playing of the tune was not enough. Garbo wanted to dance to the record several times.
Mercedes de Acosta, lesbian icon and muse, would later Garbo's ongoing fascination with this tune, and was frequently willing to indulge Garbo in this harmless fun. Kate, at the time, however, told Cukor that she found the recording "silly and boring." In front of Garbo, however, she kept her opinion to herself, not wanting to offend. The cottage had a pool, and Kate and Garbo swam naked in it, just like Garbo would do later with Marlene Dietrich at Frank Sinatra's house in Palm Springs.
It was here that Kate learned just how "aggressively oral" Garbo could be, words coming from her former lover, Lilyan Tashman, who spread the Swede's most intimate secrets around Hollywood. Garbo was mainly lesbian when she first met Kate, although the great star would rapidly move toward asexuality in just a few years. In Kate, Garbo must have sensed a kindred spirit. Like Kate, Garbo detested fawning interviewers and fans and absolutely abhorred the invasive press. Garbo was delighted when she'd heard that Kate had refused to pose endlessly for publicity shots at RKO.
Hearing of Kate's homosexual husband back East, Garbo claimed that for male company, she too preferred only homosexual men. "They make worship of you. They make goddess of you..." She paused. "What is the word?" "Deify?" Kate said. "Yes, that, and they're not demanding in bed." Resting on a chaise longue, Garbo lit a cigarette but only after she rolled her lips around it, as if orally copulating with it. "I prefer to be with a man like John Gilbert. In his case he's a homosexual man but not knowing of it yet. The important think is that I know."
Kate told Cukor that Garbo then reached over and kissed her for the first time, fondling her nude breasts. "You... and me, we be sisters under the skin. With you, freedom. With others, a prison term for me. I am very private person like you. But sex. Sex with anyone. It's like a big violation. Knocking down door on my private world." "But you make exceptions?" Kate asked. "What is this exception thing?" Garbo asked. "Sounds bad. "I mean, do you have sex?" "Sometimes..." she paused enigmatically. "Sometimes I let privacy be invaded. But I do not like this bad thing men like. What you call this bad thing?" "Intercourse." "Yes, that's what you call it. But it makes me feel like cow mounted by bull in field. If a man doesn't want oral, he not man for me. Women are more friendly about that."
Around six o'clock, Garbo promised Kate she'd prepare a wonderful supper for her. "You have not eaten before you have Garbo special Swedish dishes. I will make supper for you like mama made supper for me when I was a little boy in Stockholm." Ravenously hungry, Kate eagerly awaited dinner. She was surprised when Garbo called her into the little kitchen after having been gone for only five minutes, claiming that dinner was ready.
When she came into the kitchen, and to Kate's disappointment, she saw two pieces of old cheese on the table and a glass of milk for each of them along with a loaf of stale French bread without butter. "Years from now you can tell grandchildren that Garbo cook for you. Make nice Swedish meal." That night Garbo consented to let Kate give her a massage. Apparently, Garbo wasn't too pleased. "You no work as a Swedish masseur."
Garbo then volunteered to give Kate a massage "the Swedish way." Garbo expressed admiration for Kate's lean body, claiming that it was "the wedding of man body with woman body but in one body—not two bodies." Garbo later confided that she too considered her own body the perfect blending of the male and female physique. "You might call us the Gemini twins," Kate said.
When Garbo drove Kate back to George Cukor's house at the end of the weekend, it marked the beginning of a sporadic love affair that would continue until 1941 when Garbo made her last picture, "a disaster" called Two-faced Woman directed by Cukor himself. Kate never lost her fascination for Garbo, both the image on the screen and the woman herself. As proof of that, Cukor cited an example where Kate tried to hire herself out for a small role as a sexy, funny maid at an inn in the film Queen Christina, in which Garbo was co-starring with John Gilbert in an attempt to revitalize his career.
Kate approached the director, Rouben Mamoulian, who had been very supportive of her when he'd directed Nazimova in the Broadway stage play, A Month the Country, with Kate playing another maid's part. Mamoulian liked the idea, thinking it would generate a lot of publicity. When he presented the offer of Kate's appearance to the producer, Walter Wanger flatly rejected it. "It would be too distracting to the picture." Kate was bitterly disappointed because she wanted a "close encounter" to see how Garbo worked in front of the camera, "manipulating her magic." The part eventually went to a minor actress, Barbara Barondess. In the scene a tired Queen Christina arrives at an inn, where the maid massages her legs. Before the camera, Barondess ran her hands up and down Garbo's legs.
When Louis B. Mayer saw the scene on film, he reacted in horror. He red that the scene end up on the cutting room floor. "We're not making a lez picture," the mogul shouted at Mamoulian. Garbo later told Cukor that she had played the role of the "queen as lesbian."
Leland (Leland Hayward was Hollywood's hottest agent in the Thirties) and Kate continued to play their sexual games with each other. Unknow to either lover, both Leland and Kate were privately but only occasionally seducing Garbo on the side. Their love affairs with Garbo were temporarily put on hold, however, when the actress called both of them, reporting that she'd come down with a severe case of gonorrhea. She pronounced the word inaccurately but charmingly. Kate rushed again to Dr. Hirschfeld, who assured her that she did not have a venereal disease.
Early one morning, Kate went to answer the ring of her doorbell and discovered Greta Garbo standing there with a bouquet of flowers. Kate eagerly embraced her and invited her in for breakfast. She was later to tell Cukor that she'd spent one of the most blissful days of her life with a relaxed Garbo, part of it enjoyed while swimming nude in Hughes' pool, as they had done many months before in Cukor's.
Garbo told her a startling bit of information. "I'm going to retire from the screen and return Sweden." Kate was stunned at the news and urged her to reconsider, claiming that "your greatest roles lie in front of you." Garbo seemed to have the determination of steel. She said that in the next few months, she was going to make Two-Faced Woman for MGM, and that Cukor was going to direct her. "But even if the picture is good and removes me from the poison box list, I'm still going to leave the screen and be alone." Later, Kate told Laura, "Greta has carried her reclusiveness almost to the point of obsession."
More about Kate and GG HERE!
