A studio agent at MGM once said of Garbo, “That girl has been hurt – deeply, terrifically hurt. I wonder what it is?” These notes are an attempt to consider the sources of Greta's vulnerability, the quality that so many people have identified with – her brooding loneliness, her longing, her anguish and despair…. a sense of being wounded. The quotes are from the Barry Paris and Karen Swenson biographies.
Greta Garbo's cool aloof exterior was the outer shell of a mollusk – inside was a hypersensitive, melancholy soul. Like the character Grete Rumfort in “The Joyless Street” her face radiated poignant sadness, a timid, gentle personality faced with hopeless circumstances. A friend said “Greta can more thoroughly evoke an emotion of pity and defense than anyone I have ever known.” People were moved to protect her, help her, take care of her. Christopher Isherwood wrote: “Everybody who meets Garbo dreams of saving her – either from herself, or MGM. or some friend or lover…this is what has made her a universal figure.”
Looking back to her childhood , Greta came from a poor working class background. She recalled the claustrophobia of their apartment in Stockholm as being brutal – especially during the long gray winters. She had little education – “I always had a complex because I had so little schooling.” She was also self conscious about her height, being full grown at age twelve. Starting to work at fourteen, she had to grow up fast. “I don't think anyone ever regarded me as a child….in fact, I can hardly remember ever having felt young, in the ordinary sense.”
Greta's mother, Anna Lovisa, was a shy, hardworking woman, taking in extra work to help support the family. Her father Karl Alfred, an unskilled laborer, suffered from kidney trouble. He died a painful death when Greta was barely 15; a few years later Greta's older sister Alva died at 22 of lymphatic cancer. These losses were severe shocks that Greta hardly had time to process. “I don't understand why God suddenly hurt me so deeply. It is as if somebody cut away a piece from my inside.”
The Swedish director Mauritz Stiller stepped into Garbo's life when she needed a father figure – he was 22 years older. She adored him, and let him mold her into a new kind of film actress. When he died in 1928, it was even more traumatic for Greta than losing her father and sister, because she felt Stiller had sacrificed his own success to promote hers. She withdrew into depression, writing to Mimi Pollack, “No woman could possibly feel as sad and inferior… I could not sleep or eat or work. For me it was a time that was very black.”
Many times, Garbo described herself as a sad person, a misfit. In America, she had to deal with homesickness and the language barrier – struggling to express herself, worried that people were making fun of her accent. “ Whether I work or not, I am tired and unhappy and don't want to do anything. I don't go anywhere and just sit down staring.” “It is hard and sad to be alone, but sometimes it's even more difficult to be with someone.”
Greta's fear of crowds was sometimes misconstrued, or condemned as ingratitude, but it was genuine fear, as her psychiatrist Eric Drimmer observed. Director Edmund Goulding noted that “ The curiosity of the public reaches out and hurts her as if it were a tangible thing.” But, as Cecile Rothschild pointed out, “People have always tried to take from her, not give to her.” When we recall her childhood insecurity, her family bereavements, and exile in a foreign country, it's no wonder she secluded herself so much.
From her twenties on, Greta often suffered from various ailments and her health seemed fragile. Her compulsiveness about diet and exercise probably came from a fear of dying early like Stiller and her father and sister. She was also acutely aware of aging – and how it limited her options as a female film star. Elsa Maxwell recalls, that at age 34, Garbo stared into the mirror, shuddered and buried her head in her arms. It's a shame that the attitude of the studios toward older women actresses, was so constricted.
Garbo was often tormented by her inner conflict between the need for solitude versus a craving for companionship – or regrets about her lack of a relationship. Barbara Barondess said in 1952, “She seems to be perpetually frightened, of people and of disapproval….She wants friendship but hasn't matured much through the years or added a great deal to herself.” GG once showed up on Mercedes de Acosta's doorstep and burst into tears, crying “I have no one to look after me!” Mercedes responded, “You don't want anyone to look after you!” Perhaps this lifelong unresolved conflict explains why, at age 60, Garbo wrote “Sorrow never leaves me – will never leave me for the rest of my life.”
