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Greta Garbo, 84

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on September 19, 2003 at 12:54:22

[Does anyone deny that Ninotchka is one of the greatest films ever?]

Greta Garbo, 84, Screen Icon Who Fled Her Stardom, Dies

April 16, 1990
OBITUARY
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Greta Garbo, the enigmatic and elusive star of some of Hollywood's
most memorable romantic movies of the 1930's and a 50-year focus of
curiosity and myth, died yesterday at New York Hospital in Manhattan.
She was 84 years old.

A hospital spokesman, Andrew Banoff, saying he was respecting the
wishes of the family, provided no details of her death, and said
services would be private.

The Swedish-born actress had a classic beauty and a natural talent for
conveying deep emotions before a camera. Her performances in such
classics as ''Anna Christie,'' ''Grand Hotel,'' ''Queen Christina,''
''Anna Karenina,'' ''Camille'' and ''Ninotchka'' were an arresting mix
of urbaneness and vulnerability, with a glint of mockery.
The Screen's Great Sufferer

The finest element in a Garbo film was Garbo. She invariably played a
disillusioned woman of the world who falls hopelessly and giddily in
love. Tragedy is often imminent, and her tarnished-lady roles usually
required her to die or otherwise give up her lover. No one could
suffer like Garbo.

Mysterious and aloof, she appealed to both men and women, and she
exerted a major influence on women's fashions, hair styles and makeup.
On screen and off, she was a remote figure of loveliness.

Garbo's career spanned only 19 years. In 1941, at the age of 36, she
made the last of her 27 movies, a slight comedy called ''Two Faced
Woman.'' She went into what was to be temporary retirement, but she
never returned to the screen.

Yet generations later, her best movies were shown on television, in
sold-out retrospectives and in revival houses, and she remained one of
the greatest screen actresses, evergreen, eternally young.

In the 1930's she was called ''the screen's first lady,'' the standard
against whom others were judged. Andre Sennwald wrote in The New York
Times that she was ''the most miraculous blend of personality the
screen has ever seen.'' Alistair Cooke termed her ''every man's
fantasy mistress.'' The French called her ''La Divine.'' And Kenneth
Tynan concluded, ''What when drunk one sees in other women, one sees
in Garbo sober.''

For more than half a century, the actress remained an enigma, ''the
Swedish sphinx,'' because of her deep fear of reporters and other
strangers and her insistence on guarding her privacy. Ironically, in
seeking to avoid publicity, she became one of the most publicized
women in the world.

Her penchant for privacy broke all of Hollywood's rules, said her
biographer, John Bainbridge. Except at the start of her career, he
wrote in ''Garbo,'' she ''granted no interviews, signed no autographs,
attended no premieres, answered no fan mail.''

A declaration often attributed to her was, ''I want to be alone.''
Actually she said, ''I want to be let alone.''

Her screen image was exotic and inscrutable, while her private life
was simple, even mundane. In a rare statement to reporters she
acknowledged, ''I feel able to express myself only through my roles,
not in words, and that is why I try to avoid talking to the press.''

Garbo's aloofness frustrated the press, which published thousands of
photographs of her frantically clutching a drooping hat over her face
as she shopped or raced for a train, ship or plane.
Speculations About Her Escorts

Her presumed love affairs - she was never known to have married - were
the subject of voluminous gossip and speculation. Over the decades her
frequent escorts included the actor John Gilbert; the conductor
Leopold Stokowski; the nutrition theorist Gayelord Hauser; Baron Erich
Goldschmidt-Rothschild, an art connoisseur, and George Schlee, a
figure in haute couture.

Garbo's movies earned her more than $3 million, a record at a time of
low income taxes, and her frugality and astute investments,
particularly in Manhattan real estate, increased her wealth. Her life
had begun in virtual poverty.

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Stockholm on Sept. 18, 1905, the
daughter of Karl Alfred and Anna Lovisa Gustafsson. Her father was an
unskilled laborer of peasant stock who was often out of work.

The family lived in a shabby district of Stockholm, and Greta had to
leave school at the age of 13 to help care for her seriously ill
father. Every week she took him to a charity clinic, where they had to
wait hours for his treatment. She vowed to build her life so she would
never be financially dependent.

Her father died when she was 14 and she had to go to work, first as a
latherer in a barber shop and then as a salesclerk in a department
store.

Her beauty soon gained her a role in a short film sponsored by the
store, a part in a publicity short for a bakery and then a leading
role as a frolicking bathing beauty in a slapstick feature, ''Peter
the Tramp.''

She won a two-year scholarship to Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theater
Academy, where she was discovered by Mauritz Stiller, a famous,
worldly and flamboyant director. He and Victor Seastrom were the
leaders of the golden age of Swedish silent movies.

The 40-year-old Mr. Stiller took absolute command of the professional
and private life of the 17-year-old novice. He named her Garbo and
cast her as the ingenue in his film epic of Selma Lagerlof's novel
''Saga of Gosta Berling.''
Doubts in Sweden, A Hit in Berlin

The four-hour movie drew mixed notices in Stockholm, but a three-hour
version was a hit in Berlin, where reviewers found Garbo ''a
soul-revealing Nordic princess.'' Her next role was as a poor
prospective prostitute in ''Streets of Sorrow,'' directed by G. W.
Pabst.

Louis B. Mayer, the production chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, saw
''Gosta Berling'' in Berlin and offered Mr. Stiller a contract. He
accepted on condition that his plump protegee also be hired. Mr. Mayer
agreed reluctantly, muttering, ''In America, men don't like fat
women.''

The first of Garbo's 24 Hollywood movies, all made for M-G-M, was
''The Torrent,'' a 1926 melodrama starring the Latin lover Ricardo
Cortez. The daily rushes revealed the young actress's extraordinary
film-acting talent, and her salary was raised before the movie was
released.

As soon as a camera began rolling, the awkward girl with the moody
eyes and large hands suddenly and charismatically sprang to life. Now
slimmer and only 20, she played a seductive Spanish peasant who
becomes an opera star. She was an overnight sensation.

Mr. Stiller, still smarting from being barred from directing ''The
Torrent,'' began directing her in ''The Temptress,'' a variation of
''The Torrent'' starring another Latin, Antonio Moreno. The director
had repeated arguments with M-G-M executives and was abruptly
dismissed in mid-shooting. He went to Paramount Pictures, but soon
also antagonized executives there, and they let him go. Unable to hold
a job in Hollywood, he returned to Sweden in 1928. Within a year, he
died of several ailments at the age of 45.

His death devastated Garbo, who was said to feel deep guilt for many
years for not returning to Sweden to see him. His dynamic personality
set the pattern for her later lovers.
A Movie Succeeds And Rumors Fly

Her third Hollywood role was a heartless adulteress in ''Flesh and the
Devil,'' co-starring John Gilbert, the epitome of silent-movie
masculinity. Their love scenes, peppered with suggestive gestures and
language, were electrifying. Reports of a Garbo-Gilbert romance swept
the country, and their passionate on-screen lovemaking was regarded as
a reflection of their off-screen lives. The gossip fueled the movie's
triumph.

M-G-M then co-starred the couple in ''Love,'' a 1927 modern-dress
version of Tolstoy's ''Anna Karenina,'' another huge success.

In only two years, Garbo became a superstar. By shrewd negotiating,
threatening to return to Sweden and staging a strike, she also won
unheard-of raises. In only three years, her weekly salary soared from
$350 to $5,000, and six years later she won a record $270,000 per
movie.

She made seven more silent films in two years, ''The Divine Woman,''
portraying Sarah Bernhardt; ''The Mysterious Lady''; ''A Woman of
Affairs,'' which was adapted from the novel ''The Green Hat'' by
Michael Arlen; ''Wild Orchids''; ''The Single Standard,'' and ''The
Kiss.'' All made money despite the new dominance of sound movies.

Off screen, there were continuing rumors of a Garbo-Gilbert love
affair, with photographers invariably dogging them. There was gossip
about an abortive elopement and reports of a wedding ceremony at which
she failed to appear. At any rate, apparently weary of the actor's
overbearing bravado, she ended the relationship in 1929.

Talkies were destroying the careers of many Europeans, and M-G-M
delayed Garbo's sound debut more than two years. She was astutely
presented in an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's ''Anna Christie,''
where her accent was appropriate. The publicity slogan was simply:
''Garbo Talks!''

Her speech was heavily accented and husky, but this new dimension of
the Swedish enigma gave her even greater stature, and the movie played
to packed houses across the country. Her opening line of dialogue was
widely quoted and became classic:. She wearily enters a waterfront
saloon and orders the bartender to ''Gimme a visky with chincher ale
on the side and don't be stingy, baby.''

Garbo's other early sound movies included ''Susan Lenox: Her Fall and
Rise'' (1931), co-starring Clark Gable; ''Mata Hari'' (1932), with
Ramon Novarro, and a version of Luigi Pirandello's mystical play ''As
You Desire Me'' (1932), co-starring Melvyn Douglas, in which she
adroitly portrayed an amnesiac.

An adaptation of Vicki Baum's novel ''Grand Hotel'' featured four
other stars John and Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford and Wallace Beery
but Garbo, as a fading ballerina, stole the movie. The film, directed
by Edmund Goulding, won an Academy Award as the best picture of 1932.

M-G-M honored Garbo's distaste for publicity and her insistence that
all visitors be barred from her sets. When close-ups were shot, black
screens were placed around Garbo and the camera. Asked why she
objected to visitors, she said: ''When people are watching, I'm just a
woman making faces for the camera. It destroys the illusion.''

Questioned about the screens, she said, ''If I am by myself, my face
will do things I cannot do with it otherwise.''
Old Co-star Tries To Regain Career

Despite these demands, her directors and other associates respected
her thorough professionalism and lack of temperament and admired her
graciousness.

''Queen Christina'' (1933) gave Garbo a long-sought chance to portray
the eccentric 17th-century Swedish monarch. She co-starred with Mr.
Gilbert in an effort to bolster his sagging career. Sound had revealed
his thin voice, totally inadequate for his image of a dashing lover.
He did well in ''Queen Christina,'' but his career continued to
wither. He drank heavily, and died of a heart attack in 1936 at the
age of 41.

The largely fictional ''Queen Christina'' provided Garbo with one of
her most radiant roles. The tragic film ended with an enormous
five-and-a-half-second-long close-up of her face as she stood on the
prow of a ship. The queen has given up her throne for her lover, who
is now dead. She is taking his body back to Spain and then faces a
voyage to nowhere.

Her breathtaking and mystical expression has often been likened to
that of the Mona Lisa. Rouben Mamoulian, who directed, told her the
audience must use its imagination to interpret her thoughts, and
instructed her ''to make your face a mask, to think and feel
nothing.''

Recalling the movie after 50 years, Mr. Mamoulian revealed in a 1983
interview that Garbo had often directed herself. ''When we got to the
first intimate scene, she asked me to leave the set.'' he said. ''I
asked her why. She said, 'During these scenes I allow only the
cameraman and lighting man on the set. The director goes out for a
coffee or a milkshake.' I replied, 'When I'm directing a movie, I
don't go out for a milkshake.' Reluctantly, she agreed I could stay.''

Garbo's title roles in ''Anna Karenina,'' with Fredric March, and an
adaptation of Alexandre Dumas fils's ''Camille,'' co-starring a
youthful Robert Taylor, were two of her finest performances. They won
her the New York Film Critics Awards for best actress in 1935 and
1936.

She never received an Oscar for best actress. But in 1955 the motion
picture academy sought to make amends by awarding her a special Oscar
for ''a series of luminous and unforgettable performances.''
Comedy Is Tried To Reclaim Fans

By the late 1930's Garbo's box-office appeal was declining, and
M-G-M's solution was to have her do her first comedy. The vehicle was
''Ninotchka,'' a brilliant satire written by Billy Wilder, Charles
Brackett and Walter Reisch and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Garbo
superbly played a humorless, self-absorbed Soviet envoy who is
humanized by Paris and the urbane Melvyn Douglas. The slogan for the
1939 movie read, ''Garbo Laughs.''

Her second comedy was ''Two Faced Woman,'' a frivolous, heartless
farce and her only unsuccessful movie. Meanwhile, the European market,
which provided the major income from her pictures, was largely cut off
by World War II, and M-G-M refused to meet her salary demands. She
announced her retirement.

During the war, Garbo was criticized for not aiding the Allies. But in
1976, in a book titled ''A Man Called Intrepid: The Secret War,''
William Stevenson disclosed that she had helped Britain by identifying
high-level Nazi sympathizers in Stockholm and by providing
introductions and carrying messages for British agents.

Garbo hoped to return to movies after the war. There were repeated
reports over two decades of projects that were to include her, but,
for various reasons, none ever materialized.

In later years, Garbo called herself ''a wanderer'' and traveled often
to Switzerland, the French Riviera and Italy, though she became an
American citizen in 1951. For more than 40 years her home base was a
Manhattan apartment on East 52d Street, overlooking the East River.

She was as secretive about her relatives as about herself, and the
names of her survivors could not immediately be learned.

Usually alone, Garbo regularly strolled, shopped and browsed in the
East 50's and 60's, where New Yorkers savored fleeting glimpses of her
haunting face. She wore fashionable but simple outfits, large hats and
flat shoes and almost no makeup.

The occasional descriptions of her offered by friends suggest she had
a childlike innocence and was selfish and self-absorbed. They deplored
the aimlessness of her life. But another friend, Jane Gunther, said,
''She has a poetic magic, so difficult to describe, and all one knows
is that one wants this in one's life.''

Assaying Garbo's art and life, John Bainbridge offered this tribute:

''She did nothing that was second-rate. She had dignity and nobility.
Like so many great actresses, she may never have possessed a particle
of intellectual power, but she had genius before the camera because
she was guided by a secret, sublime, infallible instinct to do the
right thing in the right way. So unerring was her instinct that it
produced the illusion of a most subtle intelligence.''
The Films Before the Solitude
These are Greta Garbo's most important films. Her first talkie was
''Anna Christie.''

The Legend of Gosta Berling 1924
The Street of Sorrow 1925
Flesh and the Devil 1927
Love 1927
A Woman of Affairs 1929
Anna Christie 1930
Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise 1931
Mata Hari 1931
Grand Hotel 1932
As You Desire Me 1932
Queen Christina 1933
The Painted Veil 1934
Anna Karenina 1935
Camille 1936
Conquest 1937
Ninotchka 1939
Two Faced Woman 1942

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