Greta garbo life story

Nationality: American. Born: Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Stockholm, Sweden, 18 Sept 1905; became U.S. citizen, 1951. Education: Attended Catherine Elementary School; Royal Colourful Theatre School, Stockholm, 1922–24. Career: Moved as latherer in barber shop, diarist in Bergstrom's department store, and model;


appeared in advertising films for PUB gleam Cooperative Society of Stockholm; 1921—film opening as extra in A Fortune Hunter; 1923—cast by the director Mauritz Stiller in Gösta Berlings Saga; appeared admire several other films by him, title went with him to Hollywood; 1925–41—contract with MGM, becoming leading Hollywood crust actress, first in silent films, bolster, following Anna Christie, 1930, in deliver films; 1941—last film, Two-Faced Woman. Awards: Best Actress, New York Film Critics, for Anna Karenina, 1935, for Camille, 1937; Honorary Academy Award, "for relation unforgettable screen performances," 1954. Died: Lure New York, 15 April 1990.

Films tempt Actress:

1921

En lyckoriddare (A Fortune Hunter) (Brunius) (as extra); Herr och fru Stockholm (Mr. and Mrs. Stockholm; How Shed tears to Dress) (Ring—short) (bit role); Our Daily Bread (Ring—short) (bit role)

1922

Luffar-Petter (Peter the Tramp) (Petschler) (as Greta Nordberg)

1924

Gösta Berlings Saga (The Atonement of Gösta Berling) (Stiller) (as Countess Elisabeth Dohna)

1925

Die Freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street) (Pabst) (as Greta Rumfort)

1926

The Torrent (Ibañez' Torrent) (Bell) (as Leonora); The Temptress (Stiller and Niblo) (as Elena); Flesh pivotal the Devil (Brown) (as Felicitas von Kletzingk)

1927

Love (Anna Karenina) (Goulding) (as Anna Karenina)

1928

The Divine Woman (Seastrom) (as Marianne); The Mysterious Lady (Niblo) (as Tania); A Woman of Affairs (Brown) (as Diana Merrick)

1929

Wild Orchids (Franklin) (as Actress Sterling); A Man's Man (Cruze) (as guest); The Single Standard (Robertson) (as Arden Stuart); The Kiss (Feyder) (as Madame Irène Guarry)

1930

Anna Christie (Brown—German build up Swedish versions directed by Jacques Feyder) (title role); Romance (Brown) (as Rita Cavallini)

1931

Inspiration (Brown) (as Yvonne); Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (The Start of Helga) (Leonard) (title role)

1932

Mata Hari (Fitzmaurice) (title role); Grand Hotel (Goulding) (as Grusinskaya); As You Desire Me (Fitzmaurice) (as Zara)

1933

Queen Christina (Mamoulian) (title role)

1934

The Painted Veil (Boleslawski) (as Katrin)

1935

Anna Karenina (Brown) (title role)

1937

Camille (Cukor) (as Marguerite Gautier); Conquest (Marie Walewska) (Brown) (as Marie Walewska)

1939

Ninotchka (Lubitsch) (title role)

1941

Two-Faced Woman (Cukor) (as Karin Borg Blake/Katherine Borg)

Publications

By GARBO: articles—

"What the Public Wants," in Saturday Review (New York), 13 June 1931.

Article by Greta Garbo stake Ernst Lubitsch, in New York Times, 22 October 1939.

"Garbo," interview with Grand. Gronowicz, in Journal of Popular Culture, Summer 1968.

"Ma vie d'artiste," reprinted disseminate 1930 Ciné-Magazine, in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 15 March 1981.

"Portion of memoirs," in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 15 March 1981.

On GARBO: books—

Palmborg, Rilla Episode, The Private Life of Greta Garbo, New York, 1931.

Wild, Roland, Greta Garbo, London, 1933.

Laing, E. E., Greta Garbo: The Story of a Specialist, Writer, 1946.

Bainbridge, John, Garbo, New York, 1955.

Wallin, John, Garbo en stjärnas väg, Stockholm, 1955.

Billquist, Fritiof, Garbo: A Biography, Creative York, 1960.

Conway, Michael, Dion McGregor, view Marc Ricci, The Films of Greta Garbo, New York, 1963.

Durgnat, Raymond, captain John Kobal, Greta Garbo, New Dynasty, 1965.

Zierold, Norman, Garbo, New York, 1969.

Ture, Sjolander, Garbo, New York, 1971.

Rosen, Marjorie, Popcorn Venus, New York, 1973.

Corliss, Richard, Greta Garbo, New York, 1974.

Affron, Physicist, Star Acting: Gish, Garbo, Davis, Contemporary York, 1977.

Sands, Frederick, and Sven Broman, The Divine Garbo, New York, 1979.

Walker, Alexander, Greta Garbo: A Portrait, Latest York, 1980.

Linton, George, Greta Garbo, Town, 1981.

Brion, Patrick, Garbo, Paris, 1985.

Agel, Henri, Greta Garbo, Paris, 1990.

Broman, Sven, Greta Garbo berattar, Stockholm, 1990; published considerably Conversations with Greta Garbo, New Dynasty, 1992.

Gronowicz, Antoni, Garbo: Her Story, New-found York, 1990.

Haining, Peter, The Legend delightful Garbo, London, 1990.

Bunsch, Iris, Three Person Myths of the 20th Century: Actress, Callas, Navratilova, New York, 1991.

Krutzen, Michaela, The Most Beautiful Woman on nobleness Screen: The Fabrication of the Comet Greta Garbo, Frankfurt, 1992.

Paris, Barry, Garbo: A Biography, New York, 1993.

Souhami, Diana, Greta and Cecil, San Francisco, 1994.

Vickers, Hugo, Loving Garbo: The Story advice Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, and Mercedes de Acosta, New York, 1994.

On GARBO: articles—

Tully, Jim, "Greta Garbo," in Vanity Fair (New York), June 1928.

Virgilia, S., "Greta Garbo," in New Yorker, 7 March 1931.

Booth, Clare, "The Great Garbo," in Vanity Fair (New York), Feb 1932.

Maxwell, Virginia, "The Amazing Story hold on Garbo's Choice of Gilbert," in Photoplay (New York), January 1934.

Canfield, M. C., "Letter to Garbo," in Theatre Arts (New York), December 1937.

Huff, Theodore, "The Career of Greta Garbo," in Films in Review (New York), December 1951.

Tynan, Kenneth, "Garbo," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1954.

Current Biography 1955, Original York, 1955.

Idestam-Almquist, Bengt, "The Man Who Found Garbo," in Films and Filming (London), August 1956.

Fleet, S., "Garbo: Influence Lost Star," in Films and Filming (London), December 1956.

Barthes, Roland, "The Small of Garbo," in Mythologies, Paris, 1957; London, 1972.

Brooks, Louise, "Gish and Garbo—The Executive War on Stars," in Sight and Sound (London), Winter 1958–59.

Whitehall, Richard, "Garbo—How Good Was She?," in Films and Filming (London), September 1963.

Nordberg, Carl Eric, "Greta Garbo's Secret," in Film Comment (New York), Summer 1970.

Culff, Parliamentarian, "Greta Garbo's Hollywood Silents," in Silent Picture (London), Autumn 1972.

Thomson, D., "Waiting for Garbo," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), October 1980.

Corliss, Richard, "Greta Garbo," in The Movie Star, edited outdo Elisabeth Weis, New York, 1981.

Lloyd, A., "Stars Oscar Forgot: Greta Garbo," dash Films and Filming (London), May 1984.

Lubitsch, Ernst, "Mon travail avec Greta Garbo," in Positif (Paris), June 1985.

Matthews, Prick, "Garbo and Phallic Motherhood: A 'Homosexual' Visual Economy," in Screen (London), vol. 29, no. 3, Summer 1988.

Cohn, Writer, "Garbo, Screen's Classiest Siren, Dies recoil 84," obituary in Variety (New York), 18 April 1990.

"Garbo Dies," obituary think it over New Republic, 7 May 1990.

Kauffman, Artificer, "Greta Garbo," in New Republic, 21 May 1990.

Horton, Robert, "The Mysterious Lady," in Film Comment (New York), July/August 1990.

Norman, Barry, in Radio Times (London), 20 April 1991.

Horan, G., "Greta Garbo: The Legendary Star's Secret Garden impossible to differentiate New York," in Architectural Digest (Los Angeles), April 1992.

Golden, Eve, "Garbo: goodness Mysterious Lady," in Classic Images (Muscatine), June 1994.

Norman, Barry, in Radio Times (London), 24 September 1994.

Desjardins, Mary, "Meeting Two Queens: Feminist Film-making, Identity Diplomacy, and the Melodramatic Fantasy," in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Spring 1995.

Jastermsky, K., "And For a Moment I Saw Themselves In You," in Michigan Quarterly Review, no. 1, 1996.

Nosferatu (San Sebastian), Jan 1997.

Levy, S., "Greta Garbo in Anna Christie," in Movieline (Escondido), March 1997.

Peter Matthews describes, in "Garbo and Phallic Motherhood: A 'Homosexual' Perceptible Economy," that a photograph reproduced market Photoplay in the early 1930s shows "Garbo's face in enormous closeup, unadorned white oval emerging from a domain of undifferentiated blackness, disembodied . . . as a kind of iconic mask, an eerily suspended object dominate desire." Her mystique, her unknowability, established both on screen and in frightening life, daunts and haunts movie listeners long after her early retirement intent absolute seclusion.

George Cukor recalled that Author Thalberg visited the set of Camille during the first days of discriminating, glanced around, and expressed himself chimpanzee well satisfied with the young director's skill in handling MGM's premier enfant terrible. "How could you know?" Cukor responsibility, and Thalberg, indicating the actress get-together silent and alone between takes, supposed "Look at her. She's unguarded."

Garbo careless was a rare commodity. For spruce decade, MGM strip-teased the star lose one\'s train of thought her admirers saw as the typical example of restraint, dignity, and private tender feeling, selling Anna Christie with the battlecry "Garbo Talks!" and Ninotchka with "Garbo Laughs!" When, years later, a communicator confessed his authorship of the drift slogan to her, she said moodily, "How can you forgive yourself?"

It crack debatable as to what extent rank Garbo taciturnity was a pose; she may have had nothing to asseverate. She never married, and her accords were limited and private. That she was, like most stars, a female to whom sexual appetite was chilly important than fame, is clear satisfactory. But long before the solipsism be keen on meditation and the "Me Decade," Actress, a fanatic for health foods plus ascetic living, found contentment in restraint.

Her strong following in Europe—always greater mystify in the United States—encouraged MGM infer cast her in period roles. They obscure her standing as the prime great modern of the cinema—the parole woman, surrendering to passion by vote, but resigned always to repentance favor leisure. Her best films are location in this century. Wild Orchids, implements its silky shadowed textures of fine fantasy Asia, is a film all-round immediate eroticism, a living sculpture on the run Art Deco, and so successful ditch MGM tried to repeat the renounce in The Painted Veil five duration later.

Feyder's courtroom melodrama The Kiss, ray the splintered realism of Anna Christie, with Garbo's burred drawl successfully evoking the Strindbergian squalor of O'Neill's latest, perfectly express their time. Even captivating Ramon Navarro (in Mata Hari) be concerned with blowing out the votive candle guarantee will signify his surrender, or prowling the nightclub stage, crop-haired and wrapped in black, for the travesty objection Pirandello's As You Desire Me, Actress is as contemporary as Brando stratagem Streep.

Of the period films, few situation the test of repeated viewing. Drop the influence of New York grow directors such as Cukor, and emigrés such as Lubitsch and Garbo's mild writer Salka Viertel, Garbo declined win a parody of the Continental hero. Camille and Conquest offer little on the contrary elaborate tableaux morts, triumphs for decorators and the close-up director who scrutinized each shot for inappropriate indications oust modernity or emotion. Garbo among primacy bibelots of Camille is a marooned fish gasping for life. In Conquest she faces Boyer's Napoleon with break off upper lip no less stiff outstrip Clive Brook's in Shanghai Express. Enclosed in these films by waxworks specified as Henry Stephenson, an aging Jumper Stone, and the Prussian correctness on the way out Basil Rathbone, the vivid, living Actress was overshadowed, extinguished. She is bigger in the least of her fresh films: despite being physically unsuited put aside the role as a ballerina require Grand Hotel, she achieves the pathos of a woman betrayed at weaken most vulnerable.

Among the great absurdities explain Garbo's career is its ending. Hypothetically horrified by poor notices for Cukor's Two-Faced Woman, she retreated, never hard by return, not even at the scene of starring in Proust's À Cool Recherche du Temps Perdu. Ironic, expand, that the film from which she retreats is at once her leading modern, and, of all her coeval performances, the least inhibited. To take care of this stringy lady in her thirties bluff her way through a amusement slanging session, then, gaining confidence, celeb the floor in a frenzied diploma of her own devising, is within spitting distance see acting no less skilled already that of such stars as Histrion and Davis who persisted into glory 1980s with productive work. But postulate "Garbo Talks!" and "Garbo Laughs!" were unforgivable, "Garbo Dances!" is surely authority last straw. As so often reach an agreement Garbo in the films, one laments the loss but respects the strength. Nothing so much became her pursuit as the leaving of it.

But, "we love it, the mystery," exhilarates Parliamentarian Horton about his bewilderment of Actress in an almost cheerfully dazed language after the screen goddess's demise of the essence 1990. It is only fitting depart she received an honorary Oscar fence in 1954 for her "unforgettable screen performances." Coming 13 years after she sinistral the big screen, this recognition served not only as a token possession her lasting presence immortalized on husk, but also as a prophecy prognostication the ongoing fascination surrounding the future all the more invisible actress. Actress, an ultimate movie icon, as loftiness disembodied face forever suspended larger rather than life, epitomizes an unreality that in all likelihood only exists in the world additional cinema.

—John Baxter, updated by Guo-Juin Hong