Greta Garbo died in hiding in anonymity after declaring that she preferred to be alone, and long before that, she was turned into a myth by a stunned press. Greta Garbo said goodbye to a Hollywood that she is not used to suffering the rejection of her own stars, that they are the ones who choose the moment to leave her.
They still recognized her talent and her beauty at 36; she was nicknamed the divine, the sphinx, and the one who never laughs. Imposing and enigmatic, she always impressed an audience unable to penetrate her private life, to know her beyond her roles. They already treated her like a ghost when she walked through the streets of Manhattan with sunglasses, making her life in the vicinity of her apartment near the East River.
Greta Garbo lived but left out strangers eager to meet her. After thirty years without her, her documents are millions of speculations and two decades of brilliant work. Mata Hari (1931), Ana Karenina (1935), and Grand Hotel (1935) magnified a legend that came down to earth with comic films; in Queen Christina of Sweden (1933) and Ninotchka (1939), the woman with the ever-serious face showed that her regal composure and her hard accent made good laughs.
Because the talkies took away many of her contemporaries; a nice drama that was portrayed in Singing in the Rain (1952) and turned actress Gloria Swanson into her figure from Sunset Boulevard (1950). But the character of her voice drew even more attention to the figure of Greta Garbo and ended up consolidating this Swedish actress in her place, whom she had always defended that she did not know how to act.
When she was asked, after settling in the United States, if it was difficult to make films, she said that it was terrible: “I am a good girl who gets very sad when people are mean to her, although that must not seem very feminine to you. Being feminine is a lovely quality that I may not possess."
Her doubt was always with her and she also reduced her career: “My talent is within very defined limits. I'm not as versatile as some think."
The birth of a star, Greta Garbo
She landed in the cinema by chance as a teenager. Greta Lovisa Gustafsson became Garbo when she met Mauritz Stiller, the extravagant Swedish director who would open the doors of Metro Goldwin Mayer for her. Turned into an eccentric friend and teacher, this man who "would get physically sick when he saw something ugly" lavished his attention and care on her and helped her rid herself - without ever quite succeeding - of what Marlene Dietrich would describe as an "ignorant" tendency. and provincial", the frugal and elusive character that always differentiated her from her contemporaries.
Together they filmed The Legend of Gosta Berling in 1924 and traveled to Germany to put themselves under the orders of G.W. Pabst. Her previous stop in Hollywood was the filming of Under the Mask of Pleasure, where Garbo learned to tame her shyness and anxiety: they say that at first, she was so nervous that her cheeks trembled on screen and that the first thirty meters of celluloid they had to go in the trash.
Feeling a little more confident and a little more of an actress, she came to Hollywood to fulfill the promise that Stiller made to Louis B. Mayer, the vice president of MGM: Greta Garbo "possessed a beauty that is seen once in a thousand years," she swore. her mentor and she was to become "the best actress in the world."
Greta Garbo chose life behind closed doors
The death of her discoverer and teacher, who many historians maintain was homos- and to whom others attribute an affair with the very young Garbo, was a very hard blow for her, who years ago would have told Axel Nilsson: "If ever I were to love someone, it would be Mauritz Stiller". She has always kept her private life a mystery, so her characterizations in this area are contradictory and complex.
She is well known for her phrase pronounced in one of her few interviews: "My life has developed through hiding places, back doors, secret elevators, and all possible ways to go unnoticed." The only certainty is this desired opacity.
They say that she was very infatuated, and what generates the most stories is the open rumor about her. Some look for signs of her in her films, in her coldness and in the vocal rejection of her femininity; or in the kiss to a courtesan that she gives when she plays Queen Cristina of Sweden. They say that she fell in love with Marlene Dietrich in Pabst's Berlin and that the German was her hostess and confidant there. Shameless and visceral, she Dietrich would have exploded upon colliding with Garbo's timid temperament, whom she would later ridicule without deigning to reply. She had no children or long relationships and she cultivated many relationships by letter, always selective.
"I want to be alone" was the only explanation she gave when she, after 20 years of her career, decided to leave the public sphere. Hollywood was an unexpected gift to a Garbo so full of anxieties about her talent that she never wanted to be the center of attention. So, in her prime and with her pockets full, she traded it in for a quiet life in her New York apartment. She lived there until she was 84 years old.
