Greta Garbo

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Garbo launched her career with a supporting role in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gösta Berling. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B. Mayer, chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She stirred interest with her first American silent film, Torrent (1926). Garbo's performance in Flesh and the Devil (1926), her third movie in the United States, made her an international star. In 1928, Garbo starred in A Woman of Affairs, which catapulted her to MGM's highest box-office star, surpassing the long-reigning Lillian Gish. Other well-known Garbo films from the silent era are The Mysterious Lady (1928), The Single Standard (1929), and The Kiss (1929). She continued in films such as Mata Hari (1931), Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931), Grand Hotel (1932), Queen Christina (1933), and Anna Karenina (1935). Many critics and film historians consider her performance as the doomed courtesan Marguerite Gautier in Camille (1936) to be her finest and the role gained her a third Academy Award nomination. However, Garbo's career eventually declined and she became one of many stars labelled box office poison in 1938. Her career revived with a turn to comedy in Ninotchka (1939), which earned her a fourth Academy Award nomination. Two-Faced Woman (1941), which received poor reviews, was the last of her 28 feature films. Following this commercial failure, she continued to be offered movie roles, though she declined most of them. Those she did accept failed to materialize, either due to lack of funds or because she dropped out during filming. In 1954, Garbo was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for her luminous and unforgettable screen performances". Over time, Garbo would decline all opportunities to return to the screen. In her retirement, she shunned publicity, led a private life, and became an art collector whose paintings included works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard and Kees van Dongen. Although she refused throughout her life to talk to friends about her reasons for retiring, four years before her death, she told Swedish biographer Sven Broman: "I was tired of Hollywood. I did not like my work. There were many days when I had to force myself to go to the studio.. I really wanted to live another life."

• Name — Greta Garbo • Birth Name — Greta Lovisa Gustafsson • Born — 18 September 1905 • Birthplace — Södermalm, Stockholm, Sweden • Citizenship — * Sweden (until 1951) • U.S. (from 1951) • Died — 15 April 1990 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Resting Place — Skogskyrkogården, Stockholm • Education — Royal Dramatic Training Academy, Stockholm • Years Active — 1920–1941 • Occupation — Actress

• Illustration — Ten-year-old Garbo in 1915 Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Södermalm, Stockholm, Sweden at 7:30 p.m. She was the third, and youngest, child of Anna Lovisa (née Karlsson, 1872–1944), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871–1920), a laborer. She had an older brother, Sven Alfred (1898–1967), and an older sister, Alva Maria (1903–1926). Garbo was nicknamed Kata, which was how she had mispronounced her first name, for the first ten years of her life. Her parents met in Stockholm, where her father had been visiting from Frinnaryd. He moved to Stockholm to become independent and worked as a street cleaner, grocer, factory worker and butcher's assistant. He married Anna, who moved from Högsby. The family was impoverished and lived in a three-bedroom cold-water flat at Blekingegatan No. 32. They raised their three children in a working-class district regarded as the city's slum. Garbo later recalled: Garbo was a shy daydreamer as a child. She disliked school and preferred to play alone. She was a natural leader who became interested in theatre at an early age. She directed her friends in make-believe games and performances, and dreamed of becoming an actress. Later, she would participate in amateur theatre with her friends and frequent the Mosebacke Theatre. At the age of 13, Garbo graduated from school, and, typical of a Swedish working-class girl at that time, she did not attend high school. She later acknowledged a resulting inferiority complex. • Illustration — The approved application by Greta's mother to allow her name change from Gustafsson to Garbo. The Spanish flu spread throughout Stockholm in the winter of 1919 and her father, to whom she was very close, became ill and lost his job. Garbo cared for him, taking him to the hospital for weekly treatments. He died in 1920 when she was 14 years old.

Garbo first worked as a soap-lather girl in a barber shop before taking a job in the PUB department store where she ran errands and worked in the millinery department. After modeling hats for the store's catalogues, Garbo earned a more lucrative job as a fashion model at Nordiska Kompaniet. In 1920, a director of film commercials for the store cast Garbo in roles advertising women's clothing. Her first commercial premiered on 12 December 1920. In 1922, Garbo caught the attention of director Erik A. Petschler, who gave her a part, credited as Greta Gustafson, in his short comedy Peter the Tramp, released as Luffar-Petter. • Illustration — Garbo in her first leading role in the Swedish film The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924) with Lars Hanson From 1922 to 1924, she studied at the Royal Dramatic Training Academy in Stockholm. She was recruited in 1924 by the Finnish director Mauritz Stiller to play a principal part in his film The Saga of Gösta Berling, a dramatization of the famous novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, which also featured the actor Lars Hanson. Stiller became her mentor, training her as a film actress and managing all aspects of her nascent career. She followed her role in Gösta Berling with a starring role in the German film Die freudlose Gasse (Joyless Street or The Street of Sorrow, 1925), directed by G. W. Pabst and co-starring Asta Nielsen. She praised Asta and said: "In terms of expression and versatility, I am nothing to her." Accounts differ on the circumstances of her first contract with Louis B. Mayer, at that time vice president and general manager of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Victor Seastrom, a respected Swedish director at MGM, was a friend of Stiller and encouraged Mayer to meet him on a trip to Berlin. There are two recent versions of what happened next. In one, Mayer, always looking for new talent, had done his research and was interested in Stiller. He made an offer, but Stiller demanded that Garbo be part of any contract, convinced that she would be an asset to his career. Mayer balked, but eventually agreed to a private viewing of Gösta Berling. He was immediately struck by Garbo's magnetism and became more interested in her than in Stiller. "It was her eyes," his daughter recalled him saying, "I can make a star out of her." In the second version, Mayer had already seen Gösta Berling before his Berlin trip, and Garbo, not Stiller, was his primary interest. On the way to the screening, Mayer said to his daughter: "This director is wonderful, but what we really ought to look at is the girl... The girl, look at the girl!" After the screening, his daughter reported, he was unwavering: "I'll take her without him. I'll take her with him. Number one is the girl."

• Illustration — Garbo in her first sound film Anna Christie (1930). In late 1929, MGM cast Garbo in Anna Christie (1930), a film adaptation of the 1922 play by Eugene O'Neill, her first speaking role. The screenplay was adapted by Frances Marion, and the film was produced by Irving Thalberg and Paul Bern. Sixteen minutes into the film, she famously utters her first line, "Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby." The film premiered in New York City on 21 February 1930, publicized with the catchphrase "Garbo talks!", and was the highest-grossing film of the year. Her performance received positive reviews; Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times remarked that Garbo was "even more interesting through being heard than she was in her mute portrayals. She reveals no nervousness before the microphone and her careful interpretation of Anna can scarcely be disputed." Garbo received her first Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for her performance, although she lost to MGM colleague Norma Shearer. Her nomination that year included her performance in Romance (1930). After filming ended, Garbo—along with a different director and cast—filmed a German-language version of Anna Christie that was released in December 1930. The film's success certified Garbo's successful transition to talkies. In her follow-up film, Romance, she portrayed an Italian opera star, opposite Lewis Stone. She was paired opposite Robert Montgomery in Inspiration (1931), and her profile was used to boost the career of the relatively unknown Clark Gable in Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931). Although the films did not match Garbo's success with her sound debut, she was ranked as the most popular female star in the United States in 1930 and 1931. Garbo followed with two of her best-remembered roles. She played the World War I German spy in the lavish production of Mata Hari (1931), opposite Ramón Novarro. When the film was released, it "caused panic, with police reserves required to keep the waiting mob in order." The following year, she played a Russian ballerina in Grand Hotel (1932), opposite an ensemble cast, including John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, and Wallace Beery, among others. The film won that year's Academy Award for Best Picture. Both films were MGM's highest-earning films of 1931 and 1932, respectively, and Garbo was dubbed "the greatest money-making machine ever put on screen". Garbo's close friend Mercedes de Acosta then penned a screenplay for her to portray Joan of Arc, but MGM rebuffed the idea, and the project was shelved. By this time she had a fanatical worldwide following and the phenomenon of "Garbomania" reached its peak. After appearing in As You Desire Me (1932), the first of three films in which Garbo starred opposite Melvyn Douglas, her MGM contract expired, and she returned to Sweden. • Illustration — In Camille (1936) After nearly a year of negotiations, Garbo agreed to renew her contract with MGM on the condition that she would star in Queen Christina (1933), and her salary would be increased to $300,000 per film. The film's screenplay had been written by Salka Viertel; although reluctant to make the movie, MGM relented at Garbo's insistence. For her leading man, MGM suggested Charles Boyer or Laurence Olivier, but Garbo rejected both, preferring her former co-star and lover John Gilbert. The studio balked at the idea of casting Gilbert, fearing his declining career would hurt the film's box-office, but Garbo prevailed. Queen Christina was a lavish production, becoming one of the studio's biggest productions at the time. Publicized as "Garbo returns", the film premiered in December 1933 to positive reviews and box-office triumph and became the highest-grossing film of the year. The movie, however, met with controversy upon its release; censors objected to the scenes in which Garbo disguised herself as a man and kissed a female co-star. Although her domestic popularity was undiminished in the early 1930s, high profits for Garbo's films after Queen Christina depended on the foreign market for their success. The type of historical and melodramatic films she began to make on the advice of Viertel were highly successful abroad, but considerably less so in the United States. In the midst of the Great Depression, American screen audiences seemed to favor "home-grown" screen couples, such as Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. David O. Selznick wanted to cast Garbo as the dying heiress in Dark Victory (eventually released in 1939 with other leads), but she chose Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1935), in which she played another of her renowned roles. Her performance won her the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. The film was successful in international markets, and had better domestic rentals than MGM anticipated. Still, its profit was significantly diminished because of Garbo's exorbitant salary. Garbo selected George Cukor's romantic drama Camille (1936) as her next project. Thalberg cast her opposite Robert Taylor and former co-star, Lionel Barrymore. Cukor carefully crafted Garbo's portrayal of Marguerite Gautier, a lower-class woman, who becomes the world-renowned mistress Camille. Production was marred, however, by the sudden death of Thalberg, then only thirty-seven, which plunged the Hollywood studios into a "state of profound shock", writes David Bret. Garbo had grown close to Thalberg and his wife, Norma Shearer, and had often dropped by their house unannounced. Her grief for Thalberg, some believe, was more profound than for John Gilbert, who died earlier that same year. His death also added to the sombre mood required for the closing scenes of Camille. When the film premiered in New York on 12 December 1936, it became an international success, Garbo's first major success in three years. She won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for her performance, and she was nominated once more for an Academy Award. Garbo regarded Camille as her favorite out of all of her films. • Illustration — Garbo and Charles Boyer in Conquest (1937) Garbo's follow-up project was Clarence Brown's lavish production of Conquest (1937), opposite Charles Boyer. The plot was the dramatized romance between Napoleon and Marie Walewska. It was MGM's biggest and most-publicized movie of its year, but upon its release, it became one of the studio's biggest failures of the decade at the box office. When her contract expired soon thereafter, she returned briefly to Sweden. On 3 May 1938, Garbo was among the many stars—including Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Luise Rainer, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire, and Dolores del Río, among others—dubbed to be "Box Office Poison" in an article published by Harry Brandt on behalf of the Independent Theatre Owners of America. After the box-office failure of Conquest, MGM decided a change of pace was needed to resurrect Garbo's career. For her next movie, the studio teamed her with producer-director Ernst Lubitsch to film Ninotchka (1939), her first comedy. The film was one of the first Hollywood movies which, under the cover of a satirical, light romance, depicted the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as being rigid and gray when compared to Paris in its pre-war years. Ninotchka premiered in October 1939, publicized with the catchphrase "Garbo laughs!", commenting on the departure of Garbo's serious and melancholy image as she transferred to comedy. Favoured by critics and box-office success in the United States and abroad, it was banned in the Soviet Union.

• Illustration — Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Two-Faced Woman (1941) With George Cukor's Two-Faced Woman (1941), MGM attempted to capitalize on Garbo's success in Ninotchka by re-teaming her with Melvyn Douglas in another romantic comedy which sought to transform her into a chic, modern woman. She played a "double" role that featured her dancing the rhumba, swimming, and skiing. The film was a critical failure, but, contrary to popular belief, it performed reasonably well at the box office. Garbo referred to the film as "my grave". Two-Faced Woman was her last film; she was thirty-six and had made 28 feature films in a span of 16 years. Although Garbo felt humiliated by the negative reviews of Two-Faced Woman, she did not intend to retire at first. But her films depended on the European market, and when it fell through because of the war, finding a vehicle was problematic for MGM. Garbo signed a one-picture deal in 1942 to make The Girl from Leningrad, but the project quickly dissolved. She still thought she would continue when the war was over, though she was ambivalent and indecisive about returning to the screen. Salka Viertel, Garbo's close friend and collaborator, said in 1945: "Greta is impatient to work. But on the other side, she's afraid of it." Garbo also worried about her age. "Time leaves traces on our small faces and bodies. It's not the same anymore, being able to pull it off." George Cukor, director of Two-Faced Woman, and often blamed for its failure, said: "People often glibly say that the failure of Two-Faced Woman finished Garbo's career. That's a grotesque over-simplification. It certainly threw her, but I think that what really happened was that she just gave up. She didn't want to go on." Still, Garbo signed a contract in 1948 with producer Walter Wanger, who had produced Queen Christina, to shoot a picture based on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais. Max Ophüls was slated to adapt and direct. She made several screen tests, learned the script, and arrived in Rome in the summer of 1949 to shoot the picture. However, the financing failed to materialize, and the project was abandoned. The screen tests—the last time Garbo stepped in front of a movie camera—were thought to have been lost for 41 years until they were re-discovered in 1990 by film historians Leonard Maltin and Jeanine Basinger. Parts of the footage were included in the 2005 TCM documentary Garbo. In 1949, she was offered the role of fictional silent-film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, directed by Ninotchka co-writer Billy Wilder. However, after a meeting with film producer Charles Brackett, she insisted that she had no interest in the part whatsoever. She was offered many roles in the 1940s as well as throughout her retirement years but rejected all but a few of them. In the few instances when she did accept them, the slightest problem led her to drop out. Although she refused throughout her life to talk to friends about her reasons for retiring, four years before her death, she told Swedish biographer Sven Broman: "I was tired of Hollywood. I did not like my work. There were many days when I had to force myself to go to the studio... I really wanted to live another life."

• Illustration — Garbo in Grand Hotel (1932), in which she said the famous line "I want to be alone." The public would long associate her with these words due to her private lifestyle. From the early days of her career, Garbo avoided industry social functions, preferring to spend her time alone or with friends. She never signed autographs or answered fan mail, and rarely gave interviews. Nor did she ever appear at Oscar ceremonies, even when she was nominated. Her aversion to publicity and the press was undeniably genuine, and exasperating to the studio at first. In an interview in 1928, she explained that her desire for privacy began when she was a child, stating, "As early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I've always been moody. I detest crowds, I don't like many people." The artist James Montgomery Flagg said in 1933 that when he was allowed to sketch Garbo at a director's party in Hollywood some years earlier she told him she suffered from melancholia. At that time she had a Swedish phonograph record of laughs of all kinds which she played when visiting, to observe her hosts' response. In 1937, in a letter to her friend, Austrian actress and writer Salka Viertel, she wrote: "I go nowhere, see no one... It is hard and sad to be alone, but sometimes it's even more difficult to be with someone..." In another letter in 1970 she wrote: "I feel very tired and cannot seem to get myself together to plan where to go... I am sorry but something always seem to go a little wrong with me, and it is not in my head either..." Because Garbo was suspicious and mistrustful of the media, and often at odds with MGM executives, she spurned Hollywood's publicity rules. She was routinely referred to by the press as the "Swedish Sphinx". Her reticence and fear of strangers perpetuated the mystery and mystique she projected both on screen and in real life. MGM eventually capitalized on it, for it bolstered the image of the silent and reclusive woman of mystery. In spite of her strenuous efforts to avoid publicity, Garbo paradoxically became one of the twentieth century's most publicized women. She is closely associated with a line from Grand Hotel, one which the American Film Institute in 2005 voted the 30th-most memorable movie quote of all time, "I want to be alone; I just want to be alone." The theme was a running gag in her movies that began during the silent period. According to a 1955 piece in LIFE magazine, Garbo explained that she'd said: "I want to be let alone", not "I want to be alone".

After starring in Torrent (1926), she became known as "the Art Deco Diva". She favored men's shoes and clothes and her style has been described as "trench coat, simple shoes, shirts, cigarette pants, slouch hat and big sunglasses." Garbo has been credited with popularizing the "slouchy hat".

In her retirement, Garbo generally led a private life of simplicity and leisure. She made no public appearances and assiduously avoided the publicity she loathed. Contrary to myth, from the beginning she had many friends and acquaintances with whom she socialized and travelled, although it has also been said that in later years she did not trust many people and therefore did not have many close friends. Her usual response to anyone asking her about a comeback was "I have made enough faces", as she once said to David Niven. Garbo was often perplexed about what to do and how to spend her time, always struggling with her many eccentricities and her life-long melancholy and moodiness. ("Drifting" was the word she frequently used; in 1946 she told reporters, "I have no plans, either for the movies or anything else. I'm just drifting.") As she approached her sixtieth birthday in 1965, she told a frequent walking companion, "In a few days, it will be the anniversary of the sorrow that never leaves me, that will never leave me for the rest of my life." She told another friend in 1971, "I suppose I suffer from very deep depression." One biographer claims that she could have been bipolar. "I am very happy one moment, the next there is nothing left for me", she said in 1933. Beginning in the 1940s, Garbo became an art collector. Although many of the paintings she owned were of negligible monetary value, she also owned valuable works by Renoir, Rouault, Kandinsky, Bonnard and Jawlensky. Her art collection was worth millions of dollars when she died in 1990. • Illustration — Garbo signing her US citizenship papers in February 1951 On 9 February 1951, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and in 1953 bought a seven-room apartment at 450 East 52nd Street in Manhattan, where she lived for the rest of her life. Her New York apartment buzzer was identified by a solitary G and the interior was a "light and airy study in pink". In order to protect her privacy, she preferred being addressed as "Miss [Harriet] Brown". Her close friends were only allowed to call her Miss Garbo or G.G.; if they called her Greta, she wouldn't respond. Garbo was a dinner guest at the White House on 13 November 1963, just nine days before the assassination of JFK. She spent the night at the Washington, D.C. home of philanthropist Florence Stephenson Mahoney. Garbo's niece reported that Garbo had always spoken of it as a "magical evening". Italian film director Luchino Visconti allegedly attempted to bring Garbo back to the screen in 1969 with the small part of Maria Sophia, Queen of Naples in his adaptation of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. He exclaimed: "I am very pleased with the idea that this woman, with her severe and authoritarian presence, should figure in the decadent and rarefied climate of the world described by Proust." Claims that Garbo was interested in the part cannot be substantiated. • Illustration — Garbo in Stockholm in 1961 In 1971, Garbo vacationed in Southern France at the summer home of her close friend Baroness Cécile de Rothschild who introduced her to Samuel Adams Green, an art collector and curator in New York City. Green became an important friend and walking companion. He was in the habit of tape-recording all of his telephone calls, including many of his conversations with Garbo. He did so with her permission, but Garbo ended the friendship in 1981 after being falsely told that Green had played the tapes to friends. In his last will and testament, Green bequeathed all of the tapes in 2011 to the film archives at Wesleyan University. The tapes reveal Garbo's personality in later life, her sense of humor, and various eccentricities. In 1977, Garbo wrote to Frederick Sands: "I am forever running away from something or somebody"... "Unconsciously I have always known that I was not destined for real and lasting happiness." Although she was increasingly withdrawn in her final years, Garbo became close to her cook and housekeeper Claire Koger, who worked for her for 31 years. "We were very close—like sisters," Koger said. Throughout her life, Garbo was known for taking long daily walks with companions or by herself. In retirement, she walked the streets of New York City, dressed casually and wearing large sunglasses. "Garbo-watching" became a sport for photographers, the media, admirers, and curious New Yorkers, but she strictly maintained her privacy and her elusive mystique followed her to the end. Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, who was dubbed "The New Greta Garbo", and played Anna Christie on Broadway in 1977, saw Garbo in the street and ran after her, in hopes of meeting her and telling her she was playing Anna Christie. Garbo ran away from her and disappeared into Central Park. Ullmann gave up the chase after she saw that Garbo looked "frightened". She said: "Yes, she outpaced me. But when she turned and looked so frightened I gave up and didn't follow her. I was younger; I could have made it, but I didn't."

Garbo never married, had no children, and lived alone for most of her adult life. She once said: "If I were ever to love anyone, it would be Mauritz Stiller." Her most famous romance was with her frequent MGM co-star John Gilbert, with whom she lived intermittently in 1926 and 1927. Soon after their romance began, Gilbert began helping her develop acting skills on the set and teaching her how to behave like a star, socialize at parties, and deal with studio bosses. They co-starred again in three more hits: Love (1927), A Woman of Affairs (1928), and Queen Christina (1933). Gilbert allegedly proposed to Garbo numerous times and she finally accepted, but backed out just before the wedding. "I was in love with him," she said. "But I froze. I was afraid he would tell me what to do and boss me. I always wanted to be the boss." In later years when asked about Gilbert, Garbo said "I can't remember what I ever saw in him." According to Ava Gardner's autobiography, Garbo admitted to her that Gilbert was the only man she'd ever really loved but he had "let [her] down" by having a "superstitious affair" with "a little extra" during their last film and she had never forgiven him. • Illustration — Garbo photographed by Cecil Beaton, 1946 In 1937, Garbo met Leopold Stokowski, then conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom she had a brief, but highly publicized relationship while the pair traveled throughout Europe the following year; whether the relationship was romantic or platonic is uncertain. In his diary, German novelist Erich Maria Remarque discusses a liaison with Garbo in 1941, and in his memoir, British photographer Cecil Beaton described an affair with her in 1947 and 1948. They maintained a romantic friendship for several years, during which Beaton hoped to marry her, though his feelings were often unreciprocated as he competed with George Schlee for her affection. He later reflected, "Greta was a full-time job and an anxiety as well as a pleasure." In 1941, Garbo met the Russian-born millionaire George Schlee, who was introduced to her by his wife, fashion designer Valentina. Nicholas Turner, Garbo's close friend for 33 years, said that, after she bought an apartment in the same building, "Garbo moved in and took Schlee from Valentina right away." Schlee would divide his time between the two, becoming Garbo's close companion and advisor until his death in 1964. Recent biographers and others have speculated that, because it can be assumed she had intimate relationships with women as well as men, Garbo was bisexual, possibly even "predominantly lesbian". In 1927, Garbo was introduced to stage and screen actress Lilyan Tashman, and they may have had an affair, according to some writers. Silent film star Louise Brooks stated that she and Garbo had a brief liaison the following year. In 1931, Garbo befriended the writer and acknowledged lesbian Mercedes de Acosta, whom she met through Salka Viertel, and, according to Garbo's and de Acosta's biographers, began a sporadic and volatile romance. The two remained friends—with ups and downs—for almost 30 years, during which time Garbo wrote de Acosta 181 letters, cards, and telegrams, now at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. Garbo's family, which controls her estate, has made only 87 of these items publicly available. In 2005, Mimi Pollak's estate released 60 letters Garbo had written to her in their long correspondence. Several letters suggest she may have had romantic feelings for Pollak for many years. After learning of Pollak's pregnancy in 1930, for example, Garbo wrote: "We cannot help our nature, as God has created it. But I have always thought you and I belonged together." In 1975, she wrote a poem about not being able to touch the hand of her friend with whom she might have been walking through life.

• Illustration — Garbo's grave at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery in Stockholm Garbo was successfully treated for breast cancer in 1984. Towards the end of her life, only Garbo's closest friends knew she was receiving six-hour dialysis treatments three times a week at The Rogosin Institute in New York Hospital. A photograph appeared in the media in early 1990, showing Koger assisting Garbo, who was walking with a cane, into the hospital. Garbo died on Easter Sunday, 15 April 1990, aged 84, in the hospital, as a result of pneumonia and renal failure. Daum later claimed that towards the end, she also suffered from gastrointestinal and periodontal ailments. Garbo was cremated and her ashes were interred nine years later in 1999 at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery just south of her native Stockholm. Garbo made numerous investments, primarily in stocks and bonds, and left her entire estate of $32million to her niece.

Garbo is the subject of several documentaries, including four made in the United States between 1990 and 2005, and one made for the BBC in 1969: • Garbo (1969), BBC, written by Alexander Walker (critic), narrated by Joan Crawford • The Divine Garbo (1990), TNT, produced by Ellen M. Krass and Susan F. Walker, narrated by Glenn Close • Greta Garbo: The Mysterious Lady (1998), Biography Channel, narrated by Peter Graves • Greta Garbo: A Lone Star (2001), AMC • Garbo (2005), TCM, directed by Kevin Brownlow, narrated by Julie Christie • Garbo: Where Did You Go? (2024), written by Lorna Tucker

Silent films • Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1920 — Mr. and Mrs. Stockholm Go Shopping — Elder sister — An advertisement. Garbo's segment is often known as How Not to Dress. • 1921 — A Fortune Hunter — Extra — Uncredited; lost film • 1921 — Our Daily Bread — Companion — An advertising film • 1922 — Peter the Tramp — Greta — Garbo's first part in a commercial film • 1924 — The Saga of Gosta Berling — Elizabeth Dohna — Garbo's first leading part in a feature-length film; Swedish, dir. Mauritz Stiller. • 1925 — Joyless Street — Greta Rumfort — German film directed by G. W. Pabst • 1926 — Torrent — Leonora Moreno aka La Brunna — Garbo's first American film. All of Garbo's subsequent movies were made in Hollywood and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. • 1926 — The Temptress — Elena • 1926 — Flesh and the Devil — Felicitas — The first of seven Garbo films directed by Clarence Brown, and first of four movies with co-star John Gilbert • 1927 — Love — Anna Karenina — Adapted from the novel Anna Karenina by Tolstoy • 1928 — The Divine Woman — Marianne — The film is lost; only a 9-minute reel exists. • 1928 — The Mysterious Lady — Tania Fedorova • 1928 — A Woman of Affairs — Diana Merrick Furness — The first of seven Garbo films with actor Lewis Stone, who, with the exception of Wild Orchids, played secondary roles. • 1929 — Wild Orchids — Lillie Sterling • 1929 — A Man's Man — Herself — Garbo and John Gilbert make cameo appearances; this film is lost. • 1929 — The Single Standard — Arden Stuart Hewlett • 1929 — The Kiss — Irene Guarry — Garbo's, and MGM's, last silent picture Sound films • Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1930 — Anna Christie — Anna Christie — Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actress • 1930 — Romance — Madame Rita Cavallini — Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actress • 1930 — Anna Christie — Anna Christie — MGM's German version of Anna Christie was also released in 1930 • 1931 — Inspiration — Yvonne Valbret • 1931 — Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) — Susan Lenox • 1931 — Mata Hari — Mata Hari — After the multi-star Grand Hotel, Garbo's highest-grossing film • 1932 — Grand Hotel — Grusinskaya — Academy Award for Best Picture • 1932 — As You Desire Me — Zara aka Marie — The first of three Garbo films with co-star Melvyn Douglas • 1933 — Queen Christina — Queen Christina • 1934 — The Painted Veil — Katrin Koerber Fane • 1935 — Anna Karenina — Anna Karenina — New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress • 1936 — Camille — Marguerite Gautier — New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress National Board of Review Best Acting Award Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actress • 1937 — Conquest — Countess Marie Walewska • 1939 — Ninotchka — Nina Ivanovna "Ninotchka" Yakushova — National Board of Review Best Acting Award Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated – New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress • 1941 — Two-Faced Woman — Karin Borg Blake / Katherine Borg — National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Best Acting Award

• 1929 – 17th • 1930 – 6th • 1931 – 10th • 1932 – 5th

Greta Garbo was recorded at birth as Greta Lovisa Gustafsson. The authorities additionally record the heading Greta Gustafsson. Her recorded languages were English and Swedish. Her recorded confession was Lutheranism. She was the child of Karl Alfred Gustafsson and Anna Lovisa Johansdotter. Other recorded relations include Gray Reisfield.

Garbo has been memorialized in art and literature both during and after her life. Garbo was one of the subjects of French composer Charles Koechlin's "Seven Stars Symphony" (1933), which consisted of seven movements, each dedicated to a Hollywood star. Author Ernest Hemingway provided an imaginary portrayal of Garbo in his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940): "Maybe it is like the dreams you have when someone you have seen in the cinema comes to your bed at night and is so kind and lovely... He could remember Garbo still... Maybe it was like those dreams the night before the attack on Pozoblanco, and [Garbo] was wearing a soft silky wool sweater when he put his arms around her, and when she leaned forward, and her hair swept forward and over his face, and she said why had he never told her that he loved her when she had loved him all this time?... and it was as true as though it had happened..." Garbo was portrayed by Betty Comden in the film Garbo Talks (1984). The plot concerns a dying Garbo fan (Anne Bancroft) whose last wish is to meet her idol. Her son (played by Ron Silver) diligently searches for the elusive Garbo, determined to fulfill his mother's wish. A statue of Greta Garbo titled "Statue of Integrity" by Jón Leifsson sits isolated deep in the forest in Härjedalen. The Cole Porter song "You're the Top" makes a passing reference to the importance of her salary. Garbo is mentioned in The Kinks' 1972 song "Celluloid Heroes" and the 1977 song "Right Before Your Eyes" by Ian Thomas, which was covered by America in 1982. Greta Garbo is mentioned in the 1981 Kim Carnes hit song "Bette Davis Eyes" and she was the subject of the 1985 Freddie Mercury song, "Living On My Own". The 1988 song, "Garbo" by Austrian musician Falco serves as a tribute in the form of a love song. In the 1990 song "Vogue" by Madonna, Greta Garbo is the first mentioned of a list of stars from Hollywood's Golden Age. Greta Garbo is also the namesake of and mentioned in the song "Garbo" by Stevie Nicks. In 2023, notable artist William Kentridge included a drawing of Garbo in his solo museum exhibition at The Broad in Los Angeles. Pornographic film director Peter de Rome shot footage of Garbo walking across First Avenue that he inserted into his 1974 feature Adam & Yves. Its presence was explained by having one of the characters recalling how he once saw the elusive star. The Garbo footage was used without the star's knowledge or permission, and she was not paid for her appearance.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * • Italo Moscati, "Greta Garbo, diventare star per sempre", Edizioni Sabinae, Roma, 2010. * * * * * * • Sarris, Andrew. (1998). You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: The American Talking Film – History and Memory, 1927–1949. Oxford University Press. New York. * * * * * * * • Vintkvist, Jennifer