1905-1924
Sweden: The Early Years
And we cannot ask for anything else.
So the otherworldly, breathtakingly beautiful face shots peering out against a backdrop of absolute blackness in the most famous film portrait shots ever created are what we remember Garbo for. The Clarence Sinclair Bull shots (see The Man Who Shot Garbo) are works of art as important to popular culture as a Picasso or a Hopper because they represent an era of ethereal beauty which will never come again. When we conure up pictures of Hollywood greatness in the 1930s in our mind's eye many of us will immediately have those haunting photos in mind.
She was like a star like no other. Less was more.
The 'O' at the end of her name is like Brando's: a poetic full stop in a prosaic world.
© Paul Page, 2011
The store also used her for her
modeling abilities for newspaper ads. She had no film aspirations until she appeared in an advertising short at that same
department store while she was still a teenager. This led to another short film when Eric Petscher, a comedy director, saw the
film. He gave her a small part in the film, Peter The Tramp (1920). From 1922 to 1924 she studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm. During that period she met Mauritz Stiller, the foremost Swedish director, who gave her an important role in
Gösta Berlings Saga (1924; The Story of Gösta Berling), gave her the stage name Greta Garbo, and trained her in cinema-acting techniques.
In 1925, when Stiller went to the United States to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he insisted that
Garbo be given a contract also. In all, she appeared in 27 films (two in Sweden, one in Germany, and the remainder in Hollywood); the most important of her silent films were The Torrent (1926), Flesh and the Devil
(1927) and Love (1927), both with the popular leading man John Gilbert, whose name was linked with hers in a much-publicized romance. Anna Christie (1930) was the talking picture in which her rich, low voice was first heard. It was a great
success, although Garbo herself despised her performance. It earned her the first of her four Academy Award nominations for best actress. That same year, Garbo earned another Academy Award nomination for her role in Romance.
Garbo was her most seductive playing the WWI spy in Mata Hari (1932). So much so that the censors complained of the revealing outfit shown on the movie poster. Her next film that year was Grand Hotel, with one of the first all star casts. The film earned MGM it’s second Best Picture Oscar.
After almost 2 years off the screen, Garbo signed a new MGM contract granting her almost total control over her films. She exercised that control by getting leading man Laurence Olivier fired from her film, Queen Christina (1934), and forcing Mayer to replace him with former co-star and lover
John Gilbert, who’s career had faltered since the coming of sound.
In 1935, David O. Selznick wanted Garbo cast as the dying heiress in Dark Victory, but
she insisted on a screen version of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel, Anna Karenina. She had already starred in a silent version, Love (1927), with John Gilbert.
Many have called Garbo's performance as the doomed coutesan in Camille (1937) the finest ever recorded on film. Some fans even claimed that during the star's climatic death scene they saw her soul leave her body. Not surprisingly, this role earned her a third Academy Award nomination.
Director Ernst Lubitsch’s finest work of the 1930s was the classic Ninotchka (1939).
It starred Garbo in a comedy!
At age 36, after the flop of her film, Two Faced Woman (1941), Garbo withdrew from the entertainment field and retired to a secluded life in New York City. In 1954 she was awarded a special Academy Award for unforgettable performances.
She abandoned Hollywood and moved to New York City. She would jet-set
with some of the world's best known personalities such as Aristotle Onassis and
others. She spent time gardening flowers and
vegetables. In 1954, Greta was given a special Oscar for past unforgettable performances. She even penned her biography in
1990.
On April 15, 1990, Greta died of natural causes in New York and with it the "Garbo Mystique". She was 84.
Until the end, photographers still chased her for that one last shot, that one picture that would prove that Garbo had committed the one cardinal sin for Hollywood: gotten old (in particularly the obsessive paparazzo Ted Leyson who followed her stalkishly for the last 10 years of her life). Strangely street photographs of her were not that rare but then even the great Garbo would have had to use the streets to get from a to b occasionally when she was not walking on water.
If the aim was to shatter the "Garbo Mystique" then they failed. They inadvertently added to it for she was still hauntingly beautiful, still immortal in a mortal world.
There will never be another who will even come close to her.
The results are this book.
There are studies of other actors and actresses Bull photographed in his long & distinguished career but it is the Garbo shots I return to again and again.
Highly recommended.
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