Silents Are Golden: Silent Superstars: The Enigmatic Greta Garbo

Silent Superstars: The Enigmatic Greta Garbo

Of the many talented and charismatic 1920s
female stars, there were perhaps few who inspired such rapturous fan magazine
articles as Greta Garbo. Motion Picture
Magazine once declared: “Everyone feels, without being able to explain
the fact, that this slim girl is one of the children of Destiny–as definitely
precious as a piece of pale green jade.” Picture-Play Magazine likewise gushed: “Her first appearance
on the screen struck lightning into the public’s heart.” And one
particularly insightful Screenland essay
said: “Her appeal is not direct, like that of an Anita Page or a Mary
Pickford; it is subtle, evasive, often unexpected…Most actresses have what we
might call one face. Greta Garbo is a woman of a thousand faces.”

And there were perhaps even fewer actresses
who became full-fledged icons as quickly and as decisively as Garbo. Even today
it’s not hard to see why: amid all the flappers, ingenues, and motherly types
filling the screens, suddenly here was this sleek woman of mystery with almost
ridiculously perfect Nordic features. And if that weren’t enough for the
public, talkies soon revealed a husky voice with a thrillingly heavy accent.

Garbo was born Greta Gustafsson (a very common
Swedish surname) in Stockholm, Sweden in 1905. Her family lived in a dreary
working-class neighborhood and her father worked various low-paying jobs until
passing away from the Spanish flu in 1920. Young Greta disliked school and
decided not to attend highschool, working jobs at a barber shop and a
department store instead.

Her natural beauty and experience as a shop
girl led to modelling hats and clothes for mail-order catalogues, and she also
started appearing in commercial films. Greta had loved acting from a young age,
so after playing a part in the comedy short Peter
the Tramp (1922) she decided to quit her job and join the Royal Dramatic
Theatre Academy in Stockholm.

During her time at the school she was spotted
by acclaimed Swedish director Maurice Stiller, who invited her to do a screen
test for The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924).
He quickly cast her as one of the leads–her first featured role–and she signed
a contract with Svensk Filmindustri. It was around this time that Stiller also
suggested that Greta change her name to something “modern and elegant and
international.” While stories behind its creation differ, “Greta Garbo” was the
catchy result.

Stiller’s lofty reputation led to a contract
offer from MGM, which he accepted, bringing Garbo along. While Stiller tussled
with MGM over which picture to make, Garbo acted opposite Ricardo Cortez in Torrent (1926). Her performance won a
lot of praise, leading to her second starring Hollywood role in The Temptress (1926), initially directed
by Stiller. Stiller did not adapt well to MGM’s production methods, however,
and was let go. But Garbo stayed on, and when The Temptress hit theaters the delicately expressive actress with
an air of mystery was quickly deemed MGM’s newest star.

For the next few years Garbo would star in hit
after hit, starting with the sumptuous romantic drama Flesh and the Devil (1926) co-starring fellow MGM star John
Gilbert. Garbo warmed to the handsome, charming Gilbert right away and the two
struck up a real-life romance during the filming. Their love scenes on the
screen are still smouldering today, their charisma practically jumping off the
screen. Garbo’s cool, alluring performance made Photoplay enthuse: “Greta Garbo has established herself on the
screen in more sensational fashion than any other player since Rudolph
Valentino blazed out of The Four Horsemen.”

Despite Garbo’s status as a top box office
draw, MGM was nervous to put her in talkies and delayed it as long as possible.
They finally mustered up the courage to star her in the talkie Anna Christie (1930), going heavy on the
“Garbo Talks!” advertising angle. Her deep, accented voice divided viewers at
first, but in time it would become as iconic as her face–especially when she
delivered her iconic line from Grand
Hotel (1932): “I want to be alone…”

In real life, that iconic line could’ve been
Garbo’s personal slogan. Her air of mystery wasn’t mere posturing for the
screen–not for nothing did writers dub her “The Swedish Sphinx.” As a child she
had often preferred to play alone, and as a world-famous adult her desire for
privacy only seemed to deepen. She shunned movie premieres and award
ceremonies, rarely gave interviews, and didn’t seek the attention of fans. Even
her personal style was lowkey, favoring mannish shoes and trousers, trench
coats, and slouch fedora hats, which in time were dubbed “Garbo hats.”

For much of the 1930s Garbo continued to star
in hit films, some of her biggest successes being Mata Hari (1931), Queen
Christina (1933) and Camille (1936).
But after the box office failure of the historical drama Conquest (1937), MGM tried a new tack and starred her in the comedy
Ninotchka (1939), with ads
proclaiming “Garbo Laughs!” While Ninotchka
did significantly better, the followup film Two-Faced Woman (1941) received scathing reviews. While Garbo
intended to make more pictures the projects that interested her kept falling
through. As it turned out, Two-Faced
Woman was her final film.

After retirement Garbo would retreat to the
privacy and solitude she had so consistently preferred. She sometimes enjoyed
the company of close friends, but she never married or had children (although
she came close to going to the altar with John Gilbert). After becoming a U.S.
citizen in 1951 she moved into an elegant Manhattan apartment with views of the
East River, where she lived until her death in 1990. Her legacy as one of
Hollywood’s greatest stars remains unshakeable–and so does her mystique.

…

–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.

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