She captivated millions on both sides of the Atlantic.
She was even dubbed “the most beautiful woman that ever lived.”
Her life behind the scenes was as enigmatic as her image on screen.
So, what ever happened to silent-film star Greta Garbo after all that success?
The Swedish actress never really liked talking to the press.
You know what she famously said when asked about her personal life?
“I was born.
I had a mother and father.
I went to school.
What does it matter?”
And still, her younger days in Sweden affected her deeply.
If not for them, she probably wouldn’t have found her calling at all.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
She was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905 to a working-class family that lived
in a poor part of Stockholm.
She was only 13 years old when she finished middle school and decided not to go on to
high school so that she could take care of her sick father.
Her dad passed a year later, leaving her family of now 4 in unimaginable financial hardship.
She desperately had to earn a living, so she started working at a department store.
That store was the place where she made her acting debut… of sorts.
She first started modeling for their clothing catalog and soon found herself with a full-time
modeling gig.
Once she started acting in commercials in 1920, her path to the big screen was now wide
open.
She landed her first movie role in 1922, when she starred in a Swedish comedy.
Not long after that, Greta enrolled in acting school at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theater.
When she graduated in 1924, she was discovered by one of Sweden’s leading directors, Mauritz
Stiller.
He cast her in his new film The Saga of Gösta Berling.
Stiller, in a way, became her guardian and introduced her to the world of cinema.
He was also the one who insisted she use a stage name.
After all, “Gustafsson” didn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and the difficult pronunciation
would make the aspiring actress’s name hard to remember.
And thus, Greta Garbo was born.
There’s a bunch of versions of where the new stage name came from, but one of them
explains that it was inspired by the Italian musical term meaning ‘with grace,’ which
surely matched Greta’s elegance.
In any case, Garbo proved to be quite a catchy name as her notoriety grew in Europe.
And soon enough, her fame would go trans-Atlantic.
In 1925, the famous American film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offered Stiller to work in Hollywood.
He said yes but only if his 19-year-old protégé could come with him.
The studio agreed, and before long, Garbo and Stiller set foot on U.S. soil with their
MGM contracts in hand.
But it was a time when talent wasn’t enough for an actress to become a big star.
Garbo was forced to lose weight and learn English, her hair was dyed, her teeth were
fixed, and her eyebrows were tweezed into thin threads.
Sure, she was beautiful as is, but she still needed to have “the look” of the time.
One thing that remained ever unchanged was her magnificent large eyes framed by long
eyelashes – they became her signature features.
In 1926, Garbo played a Spanish singer in her first American film called Torrent.
It was a hit, and Garbo was instantly proclaimed the next big thing.
All the silent movies she made over the next few years were extremely successful.
She practically became MGM’s biggest star.
Most of Garbo’s films were love stories or dramas, and her unique performance on screen
combined both passion and restraint.
I wonder if we could say the same thing about her real life?
Her most notable relationship was with her co-star, actor John Gilbert.
Their romance was highly publicized, and that’s led some to believe that it was arranged.
And on the big day of their wedding, Garbo never showed up!
The runaway bride’s explanation for that stunt was her fierce independence.
She wanted to live for herself and be her own boss!
Greta Garbo was unique in other ways too.
Despite being one of Hollywood’s major idols, she didn’t attend movie premieres, talk
to reporters, or sign autographs.
Journalists called her the Swedish Sphinx because an air of mystery surrounded her.
She often kept to herself even on set, forbidding others from watching her work in front of
the camera.
She explained, “If I am by myself, my face will do things I cannot do with it otherwise.”
As much as she wanted her surroundings to be a certain way, there were still things
beyond her control.
By the late 1920s, the silent film era was at its end.
MGM feared that Garbo wouldn’t do so well in the “talkies” because of her Scandinavian
accent and her rough voice.
In 1930, she made her debut in the sound film Anna Christie.
The posters promoting the movie read, “Garbo talks!”
Well, her raspy sound fascinated people no less than her gaze that could replicate dozens
of emotions.
The picture was once again well received.
Following the movie’s success, she appeared in Grand Hotel in 1932, which won an Oscar
for Best Picture.
As for any Academy Awards for Garbo herself, she was nominated for Best Actress three times
but never won.
…Except for one special prize, but I’ll get into that in a bit.
Garbo never worked for any other Hollywood studio but MGM.
She was their “it” girl, and they were willing to pay whatever she saw fit her worth.
According to TIME, she was the top-paid actor in 1934, with a whopping $500,000 salary!
Mind you, that was crazy money back then, and it’d be like $10 million today!
It seemed as if Garbo was a 100% guarantee of success and that films with her in the
lead simply couldn’t fail.
To this day, her role in Camille in 1936 is considered her best performance.
And then came the late ‘30s, when Garbo decided she’d give comedy a try.
In 1939, she portrayed a Russian agent in Ninotchka.
And what do you think the posters read this time?
Yep, “Garbo laughs!”
The movie was quite popular, and MGM decided to give Garbo’s newly found comedic talent
another shot.
If only they’d known that her next role would pretty much end her career.
In 1941, she appeared in Two-Faced Woman.
The critics called the story silly, and it was a flop.
The film’s failure supposedly hurt the actress’s self-esteem tremendously.
Whether or not that’s true, Garbo decided to retire from Hollywood, at least for a while.
As it turned out later, she left cinema for good.
But that doesn’t mean she was forgotten.
After all, she was just 36 years old at the time.
She kept getting new offers, one after another for the rest of her life.
Many legendary directors tried to get her to work with them, including the master of
terror himself, Alfred Hitchcock!
But she turned down every one of them just so that she could “live another life.”
She might’ve grown tired of Hollywood, but the world hadn’t grown tired of her.
In 1950, the Guinness Book of Records dubbed her “the most beautiful woman that ever
lived.”
It might not be an Oscar, but that’s still something!
In 1954, she eventually did get her Oscar but not for any film specifically.
She was presented with an Academy Honorary Award for her “unforgettable screen performances.”
Just like on her wedding day so many years ago, Garbo didn’t show up to the ceremony…
After she stopped acting, she became even more reclusive than before.
She moved to Manhattan, where she’d take long strolls down the streets of New York
wearing huge sunglasses to not be spotted.
If anything, her retirement contributed to her legend no less than her movies did.
Photographers tried to catch a glimpse of her, but they rarely succeeded.
The actress barely put her famous name even on private letters.
Instead, she used different pseudonyms, mostly Harriet Brown.
But it’s not like Garbo lived in complete isolation from the rest of the world.
Though she never married, she surely had many friends, including photographer Cecil Beaton
and Baroness Cecile de Rothschild.
So, perhaps “recluse” isn’t the right word – she just valued her privacy and liked
to keep only close friends nearby.
And although she wasn’t making movies anymore, she hadn’t given up on art entirely.
She turned to collecting paintings and bought the works of Jawlensky, Renoir, and many others.
She kept them in her New York apartment, the one she lived in for almost 50 years.
She said that she wanted her rooms to sing, and color was the perfect way to achieve that.
Greta Garbo died in 1990 at the age of 84.
As biographer Barry Paris put it, she was an anomaly.
“She was something to be experienced rather than adored, but people did both.”
During her short but exceptional career, she appeared in nearly 30 feature films.
Her talent and beauty inspired entire generations of actors, artists, and musicians for years
to come!
So, who’s your most favorite actor of all time?
Let me know down in the comments!
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