Greta Garbo

Born in 1905 in Sodermalm, one of the most modest neighborhoods in Stockholm, Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was the youngest daughter of a street sweeper and a housemaid. Like the long-suffering women she would play on screen in tear-jerking melodramas, Greta’s life was hard, as her father died prematurely, and she had to drop out of school and go to work right away. She was first hired at a hair salon, and later she ended up at a department store. The owner of the establishment, was a man ahead of hers at her time who began to film commercials for movies, choosing her as a model. That was how she Greta realized that the camera loved her. She decided to enroll in the Stockholm School of Dramatic Art. One of her teachers was very impressed by her dramatic skills, and recommended her friend Eric Petscher,Peter the cheater Shortly after her, the young actress met director Mauritz Stiller, who advised her to change her last name and adopt a more sophisticated image of herself. In addition, the filmmaker gave her an important role in The Saga of Gösta Berling , which brought her to the attention of the general public, as well as The Street without Joy , by GW Pabst.

The American producer Louis B. Meyer, in need of talent, offered a contract to the aforementioned Stiller, which he accepted as long as Greta Garbo could be brought to the United States. In this country, the actress would shoot her first two films as the protagonist, Entre naranjos and La tierra de todos , both based on two works by the Valencian Vicente Blasco Ibáñez . Stiller ended up openly disagreeing with Meyer’s way of making movies, for which he was eventually fired, but Greta Garbo continued in Hollywood until she became a big star. Clarence Brown was the director who got the most out of it in its early days, especiallyThe Devil and the Flesh , where the actress was a seductive and enigmatic woman who seduced two Austrian army officers. During filming, she fell in love with one of her co-stars, John Gilbert , with whom she had a romance that monopolized countless magazine covers, but finally ended up leaving him at the altar, in 1927. Despite the rumors and the most varied theses , Gilbert was the star’s only recognized partner.

Although the films of Greta Garbo’s early days were silent, they became blockbusters. She highlights the first version of the novel “Anna Karenina”, andLa mujer divina , the film from which the famous nickname comes, directed by his compatriot Victor Sjöström . The arrival of the sound ended the career of the main stars of the moment, including that of the aforementioned John Gilbert, who apparently had a “whistle voice”. With her raspy voice, Greta Garbo was one of the only exceptions to the general rule, revalidating her success withAnna Christie , her first “talkie”, promoted with the famous phrase: “Garbo speaks”. The best films of the actress followed, such as Mata Hari , Grand Hotel , Margarita Gautier and the sound version of Ana Karenina (1935) , with which Garbo transcended stardom and reached the category of myth. She outstandsQueen Cristina of Sweden where she interprets the famous sequence in which she is lying on the ground, and when the camera approaches her, “the divine” slowly savors some grapes, with a sensuality that is difficult to imitate. Another of her best compositions is the protagonist ofNinotchka , satire of the Soviet regime by Lubitsch, and a masterpiece of comedy that was announced with the phrase “La Garbo laughs”, as if it were her first comedy, althoughGrand Hotel was already more or less inscribed in the genre. He always worked with the same cinematographer, William Daniels , in his opinion the only one who knew how to illuminate his face. During the filming of some difficult sequences, he demanded that they leave the setall the crew members, including the director, being left alone with Daniels and the camera operator. The actress was so short-tempered that she was famous for her tantrums on the sets, where she sometimes yelled at the top of her voice that she was going back to Sweden. She never took autographs, it was hard to get her to give an interview, and she never talked about her private life, not even with her co-stars. She is told that she sometimes went to the theaters, incognito, with sunglasses, to observe the public’s reactions to her films.

The last work of Greta Garbo wasThe Two-Faced Woman , by George Cukor , unexpected flop at the box office. It is a puzzle why she made the decision to retire, even though she was only 35 years old. It seems that she did not want the public to see her age, because until her death, in 1990, she stopped attending public events and appearing in the media.