Greta Garbo: On screen magic
“I want to be left alone”. Beautiful and reclusive Swedish actress Greta Garbo's famous lines remain engraved in the collective memory of an older generation. While a whole new crop of brilliant actors have emerged on the scene since, Garbo's mystique and style remain unparalleled. Once named “The most beautiful woman that ever lived” by the Guinness Book of World Records, her acting ability won her four Oscar nominations for Best Actress. She also received an Oscar for her “Unforgettable Performances”.
Standing at the cusp of Hollywood's transition from silent films to talkies, she set fire to the screen in performances that unfortunately only the most hardcore film enthusiast will venture to see. There's the classic Gosta Berling's Saga” and several other films. With Eugene O'Neill's “Anna Christie” she was finally heard and not just seen. The film, with MGM's catchphrase “Garbo Talks!” released in 1930. In her first line, she imperiously ordered "Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby.” She went on to act as the World War I spy in “Mata Hari”, the doomed courtesan in “Camille” and of course the woman immortalised by Leo Tolstoy in his famous classic “Anna Karenina”. Garbo's career was on the roll--and how. At the peak of her career she was described as "the greatest money-making machine ever put on screen."
“The Swedish Sphinx” as she came to be known, was born in Stockholm, Sweden on September 19, 1905. Coming from a working class family, she was compelled to leave school after her father died when she was 14. As her family was on the verge of destitution, she began to work as a salesperson at a leading Swedish department store. Her modelling abilities impressed the store management and she was given the chance to appear in two advertising shorts for the store. And she did not ever have to hark back to the hard days after that.
Her first role was in the comedy film, “Peter the Tramp” (1922). Encouraged by her own performance, later that year she applied for and won a full scholarship to the reputed Academy of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden.
In 1923 famed Swedish director Mauritz Stiller cast her in the leading role in his classic film “Gosta Berling's Saga”. Followed an MGM contract; she moved to California in 1925. The last of her 28 films was “Two-faced Woman” (1942). She retired at the age of 36, having appeared in. Although she received many film offers, she never returned to the screen choosing to fiercely guard her privacy.
Four years before her death she explained her reason for dropping out of Hollywood to 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,” she said.
Garbo died on April 15, 1990, aged 84, in hospital, following pneumonia and renal failure. She was cremated in Manhattan, and her ashes were interred in 1999 at Skogskyrkogarden cemetery, south of her native Stockholm.
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