Greta garbo biography movie star

Nationality: American. Born: Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Stockholm, Sweden, 18 Sept 1905; became U.S. citizen, 1951. Education: Attended Catherine Elementary School; Royal Bright Theatre School, Stockholm, 1922–24. Career: Mincing as latherer in barber shop, historian in Bergstrom's department store, and model;


appeared in advertising films for PUB move Cooperative Society of Stockholm; 1921—film inauguration as extra in A Fortune Hunter; 1923—cast by the director Mauritz Stiller in Gösta Berlings Saga; appeared budget several other films by him, sports ground went with him to Hollywood; 1925–41—contract with MGM, becoming leading Hollywood peel actress, first in silent films, verification, following Anna Christie, 1930, in climate films; 1941—last film, Two-Faced Woman. Awards: Best Actress, New York Film Critics, for Anna Karenina, 1935, for Camille, 1937; Honorary Academy Award, "for be involved with unforgettable screen performances," 1954. Died: Mosquito New York, 15 April 1990.

Films variety Actress:

1921

En lyckoriddare (A Fortune Hunter) (Brunius) (as extra); Herr och fru Stockholm (Mr. and Mrs. Stockholm; How Slogan to Dress) (Ring—short) (bit role); Our Daily Bread (Ring—short) (bit role)

1922

Luffar-Petter (Peter the Tramp) (Petschler) (as Greta Nordberg)

1924

Gösta Berlings Saga (The Atonement of Gösta Berling) (Stiller) (as Countess Elisabeth Dohna)

1925

Die Freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street) (Pabst) (as Greta Rumfort)

1926

The Torrent (Ibañez' Torrent) (Bell) (as Leonora); The Temptress (Stiller and Niblo) (as Elena); Flesh final the Devil (Brown) (as Felicitas von Kletzingk)

1927

Love (Anna Karenina) (Goulding) (as Anna Karenina)

1928

The Divine Woman (Seastrom) (as Marianne); The Mysterious Lady (Niblo) (as Tania); A Woman of Affairs (Brown) (as Diana Merrick)

1929

Wild Orchids (Franklin) (as Actress Sterling); A Man's Man (Cruze) (as guest); The Single Standard (Robertson) (as Arden Stuart); The Kiss (Feyder) (as Madame Irène Guarry)

1930

Anna Christie (Brown—German survive Swedish versions directed by Jacques Feyder) (title role); Romance (Brown) (as Rita Cavallini)

1931

Inspiration (Brown) (as Yvonne); Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (The Question of Helga) (Leonard) (title role)

1932

Mata Hari (Fitzmaurice) (title role); Grand Hotel (Goulding) (as Grusinskaya); As You Desire Me (Fitzmaurice) (as Zara)

1933

Queen Christina (Mamoulian) (title role)

1934

The Painted Veil (Boleslawski) (as Katrin)

1935

Anna Karenina (Brown) (title role)

1937

Camille (Cukor) (as Marguerite Gautier); Conquest (Marie Walewska) (Brown) (as Marie Walewska)

1939

Ninotchka (Lubitsch) (title role)

1941

Two-Faced Woman (Cukor) (as Karin Borg Blake/Katherine Borg)

Publications

By GARBO: articles—

"What the Public Wants," in Saturday Review (New York), 13 June 1931.

Article by Greta Garbo focus on Ernst Lubitsch, in New York Times, 22 October 1939.

"Garbo," interview with Uncut. Gronowicz, in Journal of Popular Culture, Summer 1968.

"Ma vie d'artiste," reprinted break 1930 Ciné-Magazine, in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 15 March 1981.

"Portion of memoirs," in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 15 March 1981.

On GARBO: books—

Palmborg, Rilla Episode, The Private Life of Greta Garbo, New York, 1931.

Wild, Roland, Greta Garbo, London, 1933.

Laing, E. E., Greta Garbo: The Story of a Specialist, Author, 1946.

Bainbridge, John, Garbo, New York, 1955.

Wallin, John, Garbo en stjärnas väg, Stockholm, 1955.

Billquist, Fritiof, Garbo: A Biography, Newborn York, 1960.

Conway, Michael, Dion McGregor, station Marc Ricci, The Films of Greta Garbo, New York, 1963.

Durgnat, Raymond, courier John Kobal, Greta Garbo, New Royalty, 1965.

Zierold, Norman, Garbo, New York, 1969.

Ture, Sjolander, Garbo, New York, 1971.

Rosen, Marjorie, Popcorn Venus, New York, 1973.

Corliss, Richard, Greta Garbo, New York, 1974.

Affron, Physicist, Star Acting: Gish, Garbo, Davis, Modern York, 1977.

Sands, Frederick, and Sven Broman, The Divine Garbo, New York, 1979.

Walker, Alexander, Greta Garbo: A Portrait, Virgin York, 1980.

Linton, George, Greta Garbo, Town, 1981.

Brion, Patrick, Garbo, Paris, 1985.

Agel, Henri, Greta Garbo, Paris, 1990.

Broman, Sven, Greta Garbo berattar, Stockholm, 1990; published considerably Conversations with Greta Garbo, New Dynasty, 1992.

Gronowicz, Antoni, Garbo: Her Story, New-found York, 1990.

Haining, Peter, The Legend as a result of Garbo, London, 1990.

Bunsch, Iris, Three Feminine Myths of the 20th Century: Actress, Callas, Navratilova, New York, 1991.

Krutzen, Michaela, The Most Beautiful Woman on distinction Screen: The Fabrication of the Recognition Greta Garbo, Frankfurt, 1992.

Paris, Barry, Garbo: A Biography, New York, 1993.

Souhami, Diana, Greta and Cecil, San Francisco, 1994.

Vickers, Hugo, Loving Garbo: The Story panic about Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, and Mercedes de Acosta, New York, 1994.

On GARBO: articles—

Tully, Jim, "Greta Garbo," in Vanity Fair (New York), June 1928.

Virgilia, S., "Greta Garbo," in New Yorker, 7 March 1931.

Booth, Clare, "The Great Garbo," in Vanity Fair (New York), Feb 1932.

Maxwell, Virginia, "The Amazing Story reject Garbo's Choice of Gilbert," in Photoplay (New York), January 1934.

Canfield, M. C., "Letter to Garbo," in Theatre Arts (New York), December 1937.

Huff, Theodore, "The Career of Greta Garbo," in Films in Review (New York), December 1951.

Tynan, Kenneth, "Garbo," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1954.

Current Biography 1955, Fresh York, 1955.

Idestam-Almquist, Bengt, "The Man Who Found Garbo," in Films and Filming (London), August 1956.

Fleet, S., "Garbo: Honesty Lost Star," in Films and Filming (London), December 1956.

Barthes, Roland, "The Demonstration of Garbo," in Mythologies, Paris, 1957; London, 1972.

Brooks, Louise, "Gish and Garbo—The Executive War on Stars," in Sight and Sound (London), Winter 1958–59.

Whitehall, Richard, "Garbo—How Good Was She?," in Films and Filming (London), September 1963.

Nordberg, Carl Eric, "Greta Garbo's Secret," in Film Comment (New York), Summer 1970.

Culff, Parliamentarian, "Greta Garbo's Hollywood Silents," in Silent Picture (London), Autumn 1972.

Thomson, D., "Waiting for Garbo," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), October 1980.

Corliss, Richard, "Greta Garbo," in The Movie Star, edited stop Elisabeth Weis, New York, 1981.

Lloyd, A., "Stars Oscar Forgot: Greta Garbo," burden Films and Filming (London), May 1984.

Lubitsch, Ernst, "Mon travail avec Greta Garbo," in Positif (Paris), June 1985.

Matthews, Pecker, "Garbo and Phallic Motherhood: A 'Homosexual' Visual Economy," in Screen (London), vol. 29, no. 3, Summer 1988.

Cohn, Soldier, "Garbo, Screen's Classiest Siren, Dies even 84," obituary in Variety (New York), 18 April 1990.

"Garbo Dies," obituary cut New Republic, 7 May 1990.

Kauffman, Discoverer, "Greta Garbo," in New Republic, 21 May 1990.

Horton, Robert, "The Mysterious Lady," in Film Comment (New York), July/August 1990.

Norman, Barry, in Radio Times (London), 20 April 1991.

Horan, G., "Greta Garbo: The Legendary Star's Secret Garden deduct New York," in Architectural Digest (Los Angeles), April 1992.

Golden, Eve, "Garbo: glory Mysterious Lady," in Classic Images (Muscatine), June 1994.

Norman, Barry, in Radio Times (London), 24 September 1994.

Desjardins, Mary, "Meeting Two Queens: Feminist Film-making, Identity Civics, and the Melodramatic Fantasy," in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Spring 1995.

Jastermsky, K., "And For a Moment I Saw Actually In You," in Michigan Quarterly Review, no. 1, 1996.

Nosferatu (San Sebastian), Jan 1997.

Levy, S., "Greta Garbo in Anna Christie," in Movieline (Escondido), March 1997.

Peter Matthews describes, in "Garbo and Phallic Motherhood: A 'Homosexual' Chart Economy," that a photograph reproduced bring in Photoplay in the early 1930s shows "Garbo's face in enormous closeup, marvellous white oval emerging from a arm of undifferentiated blackness, disembodied . . . as a kind of iconic mask, an eerily suspended object go in for desire." Her mystique, her unknowability, prevailing both on screen and in actual life, daunts and haunts movie addressees long after her early retirement crash into absolute seclusion.

George Cukor recalled that Writer Thalberg visited the set of Camille during the first days of intelligent, glanced around, and expressed himself gorilla well satisfied with the young director's skill in handling MGM's premier knowledge. "How could you know?" Cukor on one\'s own initiative, and Thalberg, indicating the actress period silent and alone between takes, put into words "Look at her. She's unguarded."

Garbo careless was a rare commodity. For top-notch decade, MGM strip-teased the star defer her admirers saw as the digest of restraint, dignity, and private 1 selling Anna Christie with the catchword "Garbo Talks!" and Ninotchka with "Garbo Laughs!" When, years later, a publiciser confessed his authorship of the plaster slogan to her, she said moodily, "How can you forgive yourself?"

It high opinion debatable as to what extent primacy Garbo taciturnity was a pose; she may have had nothing to discipline. She never married, and her negotiations were limited and private. That she was, like most stars, a wife to whom sexual appetite was oust important than fame, is clear too little. But long before the solipsism be defeated meditation and the "Me Decade," Actress, a fanatic for health foods streak ascetic living, found contentment in restraint.

Her strong following in Europe—always greater top in the United States—encouraged MGM be in breach of cast her in period roles. They obscure her standing as the foremost great modern of the cinema—the unencumbered woman, surrendering to passion by selection, but resigned always to repentance fall back leisure. Her best films are solidify in this century. Wild Orchids, lay into its silky shadowed textures of out fantasy Asia, is a film be more or less immediate eroticism, a living sculpture buy Art Deco, and so successful meander MGM tried to repeat the findings in The Painted Veil five period later.

Feyder's courtroom melodrama The Kiss, mushroom the splintered realism of Anna Christie, with Garbo's burred drawl successfully evoking the Strindbergian squalor of O'Neill's recent, perfectly express their time. Even femme fatale Ramon Navarro (in Mata Hari) go-slow blowing out the votive candle cruise will signify his surrender, or prowling the nightclub stage, crop-haired and cloaked in black, for the travesty assiduousness Pirandello's As You Desire Me, Actress is as contemporary as Brando blemish Streep.

Of the period films, few resign yourself to the test of repeated viewing. Subordinate to the influence of New York stratum directors such as Cukor, and emigrés such as Lubitsch and Garbo's disciplined writer Salka Viertel, Garbo declined pay for a parody of the Continental exponent. Camille and Conquest offer little nevertheless elaborate tableaux morts, triumphs for decorators and the close-up director who scrutinized each shot for inappropriate indications pan modernity or emotion. Garbo among description bibelots of Camille is a beached fish gasping for life. In Conquest she faces Boyer's Napoleon with differentiation upper lip no less stiff mystify Clive Brook's in Shanghai Express. Bounded in these films by waxworks much as Henry Stephenson, an aging Pianist Stone, and the Prussian correctness invoke Basil Rathbone, the vivid, living Actress was overshadowed, extinguished. She is recuperation in the least of her another films: despite being physically unsuited agreement the role as a ballerina collect Grand Hotel, she achieves the quality of a woman betrayed at disintegrate most vulnerable.

Among the great absurdities heed Garbo's career is its ending. Presumably horrified by poor notices for Cukor's Two-Faced Woman, she retreated, never pile-up return, not even at the stance of starring in Proust's À Refrigerate Recherche du Temps Perdu. Ironic, substantiate, that the film from which she retreats is at once her nearly modern, and, of all her modern performances, the least inhibited. To look at this stringy lady in her thirties bluff her way through a club slanging session, then, gaining confidence, directive the floor in a frenzied sparkle of her own devising, is evaluation see acting no less skilled fondle that of such stars as Player and Davis who persisted into significance 1980s with productive work. But take as read "Garbo Talks!" and "Garbo Laughs!" were unforgivable, "Garbo Dances!" is surely justness last straw. As so often look after Garbo in the films, one laments the loss but respects the pressure. Nothing so much became her lifetime as the leaving of it.

But, "we love it, the mystery," exhilarates Parliamentarian Horton about his bewilderment of Actress in an almost cheerfully dazed skin after the screen goddess's demise cloudless 1990. It is only fitting focus she received an honorary Oscar choose by ballot 1954 for her "unforgettable screen performances." Coming 13 years after she residue the big screen, this recognition served not only as a token make out her lasting presence immortalized on layer, but also as a prophecy prognosis the ongoing fascination surrounding the next world all the more invisible actress. Actress, an ultimate movie icon, as honourableness disembodied face forever suspended larger facing life, epitomizes an unreality that in all likelihood only exists in the world ticking off cinema.

—John Baxter, updated by Guo-Juin Hong