ABSTRUSE
Cirque du Freak
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I love Garbo!!!
Reclusive Garbo back in limelight for centenary
By Patrick Lannin
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A girl with slightly crooked teeth and a mass of dark hair piled on her head stares out uncertainly from a black-and-white photograph. She is dressed in what looks like a drab uniform, perhaps worn for work in a shop.
The picture, featured in a book in the vaults of a Swedish film archive, shows the girl who grew up to become the Hollywood legend Greta Garbo.
Born into poverty in a Stockholm suburb as Greta Gustafsson, Garbo came to hate the spotlight. But the centenary of her birth on September 18 has prompted new interest in one of Hollywood's most enigmatic figures.
Garbo, known as "The Swedish Sphinx," retired from the screen aged 36 while still in her prime and shied away from celebrity until her death in 1990 aged 84.
As was the case when she was alive, the interest now focuses as much on her private life as on her work -- why did she become a recluse? Was she gay or straight? Why did she retire so early?
Her great-nephew Scott Reisfield said Garbo wanted privacy.
But he warned that people who interpreted her famous "I want to be alone" line from the 1932 film "Grand Hotel" as a statement that defined her life had got it wrong.
"She wanted to have everyday interaction and a certain anonymity makes you equal to the person you're talking to," Reisfield told Reuters from his home in Boulder, Colorado.
"She wanted to be just another person in the city doing what she did. Could she take advantage of her celebrity? Sure, there were times that she would, but for the most part she didn't want to be put in this ivory tower."
MYSTERIOUS LADY
To mark the anniversary, two new books on Garbo are being published and a new documentary has been released. The United States and Sweden are also issuing stamps in her honor.
Reisfield, who in August published a book of Garbo's favorite studio portraits, praised the documentary by film scholar and historian Kevin Brownlow.
"Garbo" has been shown on Turner Classic Movies and will be screened in Sweden during a retrospective of her films.
"If you see the person that was portrayed there, that is much closer to the way she was ... She was a pretty savvy professional and she knew what she was trying to do."
Family poverty meant young Garbo had to leave school to get a job, working first as a lather girl in a barber's job and then in a central Stockholm department store, which still exists.
She later went to drama school, where she met director Mauritz Stiller. He took her to Hollywood where she became one of the most glamorous movie stars of the 1920s and 1930s, making the transition from silent films to talkies.
She retired from the screen in 1941 after making classics such as "Flesh and The Devil," "Ninotchka" and "Queen Christina" and after her last film, "Two-Faced Woman," flopped.
Her departure from film and seclusion during the decades leading up to her death has left plenty of room for speculation about the person behind the screen image.
MODERN WOMAN
Swedish author Tin Andersen-Axell, who published a book in January based on Garbo's letters to a drama school friend Mimi Pollack, said it was the demands of Hollywood which turned a happy-go-lucky Swedish youngster into a depressed exile.
A letter in the Swedish Film Institute archive to a friend back home in the late 1920s suggests some ennui.
"There is nothing else to say except that I am tired, tired," she wrote after describing a lunch at MGM studios.
Many of the letters are signed "Gurra," a nickname for men called Gustav. It was such gender-bending that led many people to speculate Garbo was a lesbian.
Andersen-Axell believed Pollack and Garbo were lovers. "I am certain of it," she said. Reisfield said he thought the letters showed the two women were close friends.
Ragnar Berthling of the Swedish Film Institute, which has the book of photographs charting her life and is holding a retrospective of her films, said that for film critics Garbo was one of the first modern women actors.
"She lived in an extremely patriarchal society, but she really stood up to all this and was making decisions for herself," he said.
"She was one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. She would have been like Madonna."
Reclusive Garbo back in limelight for centenary
By Patrick Lannin
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A girl with slightly crooked teeth and a mass of dark hair piled on her head stares out uncertainly from a black-and-white photograph. She is dressed in what looks like a drab uniform, perhaps worn for work in a shop.
The picture, featured in a book in the vaults of a Swedish film archive, shows the girl who grew up to become the Hollywood legend Greta Garbo.
Born into poverty in a Stockholm suburb as Greta Gustafsson, Garbo came to hate the spotlight. But the centenary of her birth on September 18 has prompted new interest in one of Hollywood's most enigmatic figures.
Garbo, known as "The Swedish Sphinx," retired from the screen aged 36 while still in her prime and shied away from celebrity until her death in 1990 aged 84.
As was the case when she was alive, the interest now focuses as much on her private life as on her work -- why did she become a recluse? Was she gay or straight? Why did she retire so early?
Her great-nephew Scott Reisfield said Garbo wanted privacy.
But he warned that people who interpreted her famous "I want to be alone" line from the 1932 film "Grand Hotel" as a statement that defined her life had got it wrong.
"She wanted to have everyday interaction and a certain anonymity makes you equal to the person you're talking to," Reisfield told Reuters from his home in Boulder, Colorado.
"She wanted to be just another person in the city doing what she did. Could she take advantage of her celebrity? Sure, there were times that she would, but for the most part she didn't want to be put in this ivory tower."
MYSTERIOUS LADY
To mark the anniversary, two new books on Garbo are being published and a new documentary has been released. The United States and Sweden are also issuing stamps in her honor.
Reisfield, who in August published a book of Garbo's favorite studio portraits, praised the documentary by film scholar and historian Kevin Brownlow.
"Garbo" has been shown on Turner Classic Movies and will be screened in Sweden during a retrospective of her films.
"If you see the person that was portrayed there, that is much closer to the way she was ... She was a pretty savvy professional and she knew what she was trying to do."
Family poverty meant young Garbo had to leave school to get a job, working first as a lather girl in a barber's job and then in a central Stockholm department store, which still exists.
She later went to drama school, where she met director Mauritz Stiller. He took her to Hollywood where she became one of the most glamorous movie stars of the 1920s and 1930s, making the transition from silent films to talkies.
She retired from the screen in 1941 after making classics such as "Flesh and The Devil," "Ninotchka" and "Queen Christina" and after her last film, "Two-Faced Woman," flopped.
Her departure from film and seclusion during the decades leading up to her death has left plenty of room for speculation about the person behind the screen image.
MODERN WOMAN
Swedish author Tin Andersen-Axell, who published a book in January based on Garbo's letters to a drama school friend Mimi Pollack, said it was the demands of Hollywood which turned a happy-go-lucky Swedish youngster into a depressed exile.
A letter in the Swedish Film Institute archive to a friend back home in the late 1920s suggests some ennui.
"There is nothing else to say except that I am tired, tired," she wrote after describing a lunch at MGM studios.
Many of the letters are signed "Gurra," a nickname for men called Gustav. It was such gender-bending that led many people to speculate Garbo was a lesbian.
Andersen-Axell believed Pollack and Garbo were lovers. "I am certain of it," she said. Reisfield said he thought the letters showed the two women were close friends.
Ragnar Berthling of the Swedish Film Institute, which has the book of photographs charting her life and is holding a retrospective of her films, said that for film critics Garbo was one of the first modern women actors.
"She lived in an extremely patriarchal society, but she really stood up to all this and was making decisions for herself," he said.
"She was one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. She would have been like Madonna."
