trousers, and a butch stride that screamed independence. This woman was a far cry from the poor girl living in a cramped apartment with no indoor plumbing in one of Stockholm’s poorest neighborhoods. Garbo told interviewers that her mother was practical and non-demonstrative. Her father, an unskilled laborer, was handsome, musical, and fun. In fact, she adored him, but he developed a life-threatening kidney infection. Greta went with him from hospital to hospital, unable to afford life-saving treatments in time. She was fourteen when he died, leaving the family impoverished. They lived hand-tomouth for most of her childhood. Like a character in a Dickens novel, she never forgot the humiliations she and her family experienced. She dropped out of school and went to work at a barbershop, where she applied shaving cream to men’s faces, and then found work at a department store where she sold hats. As a teenager, she longed to be an actress and appeared in an advertising film for the department store at age fifteen. Two years later, she attended the prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden, where she learned the semiotics of movement, gesture, and expression. Her break came in 1923 when the gay, Jewish director Mauritz Stiller needed an actress for an epic based on the Swedish novel The Story of Gosta Berling. Seeing her potential, he chose Garbo and soon became something of a Svengali figure to her. Next, while scouting for European talent, Louis Mayer invited Stiller and his untested starlet to Hollywood. The director sold himself and Garbo to the studio as a package deal. They sailed to the U.S. in 1925, arriving in New York, where Garbo loved riding the rollercoaster at Coney Island. Next, they boarded the train to Hollywood. Garbo’s first two pictures were hits; in Torrent and The Temptress (both 1926), she showcased the European “femme fatale” as elaborated by the great German director Fritz Lang in Metropolis and popularized by Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box (both 1929). For gay and especially lesbian fans, Garbo’s most memorable talking part is the title role inQueen Christina (1933), written by Salka Viertel, a bisexual actress, Jewish refugee, and former Garbo lover turned screenwriter. Viertel convinced Thalberg to cast Garbo, who loved the role of Christina because, like the writer Daphne de Maurier, she could “let her boy out of the box.” In the final scene, the androgynous Swedish ruler stands at the prow of a ship, the wind blowing her hair away to reveal those perfect features as she hurtles away from her country and her dead lover into the unknown. In her private life, Garbo’s closet was full of mannish suits, shirts, and ties. She often called herself a “fellow” and signed her letters “Harry Boy.” But Banner’s feminist analysis does little to shed fresh light on Garbo the person as distinct from Garbo the legend, perhaps because of the author’s own need to emphasize her subject’s bisexuality rather than her well-documented lesbianism. As for Garbo’s withdrawal from the public, it most likely stemmed from a variety of physical and mental health challenges that were largely unexamined by the actress. Her social phobias were severe, debilitating, and not conducive to maintaining close or enduring relationships. She never felt truly at home in America. After retiring from the movies, she eventually settled in New York City and made it her home base. Garbo never married or had children. She had numerous crushes on and love affairs with women, including several serious relationships, in addition to some physical relationships with men who cared for her. Banner concurs with Robert Gottlieb, Garbo’s most sympathetic biographer, that she faced multiple psychological and health challenges all her life. Eventually, she became uncomfortable with the very celebrity that she had so eagerly sought. Why Garbo gave up acting and removed herself from public view, besides being savvy about marketing her brand, remains an unsolved riddle that no biographer has fully answered. Banner suggests that it may have been because some gossip columnists declared Garbo to be box office poison. But she was nominated for Best Actress by the Academy four times, including for her 1939 hit filmNinotchka. In the end, behind the mask was a sad and self-absorbed woman who found herself living a dream life among the international jet set. Her understated performances allowed audiences to project their own emotions onto the blank canvas of her flawless face, which accounts for much of her popularity. It lasted until the film noir femme fatales and career women of the 1940s came along to displace her. March–April 2024 35 Greta Garbo as Queen Christina in a costume by Adrian, 1933. &BOOKLOVERS READERS ATTENTION Tim’s Used Books 242 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA timsusedfilms@gmail.com | 508-487-0005 | Open year-round. Are TIM’S USED BOOKS of Provincetown has been traveling throughout the Northeast since 1991, buying book collections, large and small. Scholarly, gay interest, the arts—all genres. Immediate payment and removal.
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