Greta Garbo and Her Pet Fly
Posted: Friday, November 18, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
Greta Garbo was the best actress (many say, of all time), and the ‘biggest’ movie star in the world for an unprecedented 15 years. From her 1925, heart wrenching performance in the German made silent film, The Joyless Street (Die freudlose Fasse),until the poorly reviewed The Two Faced Woman in 1941, she dominated the movie industry like no one ever has. She did not revel in her celebrity. She was the most enigmatic, remote and aloof superstar in filmdom’s history. Eccentric behavior during her career and during the half century of her reclusive retirement reveals a character and personality that is sometimes defined as inscrutably complex, and, at other times, as stunningly simple. Which ever is the truth about Garbo, she seems to have been a frightened, confused and lonely woman.
The immediate, phenomenal success of her films in America, coupled with the intense promotion of his new found ‘cash cow’ by Louis B. Mayer, soon elevated Garbo to a height never before achieved by an entertainer. Most women liked her and all men loved her. Each succeeding Garbo film set box office records. By 1935, in the depths of the depression and in the era of some of the greatest actors and actresses Hollywood has ever produced, she commanded $500,000 per film, nearly twice as much as her nearest competitor.
But, Greta (Gustafsson) Garbo, did not have an opportunity for normal emotion or psychological development. Sheltered and protected by the father-like Stiller, she leapt from mundane obscurity to being one of the most famous and talked about people in the world during a period of her life when she should have been gradually growing into a mature woman. When Stiller was fired by Mayer, soon left America then died, in 1928, Garbo, barely 23 years old, was set adrift, ostensively alone, in the ruthless, frantic world of Hollywood during the Roaring Twenties. She was still not much more than an immature, frightened young girl.
Garbo lived a quite, simple, private life in Hollywood with only a few friends and ‘outside’ activities. Her reality was drastically different from the image she portrayed on screen, which in most of her early films was that of a vamp. Her integrity, honesty and work ethic starkly contrasted with the often outlandish behavior of many actors and actresses of that time and today. However, from the beginning of her career, she demonstrated an indecisiveness and timidity in personal relationships, and an inability to ‘come to grips’ with her superstardom.
During her entire life Garbo did not attend a movie première, did not sign autographs, did not answer fan mail and did no interviews. Her relationship with John Gilbert, America’s top leading man of the day and her co-star in many films, was one of Hollywood’s first romantic headlines. Gilbert proposed marriage to Garbo at least three times. She refused him twice, relented once, but backed out at the last minute leaving him, literally, standing at the altar. She never married, and is reputed to have had sexual relationships with Lilyan Tashman, Fifi D’Osay and Mercedes de Acosta over the years.
Garbo always showed an aversion to and a desire to escape from the spotlight she found herself in. When she returned to Sweden for Christmas in 1928, shortly after Stiller’s death, Louis Mayer was convinced she would not return. When she did, he began giving her more diverse roles and raised her salary, realizing how much she meant to the studio. Garbo did not attend the ceremonies when she was nominated for Best Actress Oscars for both Anna Christie and Romance, her first two ‘talkies’ that were filmed in 1929. She was afraid of the swarming publicity hounds and became physically ill at the just the thought of the ‘pageantry’ and attention.
After she finished filming Susan Lenox with co-star Clark Gable in 1931, she and de Acosta ‘escaped’ and spent six weeks on an island in the middle of a lake in the Sierra Mountains. They had no communication with the outside world except through a boatman, who paddled supplies out to them once a week. He was not permitted to tell them any news. After the hiatus she was refreshed and returned to Hollywood to star in Mati Hari, her most popular film. In her next movie, The Grand Hotel, which won Best Picture Oscar for 1932, she uttered the line that would come to define her: “I want to be alone.”
In the summer of 1932, Garbo considered retiring and scheduled a vacation trip back to Sweden. She’d had enough of the aggrandizement. Her efforts to avoid publicity had made her the most relentlessly pursued woman in the world. From that period, there are hundreds of photographs of her hiding behind hats or sunglasses as she runs for a waiting car or train. Before she left America, Louis Mayer, familiar with her integrity (he said that a verbal agreement with Garbo was worth more than any contract he'd ever signed), convinced her to sign an agreement to make two films a year at $250,000 each, to assure she would come back to Hollywood.
When she did return, she did some of her greatest work in Queen Christina, Anna Karenina and Camille, for which she was again nominated for an Oscar. During the final ten years of her career she was linked with several men including Rouben Mamoulian, George Brent and Leopold Stokowski, but, again could develop no lasting relationship. For Ninotchka, her first comedy in 1939, she was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for the fourth time, losing to Vivian Leigh who stared in Gone with the Wind. After the panned, church condemned, The Two Faced Woman was a flop in 1941, Garbo decided to quit making movies, not because of her failure, but because the time was right.
During the 1940’s, Garbo continued to live in America but traveled Europe and the Mediterranean extensively, staying with the likes of Cecile Rothschild, Aristotle Onasis and good friend Deborah Kerr. Interest in her did not soon fade. She was still besieged by the paparazzi. Nearly everyone in 'the business' wanted to see her in films again, because, as Bette Davis said: “Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyze this woman’s acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera.”
Dozens of projects were started but never came through, some due to financing problems, but many because Garbo simply did not have the ambition to do them. She hated the fact that each rumor of a new Garbo film sent the public into another uproar. She couldn’t understand why her popularity persisted, and why, nearly a decade after her last film, she was still at the mercy of her stardom.
Finally, in 1953, she stopped even considering a comeback and moved into an apartment at 450 East Fifty-Second Street in New York City. She would recluse her self there for the next 37 years; except for summers in Switzerland and occasional trips to visit friends. Her walking partner and friend Sam Green explained her final retirement: “She had nothing to achieve, no great ambition. She already was the most famous, beautiful and accomplished woman of her time.”
Green went on to say that Garbo paid a high price for those ‘accomplishments'; by losing her privacy. All she now wanted was to live “a decent, healthy, honest life out of the public view. She was truly tormented by her fame.” Clare Booth Luce described Garbo as a “solophile,” and said that during her career she was “a deer in the body of a woman living resentfully in the Hollywood zoo.” The apartment in New York became a womb-like refuge in which she could hide. Garbo said: “I’m lucky to be in this building. They don’t like actresses here.”
The glimpses of Greta Garbo the world got during the following decades revealed a melancholy, confused and lonely woman. She hated her stardom, yet cherished it. She relished admiration, yet admonished anyone who bestowed it. She wanted to be alone, but craved being with people who loved her. Daily, she took long walks through the city, incognito, in plain cloths, hats and glasses. She said: “Sometimes I put on my coat at 10 a.m. and follow people. I just go where they’re going—I mill around.” It enabled her to be alone, yet still be with people who 'let her alone.'
Though her distrust made her think differently, the citizens of New York, for the most part, did let her alone. A walking companion said that he saw dozens of people show recognition during they're strolls together, but very seldom did anyone approach her or say a word. Once, she was distracted by a “look before you walk” sign with three cute giraffes on it while she was waiting at a street crossing. She missed two green lights in her daydream. When she looked around there were 40 people who'd recognized her gathered around, ogling her. She flinched, nodded to her fans and quickly moved on.
She hated the fame, but needed it. She was crazy over pictures of herself. She would be furious if a fan or reporter snapped a candid one, but would pose for hours in a studio while thousands were taken. For most of her retired life she contracted a “clipping service” to gather and send her all the information about her that was printed. She was curious to read what people were saying about her. She was compared to a junkie on drugs who hated it, but couldn’t give it up.
Her seclusion and her fear and distrust of fans, reporters; of people in general, either caused or was a manifestation of a deep seated melancholy and loneliness. Once, a friend entered her hotel room and found her wrapped in blankets sitting in the middle of floor. When he asked what was going on, she said, “I am an unborn child,” and continued to sit there for a long time. During a conversation with a friend at a pub she suddenly fell into a long silence then, finally said, “I am a lonely man circling the Earth.” When asked what she meant, she said, “Maybe someday I’ll tell you.”
A story she told about a summer stay in Switzerland exposes some of the true, troubled nature of Greta Garbo:
“I spent three months in Switzerland, living exactly as I do in New York, making my own meals, staying in a little apartment. There’s hardly anybody who could take that, but I’m so abnormal. It’s so boring year after year, but at least they don’t make a fuss [over me]. I found an old couple [at the hotel] who like to eat early as I do, so I take my meals with them. They’re so boring, but if people see you eating alone, they feel sorry for you….The strangest thing happened to me the last time. I was adopted by a fly—yes, sir, right there in the hotel dining room. Every time I would come in and sit down, he would fly over to me. The first few times, I used to shoo him away, but he would always come back, until finally I realized he didn’t want my food, because sometimes there wasn’t any, and he wasn’t trying to bite me or anything, he just wanted to be my friend! So I let him be, and he did tricks for me….He wouldn’t fly away if he was in my hand and I closed my hand and opened it up again. He would hop from one of my fingers to the next one—he was an acrobat. What makes me think he was a ‘he’? But, I bet he was. Everyday he came and played with me….But one day he didn’t come anymore. I guess somebody killed him. The Swiss don’t like flies in their restaurants, even if they’re your pet. But, I was sad, because he was my friend.”
Garbo became more comfortable with her fame as she grew old. Her long time housekeeper and companion, Claire Koger surprised many people who thought they knew the star when she revealed that Garbo liked to watch movies on television, including her own. When asked if she ever talked about her films after seeing them again, Koger said, “Not much. It was a secret.” Koger said that one time, when a young actress was described as the new Greta Garbo the star grunted and said in a low, dramatic growl, “There is only one Garbo.”
At 11:30 in the morning on Easter Sunday, 1990, the actress who many say was the best before the camera that ever was and ever will be, the superstar who wanted to be let alone, and for most of her life was, Greta Garbo died in the New York City hospital to which she had been taken from her small apartment on 52ndStreet. Regardless of the torment she may have suffered because of her fame, regardless of the loneliness and isolation she may have experienced, shortly before her death she smiled and said to her nephew-in-law, “You know, I’ve had a fabulous life.”
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Your word count always high. Your descriptions full of life. Your detail detailed. What a great subject. My Father would always say: "I vant to be alone". And he meant it, like she did. Tremendous work.I can't help the word count. I could have doubled it to say all I wanted to say, I guess. It took at least 4 hours to do it, while my "When I was Young" one took about one. I suppose I should focus on subjects I can deal with more quickly. Thanks for always reading and commenting.I meant to say that your writing has density. Your words are well chosen and properly used. You don't have excess, and yet you say so much. Take that the way you want to, but to me, its a positive.
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