(Greta Lovisa Gustafsson [real name])
born September 18, 1905 in Stockholm, Sweden
died April 15, 1990 in New York City, United States
Swedish-American film actress
35th anniversary of her death on April 15, 2025
120th birthday on September 18, 2025
Biography
The story of how Greta Gustafsson, a working-class girl with an irrepressible passion for the theater, became first Greta Garbo, then Garbo, and finally the Goddess, is the story of a great career. It is also the story of self-destruction, and of mythical fiction.
She was discovered by Mauritz Stiller. He became her mentor and trainer, “coaxing out of her everything he suspected was in her”: “I am merciless with her. And when she has reduced herself to the maximum degree possible, her acting performance is at its greatest.”
Garbo made her Hollywood debut two years later. Even when she was demonstrably distracted, exhausted or bored, and even when she chose to keep her face expressionless – as, for example, in the famous final scene of Queen Christina – she was able to evoke the most diverse and intense emotions and interpretations in the audience. Garbo’s unhurried approach to acting – fascinatingly economical, and utterly un-American – and the studio’s stylization of her as an idol were merged into an image that soon included her own growing shyness, egocentricity, and increasing unwillingness to allow any invasion of her privacy. She remained the Goddess in the eyes of the public even as later films revealed the more ordinary: the audience experienced her voice in sound films as a warm alto, and they saw her image as an unapproachable star referenced with irreverent irony in the comedy Ninotchka.
In the end, all that remained of the person Greta Garbo was the being that inhabited the sterile, illusory world created and controlled by the studios. She no longer wanted to be recognized outside of her 28 cinema productions. After the termination of her contract with MGM in 1941, she spent the 49 years that followed almost entirely out of the public eye. As a restless, aging woman, she had neither the ability nor the desire to deal with the image created of an eternally young goddess. It is only in her films where we see the incomparable magic that is Greta Garbo.
(Text from 1994; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2025. Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
She shows loneliness in all her silent films. Even in the most passionate love scenes, the movement and power always came from her and not from her lover. His head [her lover’s] ... lies in her lap, and she leans over him, ... and we get the impression that something exciting is happening. If she had been bending over a potato, we would have had the same feeling. (Robert Payne, 1979)
Greta Garbo is magnificent. Her face effortlessly conveys even the most delicate emotions. Her voice adds depth and nuance to the most economical of words. Such subtlety has not been seen since Eleonora Duse. Greta Garbo acts with tension, but never with hysteria. Emotion never gets the upper hand. Everything is controlled. (Herbert Ihering)
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