GRETA GARBO – Chances are millennials have no idea who Greta Garbo is. But it’ll be wonderful if they brush up on cinema history so they’ll get to know her and other great stars during the heyday of Hollywood in the ‘20s up to the ‘50s.
Garbo was a great actress, star, and beauty. She was called filmdom’s Supreme Goddess. Her face was billed “the benchmark of perfection” and “the cannon of absolute beauty.” Her eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, forehead, chin are in perfect proportions.
She was the most enigmatic of all stars—aloof, reclusive, not given to idle talk. Her most memorable films include “Camille,” “Grand Hotel,” “Ninotchka,” “Queen Christina,” “Mata Hari,” and “Anna Karenina.”
Born in Sweden, Garbo took Hollywood by storm in the ‘20s. She never married, although romantically linked to several men…and even rumored to be a lesbian. Which until the end of her life remained just that, a rumor.
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WHAT THEY SAY – Highspeed gathered what they say about Garbo (never called Greta), both favorable and un.
Yul Brynner – Greta Garbo. Well, she made a career out of a perfect profile and doing so few interviews that no way could she bore the public.
Hedda Hopper – Garbo’s the greatest actress of all time. First, last, and always.
Alfred Hitchcock – Like “Gone With the Wind,” Garbo is monumentally overrated. She’s like a cardboard façade sprinkled with glitter, mysterious because you don’t know what’s behind it…Her voice is deep, her feet are big, her private life is a fog…Only her face is perfect. But Garbo is smart; she quit when aging began to betray her fabulous face.
(Hitchcock tried but failed to cast Garbo in his movies.)
Clare Boothe Luce – Great Garbo is a deer in the body of woman, living resentfully in the Hollywood zoo.
Groucho Marx – I got into an elevator at MGM once and there, in one of her famous men’s hats, was Garbo. I said hello, and when there was no reply, I said “Oh sorry, I thought you were a fellow I knew.”
Ernst Lubitsch – Gary Cooper and Greta Garbo are the same person. After all, have you even seen them in a movie together?
Tennessee Williams – (Garbo) is hermaphroditic, with the cold quality of a mermaid.
Constance Bennett – I did a movie with Garbo, and I was dumbstruck to find out that contrary to every other feminine star in town including myself, she could do without the use of a mirror in between takes!