Home> Facts and Trivia > Stars > Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo Facts
| Sign | Virgo |
| Born |
Sep 18, 1905 Stockholm, Sweden |
| Died |
Apr 15, 1990 New York City, NY |
| Age | Died at 84 |
| Total Facts | 63 |
Gary Cooper was reportedly one of her favorite actors. She requested him for several of her films, but nothing ever materialized.
1951: Became a US citizen.
A photograph of Greta Garbo, probably cut from a movie magazine, was one of several images of movie stars, royalty, pieces of art, and family members used as decoration by Anne Frank on the wall of her room in the "Secret Annex" in Amsterdam where she and her family hid from July 1942 until their capture by the Nazis in August 1944.
According to her friend, producer William Frye, he offered Garbo one million dollars to star as the Mother Superior in his film The Trouble with Angels (1966). When she declined, he cast Rosalind Russell in the part - at a much lower salary.
Although it was believed that Garbo lived as an invalid in her post-Hollywood career, this is incorrect. She was a real jet setter, traveling with international tycoons and socialites. In the 1970s she traveled less and grew more and more eccentric, although she still took daily walks through Central Park with close friends and walkers. Due to failing health in the late 1980s, her mobility was challenged. In her final year it was her family that cared for her, including taking her to dialysis treatments. She died with them by her side.
Aunt of Gray Reisfield (daughter of Sven Gustafson).
Before making it big, she worked as a soap-latherer in a barber's shop back in Sweden.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 316-319. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.
During filming, whenever there was something going on that wasn't to her liking she would simply say "I think I'll go back to Sweden!" which frightened the studio heads so much that they gave in to her every whim.
Except at the very beginning of her career, she granted no interviews, signed no autographs, attended no premieres, and answered no fan mail.
Garbo actually hoped to return to films after the war but, for whatever reason, no projects ever materialized.
Garbo was criticized for not aiding the Allies during WWII, but it was later disclosed that she had helped Britain by identifying influential Nazi sympathizers in Stockholm and by providing introductions and carrying messsages for British agents.
Garbo was prone to chronic depression and spent many years attacking it through Eastern philosophy and a solid health food regiment. However, she never gave up smoking and cocktails.
Garbo, according to movie director Jacques Feyder: "At 9 o'clock a.m. the work may begin. "Tell Mrs. Garbo we're ready" says the director. "I'm here" a low voice answers, and she appears, perfectly dressed and combed as the scene needs. Nobody could say by what door she came but she's there. And at 6 o'clock PM, even if the shot could be finished in five minutes, she points at the watch and goes away giving you a sorry smile. She's very strict with herself and hardly pleased with her work. She never looks rushes nor goes to the premières but some days later, early in the afternoon, enters all alone an outskirts movie house, takes place in a cheap seat and gets out only when the projection finishes, masked with her sunglasses".
Garbo's sets were closed to all visitors and sometimes even the director! When asked why, she said: "During these scenes I allow only the cameraman and lighting man on the set. The director goes out for a coffee or a milkshake. When people are watching, I'm just a woman making faces for the camera. It destroys the illusion. If I am by myself, my face will do things I cannot do with it otherwise."
Grandaunt of Derek Reisfield and Scott Reisfield, children of Gray Reisfield and Donald Reisfield.
Great Garbo is caricaturized in a Merrie Melodies short cartoon called Hollywood Steps Out directed by Tex Avery (Warner Brothers 1941). The action takes place in the famed Ciro's nightclub where the Hollywood stars are having dinner. Garbo is a cigarett girl selling "cigars, cigarettes, butts." Garbo was also caricatured in other cartoons including: I've got to Sing a Torch Song (1933), Porky's Road Race (1937) and Porky's Five and Ten (1938)
Greta Garbo is among the actors and actresses who successfully made the transition to talkies; publicized with the slogan "Garbo Talks!" her voice was first heard on screen in Anna Christie (1930), a film adaptation of the 1922 play by Eugene O'Neill.
Greta Garbo is caricaturized in the Walt Disney 1938 animated short, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood which featured parodies of Mother Goose nursery rhymes and caricatures of Hollywood celebrities from the 1930s. The nursery rhyme, See Saw Margery Daw, is performed by Edward G. Robinson and Greta Garbo on a seesaw. Garbo says: "I want so much to be alone", to which Robinson replies: "O.K., babe, you asked for it!". He leaves and Garbo falls off the see saw. Garbo's character also 'appears' in other Disney cartoons including Mickey's Polo Team (1936) and Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938).
Greta Garbo was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for her unforgettable screen performances" in 1954. She did not show up at the ceremony, and the statuette was mailed to her home address.
Her favorite American director was Ernst Lubitsch, although Clarence Brown, directed her in six films, including the classics Flesh and the Devil (1926), A Woman of Affairs (1928), Anna Christie (1930), and Anna Karenina (1935).
Her first "talkie" film was Anna Christie (1930).
Her first film appearance ever was in a short advertising film that ran in local theaters in Stockholm.
Her greatest confidante was Salka Viertel, a German friend who had known her back in Sweden. Viertel proved to be very manipulative of her, including relationships (particularly with that of Mercedes de Acosta), film choices and general living. It was Viertel, in fact, who persuaded her not to return to films. Ironically, Viertel was friendly with Marlene Dietrich, Garbo's enemy, whom Salka had known back in Germany's Weimer Republic, and she had a lot of dirt on Dietrich's deepest secrets and past. Garbo's film choices were largely determined by Salka's persuasion; they co-starred in the German version of Anna Christie (1930), and shortly after that Garbo insisted that Salka be placed on the MGM payroll as a writer for her films.
Her parents were Karl and Anna Gustafson, and she also had an older sister and brother, Alva Garbo and Sven Garbo. Her father died when she was 14 of nephritis, and her sister was also dead of lymphatic cancer by the time Greta was 21 years old.
Her performance as Ninotchka in Ninotchka (1939) is ranked #25 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
Her performance as Ninotchka in Ninotchka (1939) is ranked #53 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
Her personal favourite movie of her own was Camille (1936).
Her volatile mentor/director Mauritz Stiller, who brought her to Hollywood, was abruptly fired from directing her second MGM Hollywood film, The Temptress (1926), after repeated arguments with MGM execs. Unable to hold a job in Hollywood, he returned to Sweden in 1928 and died shortly after at the age of 45. Garbo was devastated.
In Italy, her first films (like Mata Hari (1931) and Grand Hotel (1932)) were dubbed by Francesca Braggiotti. Because Braggiotti had been living in the United States for many years and had a slight American accent, the Italian public didn't really accept her voice so the very Italian Tina Lattanzi was chosen as Garbo's official Italian voice instead (she even re-dubbed Mata Hari (1931)). For her last two films Ninotchka (1939) and Two-Faced Woman (1941), she was dubbed by Andreina Pagnani. When some of Garbo films were re-released in Italy in the 1960's, they were re-dubbed once more. This is how stage actress Anna Proclemer lent her voice to the divine Garbo.
In late 1934, after Queen Christina (1933) and The Painted Veil (1934), which were both huge hits in Europe (making twice their budget in the UK alone) but underwhelming US successes, Garbo signed a contract with MGM saying that she would only make films under David O. Selznick and Irving Thalberg. Her next two films, Anna Karenina (1935) and Camille (1936), were notable hits at the US box office, and produced by Selznick and Thalberg respectively. In 1937 her contract had to be revised, as Selznick left the studio in 1935 and Thalberg had died. She made only three films after "Camille".
In September 2005, the United States Postal Service and Swedish Posten jointly issued two commemorative stamps bearing Greta Garbo's likeness.
In the mid-1950s she bought a seven-room-apartment in New York City (450 East 52nd Street) and lived there until she died.
Interred at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery, Stockholm, Sweden.
Is one of the many movie stars mentioned in Madonna's song "Vogue"
Is portrayed by Kristina Wayborn in The Silent Lovers (1980) (TV)
Left John Gilbert standing at the altar in 1927 when she got cold feet about marrying him.
Letters and correspondence between Garbo and poet, socialite and notorious lesbian Mercedes de Acosta were unsealed on April 15, 2000, exactly 10 years after Garbo's death (per De Acosta's instructions). The letters revealed no love affair between the two, as had been rumored.
Lived the last few years of her life in absolute seclusion.
Madonna's hit "Vogue" paid tribute to Greta Garbo in the song's rap section: "Vogue, vogue / Beauty's where you find it / Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe". The song was released on March 20, 1990 less than a month before Garbo's death.
Measurements: 35 1/2-26-38 (in July 1930), 35 1/2-28-33 1/2 (according to MGM designer Adrian), 35B-27-38 (noted in "Those Glamorous Years" book), (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine).
Mentioned in The Killers' "The Ballad of Michael Valentine".
Mentioned in the song "Celluloid Heroes" by The Kinks.
Never married, she invested wisely and was known for her extreme frugality.
October 1997: Ranked #38 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
Once lived in the famed Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles (8221 Sunset Boulevard).
Once voted by The Guinness Book of World Records as the most beautiful woman who ever lived.
Pictured on a 37¢ USA commemorative postage stamp issued 23 September 2005, five days after her 100th birthday. On the same day, Sweden issued a 10kr stamp with the same design. The likeness on the stamps was based on a photograph taken during the filming of As You Desire Me (1932).
Popularized trenchcoats & berets in the 1930s.
Related to Anna Sundstrand of the Swedish pop group Play.