GRETA GARBO, SWEDISH STYLE CONQUERS HOLLYWOOD

Greta Garbo

Today, The Grandma is at home reading about Greta Garbo and watching her films. The Grandma loves silent cinema and Greta Garbo was a great example of an actress who started playing her roles in silent cinema and changed to sound cinema with success. It was not the case of all the actresses of that age. Some of them had lots of problems because of public did not like their voices, unknown for it in the silent films.

Greta Garbo was born on a day like today in 1905 and The Grandma wants to homage this legend of the cinema and arts that left cinema too early to continue with her life far away Hollywood influence and lifestyle.

Before watching Greta Garbo's films, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Ms. Excel course.

19. Sharing Documents (VI) (Spanish Version)

Greta Garbo (born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson; 18 September 1905-15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and received an Academy Honorary Award in 1954 for her luminous and unforgettable screen performances. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on their list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

Garbo launched her career with a secondary role in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gösta Berling. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B. Mayer, chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), who brought her to Hollywood in 1925. She stirred interest with her first American silent film, Torrent (1926). Garbo’s performance in Flesh and the Devil (1927), her third motion picture, made her an international star.

Garbo's first talking film was Anna Christie (1930). MGM marketers enticed the public with the tagline Garbo talks! That same year, she starred in Romance. For her performances in these films, she received the first of three Academy Award nominations for best actress. Academy rules at the time allowed for a performer to receive a single nomination for his or her work in more than one film. In 1932, her success allowed her to dictate the terms of her contract, and she became increasingly selective about her roles.

Greta Garbo

She continued in films such as Mata Hari (1931), Grand Hotel (1932), and Queen Christina (1933). Many critics and film historians consider her performance as the doomed courtesan Marguerite Gautier in Camille (1936) to be her finest. The role gained her a second Academy Award nomination.

However, Garbo's career soon declined and she was one of the many stars labeled box office poison in 1938. Her career revived upon her turn to comedy in Ninotchka (1939) which earned her a third Academy Award nomination, but after the failure of Two-Faced Woman (1941), she retired from the screen, at the age of 35, after acting in 28 films.

After retiring, Garbo declined all opportunities to return to the screen. Shunning publicity, she led a private life. Garbo was an art collector and her collection, including works from Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, and Kees van Dongen, was worth millions of dollars when she died.

More information: Sotheby's

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Södermalm, Stockholm, Sweden. She was the third, and youngest, child of Anna Lovisa (née Johansson, 1872–1944), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871–1920), a laborer. Garbo had an older brother, Sven Alfred (1898–1967), and an older sister, Alva Maria (1903–1926).

Garbo was a shy daydreamer as a child. She disliked school and preferred to play alone. Garbo was a natural leader who became interested in theatre at an early age. She directed her friends in make-believe games and performances, and dreamed of becoming an actress. Later, Garbo would participate in amateur theatre with her friends and frequent the Mosebacke Theatre. At the age of 13, Garbo graduated from school, and, typical of a Swedish working-class girl at that time, she did not attend high school. She later acknowledged a resulting inferiority complex.

The Spanish flu spread throughout Stockholm in the winter of 1919 and Garbo's father, to whom she was very close, became ill and lost his job. Garbo cared for him, taking him to the hospital for weekly treatments. He died in 1920 when she was 14 years old.

Greta Garbo

Garbo first worked as a soap-lather girl in a barber shop before taking a job in the PUB department store where she ran errands and worked in the millinery department. After modeling hats for the store's catalogues, Garbo earned a more lucrative job as a fashion model.

In 1920, a director of film commercials for the store cast Garbo in roles advertising women's clothing. Her first commercial premiered on 12 December 1920. In 1922, Garbo caught the attention of director Erik Arthur Petschler, who gave her a part in his short comedy, Peter the Tramp.

From 1922 to 1924, she studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre's Acting School in Stockholm. She was recruited in 1924 by the Finnish director Mauritz Stiller to play a principal part in his film The Saga of Gösta Berling, a dramatization of the famous novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, which also featured the actor Lars Hanson. Stiller became her mentor, training her as a film actress and managing all aspects of her nascent career.

In 1925, Garbo, who was unable to speak English, was brought over from Sweden at the request of Mayer. Both Garbo and Stiller arrived in New York in July 1925, after a 10-day trip on the SS Drottningholm. But they remained in New York for more than six months without any word from MGM.

More information: The Guardian

The impact of Garbo's acting and screen presence quickly established her reputation as one of Hollywood's greatest actresses. Film historian and critic David Denby argues that Garbo introduced a subtlety of expression to the art of silent acting, and that its effect on audiences cannot be exaggerated.

Despite her status as a star of silent films, the studio feared that her Swedish accent might impair her work in sound, and delayed the shift for as long as possible. MGM itself was the last Hollywood studio to convert to sound, and Garbo's last silent film, The Kiss (1929), was also the studio's. Despite the fears, Garbo became one of the biggest box-office draws of the next decade.

Greta Garbo

In late 1929, MGM cast Garbo in Anna Christie (1930), a film adaptation of the 1922 play by Eugene O'Neill, her first speaking role.

She was offered many roles both in the 1940s and throughout her retirement years, but rejected all but a few of them. In the few instances when she did accept them, the slightest problem led her to drop out.

In retirement, Garbo generally led a private life of simplicity and leisure. She made no public appearances and assiduously avoided the publicity which she loathed. As she had been during her Hollywood years, Garbo, with her innate need for solitude, was often reclusive.

Contrary to myth, from the beginning she had many friends and acquaintances with whom she socialized and later traveled. Occasionally, she jet-setted with well-known and wealthy personalities, striving to guard her privacy as she had during her career.

On 9 February 1951, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and in 1953, she bought a seven-room apartment at 450 East 52nd Street in Manhattan, New York City, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Greta Garbo died on 15 April 1990, aged 84, in the hospital.

Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In November 1983, she was made a Commander of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star by order of King Carl XVI Gustaf, the King of Sweden. For her contributions to cinema, in 1960, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard.

More information: Slate

Being a movie star, and this applies to all of them,

means being looked at from every possible direction.

You are never left at peace, you're just fair game.

If only those who dream about Hollywood

knew how difficult it all is.

Greta Garbo