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Greta Garbo in Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) Dir. Robert Z. Leonard

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Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) Dir. Robert Z. Leonard

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“At that moment the door opened. Standing there in white shirt, beige slacks - with a peach complexion, light brown hair, and the most incredible face ever seen by man - was Greta Garbo. I almost gasped out aloud as Cole (Porter) introduced me to her. No make-up - unmatched beauty. It was the only time I saw her at anything but distance.” - Lauren Bacall, By Myself

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Greta Garbo on the set of Conquest, 1937

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Greta Garbo by Ruth Harriet Louise, c.1926

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Greta Garbo passport photos by Cecil Beaton

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In rare moments, she opened up a bit about her own family—brother Sven, for instance. "She spoke about him very fondly," says Diamond, "but for that matter, I don't remember her ever saying a nasty thing about anybody. It was warmth and affection she would always express. I never had a feeling she resented anybody or anything." Cecile once told Sam Green, in Garbo's presence, that after her brother Elie lost his eye, Garbo was the only visitor who really touched him. All the others tried to buoy him with romantic talk about a patch—the buccaneer image, the Hathaway man. "You didn't try to cheer him up with pretend?" Sam asked. "Always the truth," she answered quietly.

British playwright Kenneth Jupp recalled the day he met her in a guest bedroom at Zachary Scott's in 1961. He discovered she had a gift that was the antonym of speech, after he mentioned his new drama, The Buskers:

"What is your play about?" she asked. "It's about gypsies," I told her. She paused, and with that wonderful smile which totally transformed her appearance, she said: "I have always considered myself a gypsy." Whereupon she sat down on the bed, gestured for me to do the same, and asked me to tell her all about it. We sat [there] for almost an hour.

Her true genius was as a listener. I have frequently observed that the opposite of talking is not listening, but waiting. Garbo reversed this. She actually preferred to listen. She had the ability to concentrate totally on what you were saying, as if nothing else in the world mattered. All else vanished; all that existed was you, and what you were telling her. There lies the secret of her greatness as a screen actress: the ability to exclude everything but the moment, to exist only for right now—before the camera, or before whoever had captured her interest.

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Garbo had sensitive hearing and hated noise. She went to forests and deserts for their silence as well as their beauty. Like most Swedes, she loved nature, referring to “the grandeur and everlasting patience of mountains” and “the feeling [oceans give] of the infinite, of eternal life, of liberty.” It’s a myth, however, that she always wanted to be alone. She had friends; she went to parties and plays. She wanted to be left alone—by fans, journalists, and street photographers. And she had a phobia about strangers. When someone she didn’t know entered a room she was in, she became a frightened animal, running for cover. Actress Tallulah Bankhead called her fear of strangers “a disease.” Garbo said that she was “forever running away from somebody or something.”

Throughout her career, Garbo called herself “he,” “the boy,” “the bachelor,” or “Garbo.” She disliked the feminine name Greta; she often thought of herself as male. Moreover, as an adult, she sometimes became a child, speaking in a childlike manner, telling childish jokes—as though she was a Peter Pan who never grew up. And she was a rebel. She was a pacifist, an advocate of healthy living, and an explorer of Eastern religions, especially Hinduism. A dress reformer, she made trousers and turtleneck shirts acceptable attire for women. (Turtlenecks had previously been worn only by jockeys and prize fighters.) She wore no bra long before 1970s feminists discarded it.

She criticized Hollywood materialism and misogyny—by wearing male clothing and, as her friend actress Pola Negri put it, by being “the dowdiest woman in Hollywood… where smartness and an air of being well-groomed is a religion with even the poorest extra girl.” Yet, in Sweden, she had been a saleswoman in the women’s clothing department of Stockholm’s elite department store and a mannequin in fashion shows there. Once a film star, she tried to play cross-dressed and even male roles. (Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo)

Greta Garbo in Anna Christie 1930, dir. Jacques Feyder

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Sven Åke Gustafsson (b. 1919) nephew of Greta Garbo. Here in her home where the wall is filled with photographs of the famous actress, 1978

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Sven Åke Gustafsson (b. 1919) nephew of Greta Garbo. Here in her home where the wall is filled with photographs of the famous actress, 1978

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Greta Garbo by Arnold Genthe for Vanity Fair, 1925

"Thereupon for about an hour Genthe took a series of photographs of her, some in close-up, some waist length, all of them reflecting a quivering intensity. In one, the most beautiful, she rests her chin on her hand, and the photographer has given to that hand the abrupt delicacy of a white orchid. We see only the face, the hand, a shock of wild hair; but the expression is so appealing, the face so vulnerable, the heavily lidded eyes so mysterious, the lips so full and tender that the photograph, though set in shadows and perhaps especially because it is set in shadows, conveys the essence of femininity. She is young womanhood, serene but with a hint of tragedy. There is nothing to suggest she is Swedish; she could be a young Indian girl, Persian, Arab, Jewish, German, Italian, French, American. All that is accidental has been removed, and there is only an immediately arresting, poignant, and supremely beautiful face. When Stiller lay dying in a Stockholm hospital a few years later, this was the photograph he was holding."

-Robert Payne, The Great Garbo (1976)

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Greta Garbo, 1928

"She was the Stella assoluta , the star above all other stars. This, too, was an honor accorded to her by divine right; she had not worked for it. She accepted these honors with a simple grace, and though conscious of her beauty, she made light of it. To most people she remained a mystery, but the chief mystery was how anyone could possibly be so beautiful. It was as though God had finally created a face totally without blemish and in the most perfect form He could imagine, rounded and complete. There was something so pure and classical in that face you suspected she had once been stone and would soon turn to stone again; it was inconceivable that she would grow old and inconceivable that she would die.."

-Robert Payne, The Great Garbo

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Greta Garbo, 1940s

"It was a face to make the gods envious: a face of the utmost refinement, chiseled in cold steel, purified in roaring fires, smooth as a pebble in a mountain stream, and so beautiful that it was almost frightening in the intensity of its beauty. Here was the divine beauty, of which Plato spoke and poets have dreamed. Almost she was the abstraction of beauty, a Platonic ideal, remote and unreal, yet remaining undeniably present, casting a spell on all who saw her."

-Robert Payne, The Great Garbo

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As part of the pre-production process for Queen Christina, Greta Garbo and cinematographer William H. Daniels conducted a costume test on Friday, July 21, 1933.

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In her early years, she had expressed a desire for children and other domestic instincts of a typical Swede. Once in the seventies, Sam Spiegel took her for a Christmas visit to the wife and children of David O. Selznick in New York. She surprised her hostess with a heartfelt confession, as Irene Mayer Selznick recalled: We had a very nice dinner, we opened presents, the whole thing. She said, "Just think, I've known your father, I met your mother when she was a girl." My father was the man who brought her to this country; she worked with David, and they got along well. She saw the complete picture and was so generous and so good with the boys—she made them proud. And then on the way out, she took me aside and said to me, "I envy you more than anybody I know. You have your sons, your children, you have your work, a wonderful life. You have everything. I have nothing." Throughout her life, Garbo's wistfulness about the family she never had surfaced periodically. Pamela Mason recalled a conversation the day Garbo came to meet her husband, James, for the aborted comeback film in 1949: She was very chatty, full of laughter and fun and jokes and surprisingly open. I was a new mother and very excited about it, and she and I were sitting on the floor upstairs talking, playing with the baby who was just learning to walk, and she said, "It's very sad that I shall never have any children." I said, "Why don't you?" She said, "Oh, I'm too old and, in any case, I'm not married." I said, "Well, what difference does that make?" And she said, "Well, it wouldn't be right for me." She once told Cecil Beaton she could never undertake the terrifying responsibility of having a child. "If she had one she would 'behead' it," he quoted her. Her attitude was much like that of Victor Sjöström in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957): "It's absurd to live in this world, but it's even more ridiculous to populate it with new victims, and it's most absurd of all to believe that they will be any better off than we are."

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“My only flirtation with an attractive woman didn’t end in bed either – although I did find Greta Garbo very attractive. I first met Garbo at Brian Aherne’s house in Santa Monica when George (Sanders) and I went to a party there. The other guests, Sylvia Ashley Gable, David and Hjordis Niven, and Clifton Webb, had already arrived when Garbo breezed into the room. She was alone and I almost fainted. George, being George, made things worse by informing Greta, “My wife has a wild crush on you.” I blushed scarlet. Dispassionately, Garbo responded, “She’s a very beautiful girl, your wife.” At the end of the evening, George escorted Garbo to her car. When he came back into the house, he (rather maliciously) whispered to me, “Zsa Zsa – you don’t have to be so in love with her anymore. I kissed her and she smelled of cheap soap.” The next time I met Garbo I was alone at a party at Brian’s house on 62nd Street in New York. At the time, Rex Harrison was appearing on Broadway in My Fair Lady and was guest of honor. Garbo spent most of the evening standing behind the bar flirting with me. Rex was all over Garbo and Garbo was all over me. I nearly melted. Then Rex had to leave and Garbo said, “Let’s bring Rex’s coat.” The coat was beige and the pockets were so full of vitamins that we could hardly carry it. We took it to him, Rex left, and Greta asked me if she could drive me home. I said yes, but I was afraid of her. We got to my hotel (I was living in the Savoy Plaza) and for a moment I felt like inviting Greta in. Then she said, “Darling, would you like to come to my apartment?” I was paralyzed. Then she kissed me straight on the mouth. And I couldn’t help kissing her back because she was so overwhelmingly strong and so beautiful. I’ve never had lesbian tendencies – but if I had ever had them, the woman of my life would definitely have been Greta Garbo.“  - Zsa Zsa Gabor, One Lifetime Is Not Enough

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Greta Garbo c. 1920s