#sven broman

[grusinskayas]

Greta Garbo in Italy, 1949.

“Garbo is a wonderful person,” said Dr. [Eric] Drimmer [Swedish psychologist hired by MGM] “She is reserved and stand-offish, but once she has opened up you feel she is talking straight from the heart. This makes a very strong impression on you. I saw her as a restless person, always looking for and never finding a foothold in life.” […] “There is no doubt that it was the worldwide publicity attached to the Garbo name that was the source of her anxiety.” […] “People who describe Garbo's shyness as a pose do not have the faintest idea what they are talking about. I can assure you that the different ways she would react to various situations were as much a mystery to her as to anyone else.” […] “A few strangers pushing forward to get autographs, and even her colleagues, on occasion, could fill her with terror. Her sole impulse was to turn and flee.” “The more I came to know about her past and heard her story, the more convinced I became that Garbo was a normal, ambitious and cheerful girl when she left Sweden. Hollywood was solely responsible for her inhibitions. No matter how paradoxical it may sound, her life took a wrong direction just at the point at which her fame and wealth were created.” “In the beginning there was no more mystery surrounding Greta Garbo than around any other young girl who suddenly appeared in Hollywood and was thrust into the limelight. She was not used to the hard pace and the ‘toughness’ of that huge country. She was confused by the inquisitiveness of the press and when they misunderstood and ridiculed her limited English vocabulary she was happy to be allowed to escape interviews and public appearances. But there was one thing that she soon discovered: it is always difficult to live up to your public image. The same thing applies whether you are an actress or a politician.” “The mysterious Garbo was not allowed to appear in public. If she did, she would not have been mysterious, a role she was now stuck with. She was famous, richer than she could ever have dreamed and she longed for adventure. But she was a prisoner of the myth that surrounded her. Slowly the walls around her closed in. The legend of her mysteriousness that started as a form of protection became a complex, an idée fixe.”

Conversations with Greta Garbo by Sven Broman

[tanyushenka]

North Africa, 1949 Photographer:  Sven Broman

[faschingsvanner]

Brobyggaren Jacob Karlzon tjusade Fasching på vänkvällen onsd 27 nov

-Han är engagerad för kulturen, utövarna ska få uttrycka sig utan att någon talar om för dem vad de får och inte får göra. Och han är lika engagerad i den musik han skriver och spelar. Det handlar om pianisten Jacob Karlzon som spelade med sin trio på Fasching i onsdags. Mellan låtarna poängterade han vikten av att riva murar och hur besviken han är på att murar åter börjat byggas i världen. Själv är han mera för att bygga broar. Och i musiken har han lyckats bygga en bro med stor hållfasthet mellan det elektroniska och det manuella, mellan maskinerna och hantverket.

-Trots att basist och trumslagare växlat har Jacob Karlzon successivt byggt upp en ljudbild som är ett eget universum och som trion vårdar ömt. Här har trummorna och basen lika stor betydelse för soundet som pianot, långt ifrån den vanliga pianotrion. Basisten Morten Ramsböl och trumslagaren Rasmus Kihlberg har alltså lika stor del i gruppens framtoning som dess ledare. Till sin hjälp har Jacob Karlzon, förutom piano, också elektronik som han kan färga musiken med. Och Rasmus Kihlberg har en trummaskin som han kan sätta igång när det behövs. Det är denna bro som trion byggt mellan det elektroniska och det akustiska som gör ljudbilden så egen, man kan nästan tala om en ljudram inom vilken musiken håller sig.

Texten ovan är inledningen på trogne Faschingvännen Anders Lindéns blogg som vi delvis återger. Läs hela artikeln på https://kulturyttranden.wordpress.com/.

Anders avslutar med orden: - När jag nu sitter på Fasching och lyssnar på gruppen så kan jag kasta alla teoretiska resonemang över bord, vi i publiken blir i det närmaste överfallna av intensiteten i en del låtar, av Jacob Karlzons hisnande löpningar och klangrika nedslag, han är oerhört skicklig, av Rasmus Kihlbergs virtuosa och precisa slagserier och Morten Ramsböls rungande basgångar. Och så drar man ner på tempot, visparna kommer fram och trion låter musiken vila i en tonvagga som gungar allt långsammare. Det är då man hör Jacob Karlzons egen vagga i den klassiska musiken.

Det är tätt, det är samarbete på hög nivå som utan tvekan når ut över scenkanten, ut till oss i publiken. Det handlar om att bygga broar, inte murar.

Open Waters Tour 2019 - Jacob Karlzon Trio har varit på en lång och succéfull releaseturné för albumet Open Waters, framför allt i Tyskland och nu avslutande spelningar i Göteborg, Malmö, Stockholm och Uppsala. Konserterna har varit så framgångsrika så att det inte fanns några skivor kvar för oss att köpa. Men varför klaga, vi fick ju höra trion live på scen och de flesta låtarna från Open Waters.  

Visst ser det trivsamt ut kring vänbordet! Kvällens deltagare åt en välsmakande Good Bait, en skaldjursgryta, tillsammans med varierat gott i glasen. Från vänster: Willy och Ingrid Pellmark, en av kvällens värdar Hans Nilsson, Annika och Bibbi Ahrnstedt, Sven-Bertil och Eva Törnkvist, Östen Matson, Maria och Björn Garstedt och vår bloggare Anders Lindén.

Vi fick fin service vid borden av Lily Pairawan och Alva Hansen.

Pausmingel - alla jazzmusikers favoritfotograf Kenth Wångklev, OJ:s redaktör Patrik Sandberg och gitarristen Max Schultz.

Leif Hanson och Albert de Haan blev nya medlemmar under  kvällen, varmt välkomna! Lena Nilsson och Lennart Broman från Jönköping/Jönköpings jazzklubb tillhör den trogna och mångåriga skaran av Faschingvänner. Tack alla för ännu en minnesvärd kväll på Fasching. 

[annieloveslilies-blog]

But I do not particularly like banal love stories turned into films - whether it is me or someone else who figures in them. Ingmar Bergman managed to make films that have to do with the real world. Just imagine if I had ever been able to be involved in something like that.

Conversations with Garbo

[grusinskayas]

Greta Garbo and her mother in Sweden, 1928.

Despite the distance separating them, Anna kept in close touch with Greta, who had gone to the USA in 1925. They wrote letters to one another. Anna cut out articles that mentioned Greta in the Swedish press and sent them to Hollywood. And Greta sent home cuttings from American papers and photographs she got from MGM. A lady journalist from Vecko-Journalen (a Swedish woman's weekly) managed to call on Anna Gustafsson in her new flat in the autumn of 1928: “There was a framed photograph of her husband, who had died young. And there was a photo, too, of Alva [Garbo's sister], who died in 1926. But there was no picture of Greta, her daughter…” “I've got one here,” said Anna Gustafsson, holding up a locket round her neck with a photograph of Greta, a present from her daughter in Hollywood. “And I've got more pictures in here,” added the proud mother, pulling out a desk drawer stuffed with piles of stills that Garbo had sent home from her films. She did not dare put them on display – “Greta wouldn't like it…” […] “Yes, I do go and see Greta in the films. I went to the premiere of Anna Karenina. As someone who knows Greta very well, I could tell she was giving her utmost.” “So you were pleased with your daughter then, Mrs. Gustafsson?” “Yes, of course, I'm pleased. Mind you, they didn't need to do all that kissing…”

Conversations with Greta Garbo by Sven Broman

[grusinskayas]

Greta Garbo in New York, 1952.

Why then did she give up making films, apparently so contrarily? A vital part of the answer can be found in Garbo's letters to Hörke [Wachtmeister] from Hollywood. In these she talked about her health problems, and her consequent ambition to amass sufficient earnings to secure her future and make herself economically independent. Then the war intervened. For the six years between 1939 and 1945 she did not feel she could cross the Atlantic and so go home to Sweden. Garbo's lack of self-confidence was also of great significance in determining the final outcome. It may seem incomprehensible to most of us, with all the extraordinary success that she had, that she could feel so little faith in herself. […] Perhaps this should not be exaggerated, but her hesitancy and inability to make up her mind were also part of the whole complex. […] All the recognition and honours pleased her greatly, they helped to improve her self-confidence. She was also a realist and that had a pan to play as well: she realized that she had lived the high life on her youth and beauty–and that they were qualities that would fade with time. […] There can be no doubt that Garbo was fully aware that her trump card was her youth and beauty. She did not have a complex about growing old but she did not want to spoil her image for the cinema audience.

Conversations with Greta Garbo by Sven Broman

[grusinskayas]

Greta Garbo and Torsten Hammarén in Gösta Berlings Saga (1924) dir. Mauritz Stiller

Another Nobel laureate Garbo was pleased to have met was Selma Lagerlöf [Swedish writer, author of Gösta Berlings Saga]. “We sat in a lovely drawing-room and Selma Lagerlöf thanked me for my work in Gösta Berlings Saga and she praised Mauritz Stiller. I was very nervous but Selma had a very calming effect on me. She also had very warm and lovely eyes. She had heard that the press was paying an awful lot of attention to me and that I was scared of journalists. Like many others she thought I would deal with it all much better if I were to meet the press halfway. ‘It's not much fun when the press ignores you to death either,’ said Selma.” “But Selma Lagerlöf had no idea what things were like in America. I really did my best to make myself available. I wasn't so stupid that I couldn't see that publicity was sometimes necessary for a film and its actors. But what usually happened in America was that they simply invented things–whether I had spoken to them or not.”

Conversations with Greta Garbo by Sven Broman

[allgarbo]

(...) 'I always wanted to do my best. I got nothing free, I had to work hard. But I also got pursued and persecuted. I could never be left alone. And I dreamed of being left in peace. I was only a girl when I started, after all. I never thought that I had a childhood like other people. Then there was the press — of which you, Mr Broman, have been a representative - which pursued me and never left me alone. That was no kind of life. It was not worth the price.'

Garbo spoke clearly and matter-of-factly; she didn't seem upset for a moment. I don't think I have ever met anyone who appeared so sincere and frank when speaking about something significant. This made it easy to remember what she said.

'But what if you had been in a position to make your own choices?'

'Eventually I was able to decide for myself, I don't blame anyone else. I am just pointing out the circumstances. The war broke out and I felt even more hemmed in than before. Previously I had been able to travel home to Sweden and rest up.

'Not being able to do that any more hit me very hard and I felt sometimes that I had been exiled. But it was the same for a lot of other people and I was not suffering any hardship. And then I have had problems with my health all my life. I felt as though I didn't have any roots.

'This isn't something I want to sit here going over and over again. I do realize now that I was far too sensitive during those first years in Hollywood. Nowadays you could almost fly back and forth between continents every day. It is difficult for young people today to understand how isolated you could feel. Sweden was far away and suddenly impossible to get to. For five whole years.'

'Which of your own films do you like the best?'

'Ninotchka. I thought it was a true comedy. Thanks to Lubitsch.'

'Did you go and see other people's films?'

'I used to go to the cinema a lot. It was really my only entertainment. It was part of my job to see the kind of things other people were doing. And I also wanted to cheer myself up. I liked Chaplin and I loved Laurel and Hardy. I had two kittens I named Laurel and Hardy. I had a little garden then with flowers growing in it that looked like daisies. The kittens got in there and ate up all the leaves.'

Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939) directed by Ernst Lubitsch

[allgarbo]

“Unable to give her the Nobel prize, I wanted to be a bit grand and give Garbo something out of the ordinary — one of the stars in the sky. You can buy one from a Canadian firm that is part of an organization that exists to gather funds for an observatory. 

Garbo was sitting in our hotel room in Klosters. I explained that many of the stars in the sky lack names, but I had arranged for one of them to be known as Greta Garbo from now on. 

'That'll have to be the Star of Bethlehem, then,' Garbo joked. 'I'm afraid that one's already taken, but I've got the certificate here.' I then produced the special star chart that I documents, etc. 

The star had had sent to me with all the related known as Greta Garbo is a sun one hundred times larger than the sun of our solar system and can be found just next to the pole star - only it's infinitely further away. 

Garbo folded together all the paraphernalia and then said quietly: ‘Thank you. I promise to continue shining over everything, good as well as bad, in the future as well.’

The Duchess Of Langeais screen-test by Joseph Valentine c. 1949

[allgarbo]

Fortunately not everyone recognizes me. I was once standing in front of a small shop window on a street in New York, when two Swedish sailors appeared and stood next to me. One of them suddenly said in Swedish: “If only the old girl would move, we could see better. "The old girl would be delighted to move”, I answered in Swedish.“ I thought those boys would sink through the floor.

Conversations with Greta Garbo by Sven Broman.

[allgarbo]

Garbo suddenly asked, 'Have you heard the story about the man who went to see a psychiatrist because he was feeling so depressed? The doctor talked with the patient for a bit and then made a suggestion: You have to have a good laugh now and then. There is a circus in town at the moment that's got a very funny clown. All the punters laugh at him. You should go there one evening. "I can't do that. I'm the clown...

Conversations with Greta Garbo by Sven Broman

[allgarbo]

Garbo was able to speak about the most sensitive matters in a cool and matter-of-fact way. It was as though she wanted to conjure up peace and quiet. “There’s nothing that gives you, such a feeling for the eternal as wandering around a churchyard. It’s not at all macabre. It is very peaceful.

Conversations with Garbo by Sven Broman.

[allgarbo]

greta garbo biographies etc conversations with garbo by sven broman / garbo by barry paris / garbo by john bainbridge / garbo by norman j. zierold / garbo: her story by antoni gronowicz / garbo: portraits from her private collection by scott reisfield / greta garbo: a life apart by karen swenson / here lies the heart by mercedes de acosta / loving garbo: the story of greta garbo, cecil beaton, and mercedes de acosta by vickers hugo / the divine garbo by frederick sands & sven broman / the films of greta garbo by parker tyler / the private life of greta garbo by rilla page palmborg / walking with garbo: conversations and recollections by raymond daum / garbo her life, her films by robert gottlieb / greta garbo: a divine star by david bret / greta garbo: the mystery of style by stefania ricci / garbo on garbo by sven broman / ideal beauty: the life and times of greta garbo by dr. lois w. banner   💚. 

[allgarbo]

Do you think Greta had plastic surgery?

from what i've read about old hollywood it was pretty hard to find an actress who hasn't had a surgical procedure but your question reminded me of this conversation garbo had with her friend sven broman:

Garbo's face was lined. Her profile was still classically beautiful, especially when she leaned her head back. Her nose was unique in its perfection.

'What incredible eyelashes you've got,' I said.

'There's not much left of them, now. But I have never had to use artificial ones.'

'I can't imagine having such a perfect face ... do forgive me for looking.'

'It's not that perfect. I had to have an operation on my forehead, here on the hairline, because I had a little bump there. They did it so badly that it left a mark and I've always had to have my hair combed over the mark on this side. . . and they changed my front teeth in Hollywood, as they were set too wide apart. Now I often have to go to the dentist. . . or rather I ought to go more often.'

she also had to be on strict diets early in her hollywood career which makes me think maybe that's why she's been dieting all the time. that's all i remember atm. (':

(btw there's even an article by an author named rebecca harrington who was on one of garbo's diets for 10 days. if you're interested in reading about the experience, here's the link.)

[allgarbo]

What do you know about Garbo and Ingmar Bergman. I believe that they met at least once and that her favourite movie was said to be Through a Glass Darkly. That the two of them never collaborated is surely one of cinemas tragedies given their similar natures and shared culture. Do you know if he ever reached out to her about the possibility of working together? P.S. Keep up your good work on here.

hello! yes, you are totally right. they got to know each other on stockholm in 1962. i have bergman's autobiography (the magic lantern) and he wasn't very nice talking about one of her insecurities. (in some pictures, you can see that she was always covering her mouth). garbo was certainly very disappointed by the statement he gave in his autobiography and after what he said, she even criticized his laugh. lol i believe she wasn’t upset about it for a long time, saying a while later to sven broman and his wife:

she returned to our discussion about ingmar bergman. 'but mr broman, we shouldn't be too critical, we should be understanding.’

and yes, "through a glass darkly" was her favorite movie!

"previously in klosters, garbo had mentioned an ingmar bergman film, “Såsom i en spegel" that was the best film she had ever seen. I had asked her then what especially had fascinated her. she had said, 'mirror, as the film is called in english, is the truest film I have ever seen. life is just like that. i have seen the film twice in new york. and I'd like to see it again.” (conversations with garbo)

as an admirer of their work, i get really sad and i also consider it a tragedy that they did not work together. seeing ingrid bergman's performance on autumn sonata (1978) left me dreaming of garbo in one of his works.

about the possibility of them working together, according to garboforever:

"it is said that he made her two movie offerings in 1962 and another one in 1977 but sadly nothing turned materialized of course." the films he had in mind were ‘Tystnaden’ (The Silence) and ‘Höstsonaten’ (Autumn Sonata).

it would be a dream come true to see garbo working on one of these films. garbo also says that bergman gave her one of the best gifts she has ever received:

"when I visited bergman in råsunda he gave me a present, a mascot: a little bear made of wood that one of his children he had carved. that is the best present i ever received."

i know you just asked about ingmar bergman but i would like to mention that liv ullmann knew her too, and garbo's reaction was as typical as possible. (check the video description for a brief translation of what she said in the interview.) thanks for the support! <3