Garbo: The Reticent Personification of Passion

^{CHARLEY BRADY}

Cinephile Paradiso’s choice of ladies for the Hot Girl Summer presentation at Silent Cinema continues to whisk me very pleasurably back down Memory Lane.

If last month’s pick of Clara Bow made me happy to see the great actress resurrected for a new generation and next month’s look at Gloria Swanson – a personal favourite – brings back more complex reminiscences, then next week’s Greta Garbo offering elicits great big grins from me.

Smiles and laughter: not things always associated with Ms. Garbo, but for personal reasons (such as winding-up my father) it is mainly mischievous amusement that comes to mind when I think of her.

And people often forget that Garbo did comedy very well, in addition to having what I’m convinced was a sly, impish sense of humour in real life. After she had done a tour of the Mediterranean she was once asked where she had gone while in Greece and replied: “Oh, I don’t know. I think we saw Lesbos.” That’s my Greta

I Was a Teenage Garbo Stalker

In those halcyon days of summer during the 70s (which at least in memory were always scorching hot) Garbo resided for a while on my bedroom wall, which saw an array of film posters adorn it during my teenage years. Hence my amusement in remembering my father. A quiet, easy-going man, he would look in approvement over the various posters of the Celtic football club and motorbikes that hung on the walls of my brother’s rooms, but when he got to mine and saw images of such estimable ladies as Leslie Caron (playing Nazimova) or Swanson or Ida Lupino he would frown and shake his head. Although he did like Lupino, mind.

For a while I had the poster for Garbo’s 1939 film Ninotchka, with its famous blurb ‘Garbo Laughs’. GRETA GARBO GOES GAY IN HER NEW FILM said the reviews of the time, unaware that future generations would do a double take on seeing this. Wasn’t she always gay?

She was born in Sweden in 1905 and took American citizenship in 1951, which was as much as I remember knowing about her. When I think back, I would imagine that few of us then had actually seen Garbo in her silent films, possibly even very few of the talkies that she did before slipping into retirement and supposed seclusion. There was, however, something very exotic about her that I liked. And, of course, so-called comedians who were looking for a cheap laugh would intone ‘I vaaant to be alone’, sounding more like Bela Lugosi than the great screen beauty. She was once reported to have claimed: ‘I never said I want to be alone. I only said I want to be let alone.’

That she did manage. She retired from acting with Two-Faced Woman in 1941 and thereafter lived a simple, quiet, and apparently contented life. She would take very long walks, often by herself and never gave interviews or made public appearances. She died in 1990.

Also, in looking back, my generation never really made a big deal out of her much-speculated-on sexuality, which seemed to be taken for granted as a dash of bisexual, heavy on lesbianism. (Or ‘playing for the other team’ as we knew it.) We never really cared that much. Tyrone Power was reputed to be gay, but then so were Lou Reed and David Bowie. To be honest, as long as they could act or sing, I can’t recall teenage movie or rock fans caring less about what people got up to in their private lives. As Adam Scheffler, he of this parish often puts it: ‘Love is love’. But perhaps I’m viewing the past through those famous rose-tinted glasses.

When Garbo Met Gilbert

The Garbo film being shown on July 20th is the 1928 Clarence Brown film A Woman of Affairs. (A title I’ve always hated, given that it was picked simply to make the content appear more salacious than it was. If you pay heed to most of the rest of the characters, you’ll perhaps agree that it should have been called A Woman of Principles.) Brown directed Garbo in seven features, starting with Flesh and the Devil in which she starred for the first time with John Gilbert.

She would work with Gilbert several times and the two are said to have begun a tempestuous romance. There. I’ve been waiting for a chance to use that word. Tempestuous. But with many of the tales of Garbo, there’s the truth and elaborations on the truth. They do seem to have had a relationship – kind of – for a while, but fought constantly, although there’s no doubt that ‘the Great Lover’ certainly pursued her.

You can decide for yourselves on Saturday if there is genuine chemistry between them. Enjoy!

Works consulted:

The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood by Diana McLellan.

This is insanely readable, although you’re going to have to take along a large container of salt. It’s as deliciously bitchy as Gore Vidal on a good day, but sometimes the conspiracy theories prepare you for a shout of "And Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings!” Personally, I always enjoy hearing such vivid expressions as ‘lavender weddings’ and ‘The Sewing Circle’, which was a club for A-list lesbians in the 1920s. A guilty pleasure and very much recommended.

Garbo: A Biography by Norman Zierold.

The very opposite. A basic meat-and-potatoes look at the life of the actress, and written while she was alive. This almost certainly means that Mr. Zierold was banished to the Outer Wastes, never again to breathe the rarified air of Ms. Garbo.

She really did not like people talking about her.

^{charleybrady@gmail.com}