Greta Garbo .Forever Alone. (3)

Garbo Talks!

When Greta Garbo began her acting career in the 1920s, films were still silent. Garbo . She was an international star, but her audience had never heard her speak. In fact,( de hecho) movies with sound, or ‘talkies’ as they were known at the time, destroyed the careers of many silent movie actors. American audiences sometimes could not understand actors speaking English with a foreign accent, and sometimes they disliked the sound of an actor’s voice. It was a big risk for Garbo, with her heavy Swedish accent and husky (ronca ) voice, to appear in a talkie. Her first talkie was Anna Christie, released in 1930. The studio had selected the role very carefully, and it was appropriate for Garbo’s character to have an accent. By this time, everyone wanted to hear the sound of her voice, and the movie was publicised with the slogan ‘Garbo Talks!’. Audiences across America loved it. Garbo was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress, although she did not win, and in fact Garbo herself hated her performance in the film. 

Greta Garbo's first "talkie"

Hollywood Queen

From 1930 to 1941, Garbo reigned supreme in Hollywood. Audiences loved her glamour and beauty, and the studio publicity system, plus her own natural reticence, combined to create the enigma of the mysterious Swedish beauty. Garbo did not like visitors to come to the set of the film, and in fact when her close-up shots (primeros planos )  were filmed, she even asked the director to leave the set. She said that if people watched her, she felt like ‘a woman making faces for the camera’. To ‘make a face’ means to adopt unnatural or exaggerated expressions. With people watching her act, Garbo felt self-conscious, but with privacy, she could create magical performances. 

One of her greatest successes was Queen Christina (1933). Garbo played the eccentric seventeenth century Swedish monarch, and the male lead was her ex-lover John Gilbert.  Gilbert’s career had suffered with the arrival of sound. He had a thin, weak voice that did not fit with this image of a strong, manly romantic lead. Garbo made a special request to work with Gilbert in this film, and it contains several memorable scenes. Audiences thought she was charming, and the movie made her more popular than ever.

Retirement and Seclusion

After Queen Christina, Garbo appeared in several comedies. Her last film was another comedy, Two-Faced Woman (1941). This was not a success, and afterwards Garbo could not find another film script that she liked. As the years passed, she became reluctant to return to the screen. She bought an apartment in New York, and spent a lot of time travelling the world as part of a glamorous group, including tycoon Aristotle Onassis. She also enjoyed her life at home in New York. She had a garden where she grew fruit and vegetables, and she used to walk in Central Park wearing large sunglasses.

Garbo never forgot her early years living in poverty. She had invested  her money very wisely and lived frugally, so she stayed a very rich woman. She never married, although she was rumoured to have had many affairs with both men and women. She died in 1990, at the age of 84. However, in her films, Garbo never grew old. Her image is of a woman who is both sophisticated and vulnerable, aloof (distante) but capable of great passion and profound emotions. She is a true icon of the cinema, unique and unforgettable.(inolvidable)