Greta Garbo documentary reveals star as ‘a relaxed, silly, funny person’

I want to be alone.

The documentary is coming to Netflix this month.

It's on Netflix now

Garbo farts

I was surprised she was offered the role of the Mother Superior in The Trouble With Angels. She was also offered a role in one of the Airport movies.

Am currently reading a 2021 bio of her. It confirms how the documentary shows her as humorous and playful. Also was good with children. But there was another side of her. Skittish, unfeeling, selfish and not willing to spend money. Left her $32 million estate to her niece.

Who else would she leave it to, R6? She didn't have her own children.

I always assumed Noel Coward's witty song "Louisa" was about Garbo, whom he knew personally. If not, no clue who.

It’s a terrible documentary. Ridiculous ‘narrator’ in a platinum Marilyn Monroe wig, actress holding a tres creepy Garbo mask in front of her face while Garbo’s letter are read aloud.

Said letters and interviews with descendants of people who knew her in Sweden contain nuggets of interest, and the interview with her nephew or great nephew who was the primary beneficiary of her will, was interesting, though he could have revealed more about his personal relationship with her. But there’s little new here.

How many documentaries have there been on Greta Garbo and which is the best one?

There’s no there there and she wasn’t a recluse. She just left show business.

Joan Crawford was obsessed with her even though they reportedly didn’t get along when they worked together. Joan probably wanted her snatch.

The director of this also did a Katharine Hepburn doc which is also on Netflix.

Best biography on Garbo?

Mein Fuehrer

R1, she never said that. She said, "I want to be left alone."

R14 has a sense of humor or is severely lacking in reading comprehension skills.

R15 She did say "I want to be alone." several times in Grand Hotel.

Yes R16, her character may have spoken that line of dialogue in the film, but in real life she said she wanted to be left alone.

R16, in film, not in life, as it has been attributed.

I mean.. no one really cares about this person, right?

R17 Someone's post was:

[quote] I want to be alone

That was the entire post. Then you wrote,

[quote] she never said that. She said, "I want to be left alone."

But she did say it. The original post never claimed she said it in real life, not on the screen.

the former, r15.

Garbo had incredible eyes

That move Garbo Talks with a young Harvey Fierstein is real crap. But I watched it anyway.

Cecil Beaton tore her ass up. Or so he wanted us to believe.

It’s awful. What’s with the platinum blond narrator and the monster old lady mask throughout- very weird.. I used to see Garbo all the time in her neighborhood because my family lived across the street on E 52nd. She was a very handsome old woman- simply dressed and well groomed. No sign of the modern cosmetic and surgical alterations.

R25, charlie, I'm so happy to see you!

What is a handome woman, anyway?

*handsome

Garbo never said, "I want to be left alone" in real life or otherwise, but her character in GRAND HOTEL (1932) who was an actress did say "I want to be alone."

I think people confused her with that character and thus the myth of the reclusive Garbo was born after she retired from Hollywood prematurely.

Two low class, unworthy mooks if I ever saw any. The look on her face every time she's photographed in public shows a trashy woman who has become extremely haughty broad with no dignity who wants people to think she's always been rich and famous. She always tries to look so above-it-all, as if she's taking time out of her luxurious day and graciously allowing people to see into her ultra privileged life.

Bitch please, you're still just a common puta, with money. I'm starting the countdown to when Jeffy boy decides you've gotten too old for him and sends you packing.

And from the looks of things, Jeffy has reached peak sag stage himself. Those perky pecs are rapidly turning into saggy tits. Time to ditch all the tight shirts pal. They're doing you no favors.

The blonde-wigged host was ridiculous. Reading clippings and making thoughtful faces while taking notes - while we just WATCHED - is the most boring and ineffective use of film since Plan 9 From Outer Space. The editing is horrible, just lingering on this bullsh*t. A real wasted opportunity.

Oops, R30 got posted in the wrong thread. Sorry.

Greta Garbo is unique in the fact that she walked away from Hollywood when she was still young, gorgeous and a major star, and lived a completely private life afterwards. Nobody else has ever done that.

R33 She didn't walk away from Hollywood. She just inteneded to take a break, but it got longer and longer until she just never went back.

There are screen tests made in the late 40s for a film she intended to do until the fininacing fell through.

"Greta Garbo in a screen test for the planned film The Duchess Of Langelais, which was never made. The test was photographed by Joseph Valentine in May 1949.

Garbo signed a contract in 1948 with producer Walter Wanger, who had produced her film Queen Christina, to shoot a picture based on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais.

She made several screen tests, learned the script, and arrived in Rome in the summer of 1949 to shoot the picture.

However, the financing failed to materialize, and the project was abandoned."

The screen tests (the last time Garbo stepped in front of a movie camera) were thought to have been lost for 41 years until they were re-discovered in 1990 by film historians Leonard Maltin and Jeanine Basinger.

R34, I didn't know that. Surprised that they couldn't find the funds for a movie with a star as big as Garbo.

Check out this documentary.

I'd be happy just to see and listen to a documentary without the ubiquitous, soulless AI voiceover. They're everywhere now.

R37 The host is NOT AI. Her name is Izzy and she's been doing great documentaries for her You Tube channel since 2018. Her videos are great!

She's very sly and very funny. Also does lots of Oscar Best Actress videos that DL'ers would love.

WWII affected Garbo's career. By the middle 1930s, her movies were much more popular in Europe than in the US. Ninotchka (1939) was a hit in the US, and it was a comedy, so with the European market drying up, Madame Curie, which was supposed to be her next film (with Spencer Tracy) , was tabled, which was the reason she ended up making another comedy, Two-Faced Woman (1941). (Madema Curie was made a few years later, with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon.)

Incidentally, Two-Faced Woman wouldn't have been all that bad, except that the Hollywood self-censorship office insisted the husband couldn't commit adulery by knowingly sleeping with his wife's sister (actually Garbo's character pretending to be her own twin sister, to test his fidelity). So a scene was inserted showing that he knew it was his wife all along, which made what came after seem stupid.

Was Garbo ever appealing to straight men?

She was the biggest female sex symbol of the late silent-early talkie movie era.

I wish that there were pictures of Garbo and Dietrich together

I don't believe Diectrich and Garbo ever met.

Katharine Hepburn and Garbo lived practically around the corner from each other in NY for decades, I wonder if they ever crossed paths.

[quote]Was Garbo ever appealing to straight men?

She was nicknamed 'Greta Garbage' by them. Her films were mostly popular among women (and in Europe).

passport 1984

Wow - that was one horrible movie.

I guess it's some sort of achievement to make such stupid dreck on such an interesting topic.

Hopelessly inept.

Trailer.

[quote]Katharine Hepburn and Garbo lived practically around the corner from each other in NY for decades, I wonder if they ever crossed paths

I can't imagine they didn't, r43.

It's not such a great mystery where she went.

According to this, Garbo and Hepburn knew each other for decades.

Supposedly Michael Jackson hounded Kate for a meeting with Greta.

She says on her Dick Cavett interview she met Garbo many times.

Garbo still gorgeous in the passport photo at nearly 80!

Her digs...

That suit gets the quote from Anna Christie wrong.

Was she an amazing actress?

She was a presence, r56.

The narrator and that ridiculous mask were misguided choices on the part of the filmmakers, , and completely distracted from what could have been a revealing and overdue look at an enigmatic and fascinating woman.

ouch

Does anyone know the purpose of the odd narrator with the wig and the woman with the grotesque mask?

[quote]According to this, Garbo and Hepburn knew each other for decades.

They slept together.

Check out this documentary R36

Ah the Be Kind Rewind girl with vocal fry.

Greta Garbo and Monroe...

Her NY apartment was gorgeous.

Did she own the entire apartment building?

No, just her own apartment.

[quote]Did she own the entire apartment building?

I owned *mine*.

Which celebrities did Garbo dislike?

I notice that in a few of these pictures (like the passport I posted) Garbo resembles Betty Comden a bit. Then I remembered Betty Comden played her in the movie, Garbo Talks.

I listened to the whole R36. Was glad she dismissed the idea that Garbo deliberately retired after Two-Faced Woman. The host shows the screen tests for The Duchess of Langelais without actually naming the film that was never made.

How many lost Garbo films are there?

I think only one. The Divine Woman.

[quote]I think only one. The Divine Woman.

There's also Debbie Does Djursholm.