GARBO

Skillful, admiring biography of the film star of yore.

Writer and publisher Gottlieb delivers a nuanced portrait of Swedish-born actor Greta Garbo (1905-1990), who famously wanted to be left alone and who made good on it, disappearing from the scene in 1941 after nearly 30 films. She was less popular than peers such as Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. As the author writes, perhaps that’s because “M-G-M presented her first as a vamp, luring men on with her vampish ways, but she hated that.” The psychology runs deep here. Early in life, Garbo suffered the deaths of family members including her father, poverty, and a lack of education, a source of constant embarrassment to her in later life. Even while standing in line for food, however, she was putting on skits for those who waited with her. A natural beauty of considerable discipline, she won a Hollywood contract after making a few films in Europe, and she was put to work on films such as The Temptress(1926). “Garbo hated this movie, too,” writes Gottlieb, “but its success secured her position as the most promising young actress in the world.” By 1932, she was making at least $250,000 per movie, a fortune at the time. Gottlieb carefully explores Garbo’s private life, which was marked by a hermeticism without equal in the film world. Although an icon in that milieu, she took exceptional pains to live out the rest of her long life away from the public eye, spending 50 years away from the film world while never being allowed to truly leave it. “What are we to make of this strange creature who, without trying, compelled the attention of the world in a way no other star had done?” Gottlieb asks toward the end of a smoothly flowing book that provides ample answers while never quite solving all of Garbo's mysteries.

A searching life study that ought to rekindle interest in an unhappy yet brilliant artist.