The Divine Garbo (1990 TV Movie)

Glenn Close: Self - Host, Narrator

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Herself - Host : When Greta Garbo arrived in Hollywood in 1924, she was a frightened 19 year old Swedish girl who didn't speak English. When she vanished from the screen, 16 years and 24 movies later, she was a goddess, the most glamorous, mysterious movie star in the world.

• Herself - Host : For 50 years, Garbo was hidden from the world, demanding to be left alone. And the more she withdrew, the greater her myth grew.

• Herself - Host : What is it about that fabulous face that fascinates generation after generation of movie goers? Her "Grand Hotel" co-star, John Barrymore, said, "Garbo has only to flash on screen to seize our attention. Her brilliance dispels our dullness. It isn't acting, it is something that holds us in it's spell. A kind of magic. That magic - is Garbo."

• Herself - Host : Greta was offered a small part in the silent film comedy, "Peter the Tramp." The plump bathing beauty bore little resemblance to the elegant femme fatale of Hollywood legend.

• Herself - Host : In 1923, the 17 year old drama student, caught the eye of the legendary silent film director, Mauritz Stiller, who intuitively saw something extraordinary in her. The flamboyant, egotistical Stiller was determined to mold the unformed Greta into the screen's perfect woman. She was eager to play Trilby to his Svengali. He set about to make her over, insisting she lose 20 pounds. He taught her how to dress, what to think, how to act in society. And he gave her a new name: Greta Garbo.

• Herself - Host : Many thought Stiller and his protégé were lovers. Those who knew of his homosexuality doubted it.

• Herself - Host : The legendary MGM mogul, Louis B. Mayer, was also in Berlin on a European talent search. He had come to sign up Stiller. But, Stiller would agree to come to Hollywood only if the studio gave Garbo a contract as well. Mayer agreed to sign her up for $400 a week and quipped, "Tell her that in America, men don't like fat women."

• Herself - Host : MGM in the 20s was a powerful and efficient dream factory run by Louis B. Mayer - a proud, strict patriarch. Garbo, like all his contract players, was expected to behave like an obedient child. But, at first, the studio didn't know what to do with her. They posed her on a track field, surrounded by athletes, selling Garbo as the sporty, outdoorsy girl. They plucked her eyebrows and capped her teeth and tamed her frizzy hair. And then they gave her a screen test supervised by Stiller.

• Herself - Host : Like all Garbo movies, it was a love story. Like most of them, it ends tragically.

• Herself - Host : In "The Temptress," which Stiller was assigned to direct, she would be playing her first full-fledged vamp. Men fight and die to claim her. But, Garbo's vamps are always capable of one great love that redeems them.

• Herself - Host : "The Temptress was a public triumph for Garbo and a personal tragedy. On the fourth day of shooting, she received news of the death of her 22 year old sister Alva. After just 10 days of filming, Stiller was fired from the picture. Worried about her fallen idol, doubting her talent, homesick, Garbo wrote somber letters to a friend in Sweden, "I have become afraid of life. It is as if somebody cut away a piece from my inside. I'm so sick and tired of everything. All I want to do is run away."

• Herself - Host : The unhappy Garbo had become a certified Sex Goddess. But, she had yet to find a co-star of equal erotic charm.

• Herself - Host : MGM paired her with its most popular leading man, John Gilbert, "the great lover." The movie was, "Flesh and the Devil" and the sparks that flew from the 29 year old Gilbert and the 21 year old Garbo set a new standard for screen passion.

• Herself - Host : In her trademark, dominant position in love scenes, Garbo seemed to devour Gilbert with her kisses.

• Herself - Host : She turned the sipping of a Communion cup into a profane innuendo.

• Herself - Host : Garbo insisted on a raise. Gilbert was making $10,000 a week to her $600. When Mayer refused her demands for $5,000 a week, she uttered her famous line, "I tink I go home now." It was no bluff. She stayed away from the Studio, unpaid, for seven months. Mayer had met his match. In face of her infuriating indifference, he caved into her demands.

• Herself - Host : The great cinematographer William Daniels who shot 20 of her 24 Hollywood films. "She had no bad angles," Daniels exclaimed. It was he who first discovered that Garbo was at her best in extreme closeups and long shots. And that she was often at her most alluring in a reclining position.

• Herself - Host : Her acting was reaching new levels of emotional transparency. The subtlest shift of her eyes could reveal the depths of her soul. It was an interior style of screen acting far ahead of its time.

• Herself - Host : Garbo's fans were not disappointed. Her deep, melancholy tones only deepened her other worldly allure, adding the tantalizing spice of androgyny.

• Herself - Host : The movie community didn't know what to make of Garbo. She refused to play the Hollywood game. She no longer gave interviews, wouldn't sign autographs, avoided premiers. Garbo never really settled in Hollywood. She moved homes 11 times in 16 years. She took to using pseudonyms when she went out. Harriet Brown was her favorite.

• Herself - Host : She felt contempt for many of her own movies. "Screen vamps make me laugh," Garbo complained. But, she was stuck with them.

• Herself - Host : By 1932, when she received top billing in the all star extravaganza, "Grand Hotel," her screenwriters were incorporating bits of the Garbo legend into her movies.

  Greta Garbo, Movie Clips : "I want to be alone." "We want to be alone." "One day I shall find myself - alone." "But I want to be alone." "I shall probably be - quite alone."

• Herself - Host : The sentiment followed her throughout life. But, Garbo herself told a friend, "I never said I want to be left alone. I only said I want to let alone. There is all the difference."

• Herself - Host : She was only 27; but, Hollywood was filled with rumors of her retirement.

• Herself - Host : Garbo was at the peak of her popularity in 1932; but, her greatest roles lay ahead. When she returned to Hollywood to make "Queen Chirstina," she commanded $250,000 a movie. Her vamp days were over. Now, she was the queen of MGM's prestigious historical epics. Hollywood's official tragic muse.

• Herself - Host : The story remained the same, she was the heroine who lived, suffered and died for love. In the late Garbo romances, the flesh and the spirit became fused. Love was a kind of religion - and on its alter, Garbo was always the supreme sacrifice.

• Herself - Host : Garbo finally agreed to meet with reporters. "It's cruel to bother people who want to be left in peace," she said. "This kills beauty for me."

• Herself - Host : The outbreak of war threatened Garbo's standing at MGM. Forty percent of their revenues came from abroad. Now that that market was lost, Garbo's value was diminished and her salary dropped.

• Herself - Host : Nobody knew that this silly sex comedy was, in fact, Garbo's swan song.

• Herself - Host : Garbo was 36 when she last appeared on screen. She was rich - and alone. With nothing but time on her hands.

• Herself - Host : The world never got to see the blue eyed Garbo on screen.

• Herself - Host : The last time Garbo gave an extensive interview was in 1928. "Your joys and sorrows, you never can tell them," she said. "You cheapen yourself, the inside, when you tell them. "

• Herself - Host : Everything she had to give, she gave the camera. The rest was silence, exile, and the cunning preservation of her own mystique.

• Herself - Host : Perhaps Garbo knew all along, that the best way to guarantee her immortality was to cloak her life in mystery. Intimacy is for mortals.

• Herself - Host : Garbo has transcended the fickleness of fashion, by always remaining just beyond grasp. There was something timeless in her beauty. As the critic Kenneth Tynan wrote, "What when drunk one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober."

• Herself - Host : What does it matter who the real woman is? Garbo is no more than a creation of light and shadow. But, onto that incredible image, we continue to project our deepest fantasies - and desires.

• [last lines] 

  Herself - Host : She was the movies *grandest* illusion.