I love to waltz with a man in a dark linen suit
All alone -- at a party with someone I knew
From a time gone by -- turned to stone
You could be Garbo or even Marlene
You could be Marilyn...
Or you could forget
-- "Garbo," written by Stevie Nicks (originally the B-side to "Stand Back," available on the boxed set Enchanted)
Greta Garbo was a film star who died in April of 1990, 48 years and five months after her last film (the flop Two Faced Women) was released. By then she had already been among the few stars of silent films to crossover and remain a star in the 'talkies.' Some might argue she never recovered from being labeled box-office poison in 1937.
"Don't make an issue of my womanhood. We're here to work, all of us. Let's not waste any time. Shall we go?" asks Garbo as Comrade Nina Ivanovna Yakushova as she makes her entrance in Ninotchka.
The 1939 comedic gem directed by Ernst Lubitsch was a blockbuster and saw Garbo nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actress category (her third nomination in the category, she lost all three times, in 1939 to Vivian Leigh for Gone With The Wind). The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Original Story and Best Screenplay. Melcior Lengyel would garner the Original Story nomination while Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch would receive the Screenplay nomination (all lost -- Best Picture and Screenplay to Gone With The Wind; Original Story to Lewis R. Foster for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington).
Billy Wilder would co-write many successful screenplays and move on to directing them (such as the classics Some Like It Hot and The Apartment). For 1999's Conversations With Wilder, director and writer Cameron Crowe (Jerry McGuire, Say Anything, Almost Famous, etc.) spoke with Wilder at length. Pages 110 through 111 find Crowe asking about Garbo and Ninotchka:
Billy Wilder: We were just writers -- that was at MGM -- [and] I was on the stage one day, and Garbo was playing a love scene. So she went up to somebody, an assistant, and she came out and started rehearsing the scene, but in between, they put up a blackboard right in front of me. She had eyes in the back of her head. She saw me there. "Throw that man out!" So they threw me out. And then I met her later at a party at Salka Viertel's, the grandma of the German circuit. She was here in twenties. I met her there and now knew Garbo a little. The one day years later I saw her running, exercising, up Rodeo Drive. Rodeo then had a track in the middle where you could run. So she was running up Rodeo and she was very sweaty, and I stopped her and said, "Hi, how are you? I'm Billy Wilder." And she said [imitates her smoky accent:] "Yes, I know you." "Would you like to have a martini, something to drink? I live right around the corner, Beverly Drive." She said. "Yes, I would like to." I lived right around the corner, so I took her home.
It was in the afternoon, and she collapsed in the chair and I said, "I will tell my wife, she is upstairs, to come and fix us a drink." And I said, "And come on down, guess who we have here." She says, "Who, Otto Preminger?" -- somebody like that. And I said, "No, Greta Garbo." And she said, "Oh, go on, go fuck yourself!" And I said, "No, honestly." So she came down and I introduced her, and Aud [Audrey Wilder] fixes a martini, really strong, bit and [Garbo] had that thing in one gulp, and then another one and another one. They drink them like beer, those Swedish -- martinis. She lived on Bedford Drive, the house of [Jean] Negulesco, North Beverly, across the street from the house of [MGM executive] Joe Cohen. And we started to talk about pictures and she said [does accent], "I would like to make a picture about a clown." I said, "Oh, that's fine." "I always am a clown, and I am wearing a mask, and I will not take the mask off. I will only be in the picture as a clown." She never made a picture again. She made one more picture after Ninotchka, and that was it. So she wanted to play the clown, and not show her face. A clown who grins all the time. I said, "That might be difficult."
She stayed on a while. Then she walked out. I wanted to drive her, but she said, "No no no no no no. I walk a little bit to cool off."
Cameron Crowe: Did you discuss Ninotchka?
Billy Wilder: I mentioned Ninotchka, but she did not want to talk about the old pictures. She just said, "I would like to make another picture." That's when my ears perked up. Then she said, "I play a clown. I always play a clown [in life]. I will always be a clown in the picture." I only saw her there that one time, running. And then I saw her arm in arm with Salka Viertel, going down a street in Klosters, Switzerland. She was always there. She was a great friend of Salka Viertel. So that was my only long encounter with Garbo, that was kind of a half hour. "I will play the clown."
Wilder's being iced out on the set of Ninotchka was nothing new. Joan Crawford was a co-star of Garbo's in Grand Hotel and looked forward to meeting Garbo.
She showed up for rehearsals December 30, 1931 determined to make a grand entrance with her dog (Woggles) only to discover that Garbo did not rehearse with her cast mates (which included John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery and Jean Hersholt). Not only did Garbo not rehearse with the cast, the bulk of her scenes were filmed another soundstage which was closed to "visitors" (cast mates qualified as "visitors").
For the entrances and exists through the hotel lobby, the entire cast used the same soundstage; however, Garbo had dibs on the post-lunch period. The never-back-down Crawford feigned illness and had her scenes rescheduled from the morning in order to meet Garbo.
Crawford and Garbo 're-teamed' May 30, 1937. That's when they and others -- including Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, Edward Arnold, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis and Kay Francis -- starred in an Independent Theatre Owners print 'production' which opened, "The Following Stars are BOX OFFICE POISON". Crawford, Hepburn and Davis would go on to have long film careers refuting the poison label, many others would not.
In the film that returned to her to the list of moneymakers, Ninotchka, Garbo's is asked, "What kind of girl are you anyway?" She responds, "Just what you see: a tiny cog in the great wheel of evolution."
In 1954, Garbo would receive an Honorary Oscar. By that time, she'd been nominated three times . . . for four roles. Yes, you read that right. Along with Ninotchka, she was nominated for Camille (1937) and for the 1929/1930 Academy Awards (you read that right, held November 5, 1930) her single nomination was for two roles: "Anna Christie {"Anna Christie"}; and Romance {"Madame Rita Cavallini"}".
The first line Garbo spoke onscreen was, "Give me a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby" from the 1930 film Anna Christie. In the early eighties, Nancy Frangione would utter the line as Cecile DePoulignac on NBC's Another World. But Garbo's most quoted line is from Grand Hotel, "I want to be alone." From Saturday Night live skits to Lisle von Rhoman (Isabella Rossellini) in Death Becomes Her, it is the most quoted of all Garbo's lines. Some are done as homages, some as parodies. The most insulting imitation took place in April 1932 following a Grand Hotel preview held at Grauman's Chinese Theater. Garbo's contract with MGM had lapsed and they had threatened to drop the re-shoots Garbo had done and hand Grand Hotel over to Joan Crawford. As the animosity grew on both sides, MGM decided to the way to 'cap' the LA preview was to have 'Garbo' appear, introduced by Will Rogers. Beefy Wallace Beery stumbled down the aisle in a frizzy wig and dress while those assembled laughed and applauded. Reaching the stage, Beery declared, "I think I go home now."
Photos are by Arnold Genthe.
Another lady...another time...
Another heartbroken state of mind
Alone in her chambers...she dreams of her home
Outside...she's got a movie star view
Outcries...well where will the kings go...
Where will the kings go now?
She's got her eyes wide open...
And she's ready to stare you down
She says in words unspoken...she's from out of town
Well some cry...well I really don't dance down
Stormy weather...it cuts like a knife
-- "Greta," written by Stevie Nicks and Mike Campbell (available on Nicks' Street Angel).
