-Garbo-

Greta GarboI edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4
| View | Add FavoriteGreta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905. Garbo was born in Stockholm to poor parents. She was 14 when her father died, leaving the family destitute. Consequently, Greta was forced to leave school and go to work, first as a lather girl in a barbershop, then as a clerk in a department store.The store also used her for her modeling abilities for newspaper ads. She had no film aspirations until she appeared in an advertising short at that same department store while she was still a teenager. This led to another short film when Eric Petscher, a comedy director, saw the film. He gave her a small part in the film, Peter The Tramp (1920). From 1922 to 1924 she studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm. During that period met Mauritz Stiller, the foremost Swedish director, who gave her an important role in Gösta Berlings Saga (1924; "The Story of Gösta Berling"), gave her the stage name Greta Garbo, and trained her in cinema-acting techniques.Greta Garbo was an enigmatic superstar of silent films and early Hollywood "talkies" until her surprising retirement at age 36. She was discovered in Sweden and moved to America under contract to MGM Studios, where she played aloof, dramatic beauties in films like Flesh and The Devil (1926) and Mysterious Lady (1928). She became a star and made the transition to talking pictures: Anna Christie (1930) was promoted with the famous tag line "Garbo Talks!" In the 1930s she played doomed title characters like Mata Hari (1932) and Anna Karenina (1935) and was a pensive ballerina in the 1932 Oscar-winner Grand Hotel, where she uttered the famous line "I want to be alone." She changed styles a bit for the 1939 Ernst Lubitsch satire Ninotchka, playing a drab Soviet envoy transformed by a Parisian romance. She stopped making films in 1941, refused all attempts to lure her back to Hollywood, and settled in New York City. She dropped from public life entirely, and her solitary nature -- combined with her earlier movie mystique -- earned her a reputation as a romantic recluse. Although it was believed that Garbo lived as an invalid in her post- Hollywood career, this is incorrect. Garbo was a real jet setter, traveling with international tycoons and socialites. In the seventies, she traveled less, and grew more and more eccentric, although she still took daily walks through Central Park with close friends and walkers. Due to failing health in the late eighties, her mobility was challenged. In her final year, it was her family that cared for her, including taking her to dialysis treatments. She died with them by her side. Greta died on April 15, 1990 in New York City.
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