Greta Garbo II.
How the world’s greatest actress became its most notorious recluse. Part two.
Continued from Part I:
Then in December 1941 came the infamous Two-Faced Woman. That it was released just weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbour was not the only reason the film flopped. Two-Faced Woman was a disaster on every front. Moral watchdogs from both church and state objected to the storyline, in which a ski instructress (Garbo) impersonates her twin sister to seduce and win back her philandering husband. Like botched surgery, the film was cut and edited until it made no sense.
Garbo’s hair was also cut short and looked dreadful. Couturier Adrian, who designed both the iconic high-necked evening gowns and boyish casual attire the actress wore in 17 of her 24 Hollywood films—making Garbo one of the great fashion icons of the 1930’s—foresaw such a catastrophe that he resigned from MGM over the lowbrow modern American makeover on the sophisticated actress. And director George Cukor did such an appalling job (the film should have been canned) that he later acknowledged his hand in the killing of the career of the great Garbo. According toTime, watching the film was “like seeing Sarah Bernhardt swatted with a bladder.”


On the one hand her departure from Hollywood was a long time coming. There had been countless sliding-door moments when Garbo might have quit the business, not to mention the fact that when she left Sweden in 1925 she told her mother she’d be back within a year. On the other hand, her experience was such a humiliating shock to the system that she had to take drastic action, telling Mercedes de Acosta at the time: “I will never act in another film.”
There were in fact projects that she considered throughout the 1940’s. And one—an adaptation of Balzac’s La Duchesse de Langais—where she even signed a contract. Her path, though, did not to involve returning to the screen and by the time 1964 came around, when she was offered a million dollars to appear in a film about Tchaikovsky, she declined. Curiously, though, she had a top-secret meeting with Luchino Visconti in Rome in 1971 regarding a film version of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, where she was to play a single scene as the Queen of Naples. The film never got off the ground, although it was unlikely that Garbo, 65 at the time, would have gone through with it.
Perhaps even greater than any humiliation was her sadness over the tragedy of the war. She was criticised for not using her celebrity to help in the war effort but as her loyal friend, Salka, defended her at the time, “There are some people who just cannot face crowds, no matter for what cause.” However, her contribution was greater than the naysayers realised. Not only did she donate generously to a variety of war funds under the condition of anonymity, it appears that, Mata Hari-like, she also spied for the British.
Despite its neutrality, Sweden was a hotbed of stealth Nazi activity during the war. Garbo made the most of the situation and identified high-level Nazi collaborators, as well as acting as conduit between the allies, sympathetic Swedish industrialists and the royal family. But the best Garbo wartime anecdote is the plan she hatched to assassinate Hitler. She recounted the story years later in New York to her friend, the art dealer Sam Green, who, in an astounding win for posterity, was allowed to record more than 100 hours of telephone conversation with Miss G (never Greta) over the course of their 15-year friendship. “Mr. Hitler was big on me,” she said. “He kept writing and inviting me to come to Germany and if the war hadn’t started when it did, I would have gone and I would have taken a gun out of my purse and shot him, because I’m the only person who would not have been searched.”
Whatever Garbo may or may not have felt after the failure of Two-Faced Woman—upset, relief, or both – her finances cushioned the fall. She’d made so much money by the age of 36 that she could quietly walk away from the business and shield herself from prying eyes. While much about her finances is shrouded in mystery, we do know that she was shrewd at generating income-to-be. Her extensive investment portfolio came to include stocks, bonds and a variety of trusts as well as real estate in Sweden and throughout the U.S—one commercial property alone, on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, bringing in $10,000 a month.
The New York apartment, however, was Garbo’s first real home in America. “I’m lucky to be in my building,” she said of living in the Campanile, the iconic pre-war Venetian-Gothic pile at 450 East 52nd Street. “They don’t like actresses here.”
While she did not purchase the apartment until 1953, she’d spent longer stretches in New York from the late 1930’s onwards, staying at the home of playwright S. N. Behrman and later renting an apartment in the Ritz Tower, where she would see out the war. It was at this time that Garbo began to assemble her collection, purchasing three Renoirs (two from the collection of film and theatre director, Otto Preminger), a Bonnard and the first of two Rouaults in November 1942. Other paintings by Robert Delaunay, Chaim Soutine and Alexej von Jawlensky—bold choices for the time—were added throughout the 1950’s and 60’s. Lesser known was a 1956 abstract by Jean Atlan seen in one of the catalogue’s vignettes above an 18th-century painted chest of drawers. A gift from Elie de Rothschild, the Atlan is arguably the most masculine work in the collection. There was little rhyme or reason to the way she bought: collecting, much like her acting and life choices, was intuitive and ignored prevailing tastes.
Two other activities came to define Garbo’s ‘second act’: her legendary walks around Manhattan—often twice a day and for hours at a time—and travel. In both cases she was often in the company of Elie’s sister, Cecile de Rothschild. It was through Russian émigré, George Schlee that Garbo had been drawn into the Rothschild family orbit in the 1940’s when Schlee, wanting to further cultivate Garbo’s interest in art, introduced her to Erich von Goldschmidt-Rothschild.
It was also through Schlee and his wife, Valentina, that Garbo came to buy in the Campanile, the couple residing one floor below. The ménage à trois (non-sexual, at least in the beginning) was initially a happy one. Much like Stiller before him, Schlee took control of Garbo as companion and manager and possibly—unlike Stiller—as lover. Le Roc, a villa in Cap-d’ail in the South of France that had been built by Egypt’s King Farouk, was purchased in Schlee’s name but with Garbo’s money, the pair retreating there for weeks and months at a time, sans Valentina.
For Mrs. Schlee, the novelty of sharing her husband with the legendary Garbo soon wore off. “The public defeat infuriated her,” according to Sam Green, “but I think she profited greatly from Garbo’s dalliance with her husband.” Green was referencing the fact that many of Garbo’s significant purchases had been made in Schlee’s name. The love triangle, sexual or not, was so complicated that by the time Schlee died in Paris in 1964, when his widow inherited all that was in his name—including Le Roc—the notoriously tight-with-money Garbo did nothing to protest. For the next 25 years, the two women continued to live one floor apart in the Campanile, never speaking. Valentina referred to Garbo as “that vampire” or, more simply, “the fifth floor.”
Jackson Pollock was strolling along Third Avenue with a friend when he passed Garbo walking in the opposite direction. “I’ve only experienced love three times,” he said, “and one of them was when we passed that woman.”

The unmarried Cecile took the place of Schlee to become one of Garbo’s greatest protectors, also introducing her to other wealthy women whose lifestyles could shield her from the public’s prying eyes. “Cecile just bullied her into things,” recalled Sam Green, who met Garbo through de Rothschild in 1971, after she vetted the art dealer for a period of two years to see if he might be a suitable walker and companion for the retired actress. “G would be taken by the scruff of the neck. Otherwise she wouldn’t go anywhere. When she’d say, ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be hungry tomorrow,’ Cecile would just laugh and say of course you’re going to be hungry. The car is picking us up at a quarter after twelve… and that’s that.’ “
Green described the relationship between the two women as deep but not sexual. Garbo would spend a month each year at Cecile’s “town place” on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris and then weeks cruising around the Mediterranean on Elie’s boat, Bibo. It was not the only sea vessel Garbo came to know: the great collector of women, Aristotle Onassis, ‘acquired’ Garbo for a time, his vast fortune offering movement and protection beyond even that of the Rothschild clan. She spent several summers with Onassis and guests including Winston Churchill aboard Christina, the shipping magnate’s floating palace replete with 50 crew, nine staterooms named after Greek Islands, even an El Greco. (Garbo’s cabin was usually ‘Lesbos’.) Much like the widow Kennedy, it was this level of protection rather than celebrities that galvanised her.
“She would ignore invitations, accept and then fail to show, or shock a host simply by showing up with no prior indication of doing so,” wrote Paris of Garbo’s relationship with fellow famous people. He recounts a wonderful example of the latter that took place in the mid 1950’s when Garbo and Minna Wallis were in Palm Springs visiting Gayelord Hauser:
“After Several days, Wallis asked her friend Ava Gardner if she and Garbo might spend the weekend at the Gardner-Sinatra residence there. Gardner said of course—when did they want to arrive? ‘In about five minutes’ was the answer. When Gardner opened her door, Garbo swept past without so much as a handshake, asking ‘Where is my room?’ and complaining about the air-conditioning. Gardner was sure she was in for the Guest from Hell, but Garbo soon materialised—topless—by the pool, all smiles. ‘She changed into a dress after that, accepted our offer of vodka, and began a memorable weekend of drinking, eating, laughing and more eating,’ wrote Gardner, who privately told a friend, ‘She ate a whole fucking chicken!’ ”
On the surface her new life seemed carefree, but ever present was a growing malaise. She referred to this period as “drifting” and while she may have perked up when pushed to do things by the likes of Schlee and Cecile, when left to her own devices, she sank further into her dour ways. However, it was not all without good reason: Garbo was betrayed time and time again by those she trusted—those with whom she’d lowered her guard and been herself. Mercedes de Acosta wrote a memoir detailing romantic interludes with the actress, an unforgivable travesty. Cecil Beaton, who was desperate to marry Garbo (she accepted although never went all the way to the altar), gave pictures of her to Vogue that had been taken during a session for a passport photo. One of the rare few to be given a second chance years later, he blew that too when his diaries, including intimate Garbo details, were published in newspapers in the early 1970’s.
The betrayals weren’t limited to commoners. For the first time in a decade, Garbo returned to Sweden in 1975 to stay with Count Carl Johan Bernadotte (the king’s cousin) and his wife, Countess Kirsten at their coastal villa in Southwest Sweden. She was relaxed enough to allow herself to be photographed by the countess, only to discover, the following year, that she’d again been exploited when the photos appeared in magazines around the world. Deeply embittered, she never returned to Sweden.
Garbo’s rock through it all was the nanny-like Salka. Having lived through the witch-hunts of the McCarthy era when she and many of her fellow screenwriters were denounced as communists on the Hollywood blacklist, Salka relocated to Klosters, Switzerland in 1953. Her son, the screenwriter Peter Viertel and his wife Deborah Kerr also lived there from 1960, the trio forming a welcoming family unit to which Garbo would retreat each year, late in the summer before the ski season kicked off. The resort was dead at that time, which suited her perfectly. She rose early, exercised, wandered about town and hiked through the mountains each afternoon. Then on to Salka’s for late-afternoon tea, where the Santa Monica salon of the 1930’s lived on, its smart and interesting regulars, according to Paris, able to “be trusted not to frighten Garbo when she appeared, which Salka made certain she did often.”
“I hear people say, ‘I never drink alone. Well, if I didn’t drink alone I’d never get a drink.”
Truman Capote could have had Garbo in mind when he wrote of New York, “entering it from the greater reality of elsewhere, one is only in search of a city, a place to hide, to lose or discover oneself… ” While her mind and character remained more European than ever becoming American, the sprawling island metropolis was truly home as it was the place in which she could achieve the greatest degree of anonymity. Paradoxically, though, everyone had a Garbo story, usually as the result of one of her walks. “I trotted out to get some things and look at the human beings today,” she would say, or, “Often I just go where the man in front of me is going.” Andy Warhol trailed her secretly for years, taking photos. John Lennon would often sign his name “Greta Hughes” in homage to his fellow recluse. Jackson Pollock was strolling along Third Avenue with a friend when he passed her walking in the opposite direction. “I’ve only experienced love three times,” he said, “and one of them was when we passed that woman.” Although she was probably recognised a hundred times each day, the confederacy of Garbo watchers was, according to Paris, “largely united by the good manners not to disturb the object of its affection.” A disparate league of walkers—friends of varying degrees who would accompany her on many of her outings—afforded an added layer of protection on the rare occasions she was approached. She would phone one of them, Raymond Daum and simply say, “Let’s go.” In the 18 years Daum “walked” Garbo, he was never given her phone number and was warned: “Don’t ever ask me about the movies—especially why I left them.” She wasn’t always so surly with him, though: “I hear people say, ‘I never drink alone.’ Well, if I didn’t drink alone I’d never get a drink.”
Sam Green, who travelled extensively with Garbo and Cecile, also accompanied her on some of her walks around Manhattan, but the bulk of their friendship was conducted over the phone. Despite her withdrawn nature, Green was convinced that she was never bored:
“What she enjoyed most was being alone with her own thoughts and inner dialogues. She had no other great ambition because she’d achieved them all by the time she was 35—she was the most famous, beautiful and accomplished woman of her time. But she paid the price by losing her privacy, which was the one thing she wanted—just to lead a decent, healthy, honest life out of the public eye. It wasn’t Two-Faced Woman that made her quit the movies. It was about personal development. From the age of 17, she’d done nothing but work, and her huge success came before she’d had time to develop an emotional life. In the end, her emotional life was more important.”


When Greta Gustafson was a child in Stockholm she was entranced by the idea of the theatre. Not able to purchase a ticket, she made so many attempts to sneak in to one particular theatre that a security guard, eventually taking pity, allowed her in to watch the odd performance. One Garbo theory holds that she was more suited to the theatre, which Salka Viertel touched on as early as 1932: “I do not think she has reached the artistic heights of which she is capable, nor am I sure that films are her milieu. Perhaps, ultimately, the stage will be.” It’s possible that had she taken to the stage instead of the screen, she would have been more content creatively, although tiring as easily as she did, it’s doubtful she would have thrived in the late night environment. She told the composer, David Diamond that she would have liked to return to Sweden to perform on the stage but that she simply “couldn’t.” Diamond, who had met Garbo through Salka in the early 1940’s, took her to see M. Butterfly not long before she died. She enjoyed the play immensely and wanted to go backstage to meet B.D. Wong, the female-impersonating star of the show. “You are an artiste,” she told Wong before disappearing off into the night. Diamond considered his elusive friend to be in the same league as George Sand and James Dean—as he put it, “unique people lost in their environments.” Garbo had always wanted to portray Sand and if she had, it might have also, like Christina, seemed semi-autobiographical. Both the writer and the actress were women of humble birth who came to be the great ornaments of their age.
On the rare occasions she socialised over the years in New York it was usually at the home of her friends, John and Jane Gunther. There’s an inscription in the Sotheby’s catalogue written by Jane—other dedications were made by Garbo’s niece and heir, Gray Reisfield and Cecile de Rothschild— who had the following to say about meeting the actress in 1947:
“I came into John’s apartment, and there she was. Wonderfully beautiful, but she surprised me for being perfectly simple, without the slightest pretension, affectation, or theatricality. Here was a human being, direct, gracious, and unforbidding. I felt shy in her presence, and said not a word, dazzled in observation. A collection of circumstances made us meet many times again… How can I describe her? She was certainly the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, or even imagined. Her features were perfect, but the wonder of her beauty came from something within. There was a strange melancholy in her, which led one to believe that her marvellous face revealed the secrets of life—both the sorrows and joys.”
The artist-recluse is far from unique to Garbo; many have separated themselves from the crowd in order to hear the music within. Her quiet, lifelong retreat was her swansong. Silent film star Louise Brooks once referred to the stage director, Alfred Lunt, who criticised Garbo for not being able to sustain a long scene. “But she has probably sustained the longest scene in theatrical history, ever since 1925—her private life.”
From a story originally published in Reflektor Magazine.