Garbo

The Street of Sin (1928, :Author Paul Rotha reviewed "that most extraordinary of movies" shortly after the release of the film, "No expense was spared on its making. The script was well-balanceed;the continuity was good; the setting natural. yet for some obscure reason it was one of the worst films ever done. It defied analysis.  

Glimpses of the Garbo of 1924, a year when in the United States Viola Dana and Jetta Goudal were starring together in the film Open All Night (six reels), can be seen in the letters between her and Swedish actress Mimi Pollock authenticated by author Tin Andersen Axell, letters on which his newest book is based. Leaving us again with something mysterious, the letters written by Pollack to Greta Garbo have been unseen by the public and are thought to be currently included in the collection of Scott Riesfield.

 

     There is an account that Greta Garbo had seen Mauritz Stiller's film Erotikon in a theater in Sweden.
Appearing on the screen in the 1920 Gustaf Molander film Bodakungen was Franz Envall, whom Greta Garbo mentioned in a 1928 Photoplay magazine interview with Ruth Biery, "Then I met an actor...it was Franz Envall. He is dead now, but he has a daughter in the stage in Sweden. he asked if they would not let me try to get into the Dramatic School of the Royal Theater in Stockholm."

Paul Rotha, writing at the time of the silent era having come to and and sound film making its beginning in his volume The Film till now, a survey of the cinema, helped formulate the consensus that the value of Swedish Silent Film lay in its depiction of man's relation to the enviornment, shown through exterior shots during the period of the silent film of Victor Sjostrom untill the interior shooting of Gustaf Molander during the early sound era, that there was a "lyricism" that brought "depth and width" that would make each director the others contemporary. "With Seastrom it manifests itself in his shots of landscape, his feeling for the presence of the elements, his love of the wind and sky, and flowers...Seastrom too this reality of nature with him to the mechanized studios of hollywood and it blossomed even in that hot-house atmosphere."        Notably, Clarence Brown in 1925 directed Rudolph Valentino in the film The Eagle, which is of interest not only for its introduction of the pull-back shot, a tracking shot moving away from its subject similar to the present day zoom-out, but it was also one of the first films for which Adrain had designed the costumes, the other that year having had been being Her Sister From Paris. Basil Rathbone, who co-starred with Greta Garbo under the direction of Clarence Brown, in the sound version of Anna Karenina, wrote of his aquaintance with her in his autobiography, In and Out of Character. "I first met Miss Garbo in 1928 when Ouida and I were invited to lunch with Jack Gilbert one Sunday." Rathbone and his wife had been present at the premiere of the film Flesh and the Devil. Of his starring in film with her, he wrote, "And so upon the morning previously arranged I called upon Miss Garbo. The house, a small one, was as silent as the grave. There was no indication it might be occupied." Rathbone had also appeared in silent films- Trouping with Ellen (T. Hayes Hunter, seven reels) in 1924, The Masked Bride (Christy Cabanne, six reels), starring Mae Murray, in 1925 and The Great Deception (Howard Higgin, six reels) in 1926. Jane Ardmore's biography, The Self-Enchanted- Mae Murray: Image of an Era, only briefly mentions Basil Rathbone or Greta Garbo it is an account of off-screen Hollywood, "Every fourth Sunday Mae threw open her house for lavish entertainment...Jack Gilbert brought Greta Garbo. They were in love and radiant, but Greta was worried about the studio, she was shy, there seemed such commotion, her engeries were sapped. 'You should have a dressing room on the set as I do, Darling.' Mae told her." Mae Murray would be attending a birthday party later that year for Rudolph Valentino given by Pola Negri. Rathbone and his wife had been present at the premiere of Flesh and the Devil. On learning that Greta Garbo had already had the film Mata Hari in production, Pola Negri deciding between scripts that were in her studio's story department chose A Woman Commands as her first sound film, in which she starred with Basil Rathbone. Of Rathbone she wrote in her autobiography, 'As an actor, I suspected Rathbone might be a little stiff and unromantic for the role, but he made a test that was suprisingly good.' Directed by Paul L.Stein, the films also stars Reginald Owen and Roland Young.

In his biography of Greta Garbo, Raymond Durgnat quotes "the austerest of all film directors", Carl Dreyer, although the quote seems superfluous or decorative to the essay, as having said, "Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land no one can never tire of exploring." The context was that Garbo, being a film star, was an object of art.

Greta Garbo Greta Garbo There were 478 silent films made in Sweden; of them only 192 still exist, although there are copies of fragments from a number of them. Added to that, countless Danish silent films produced by Ole Olsen for Nordisk Films Kompagni are "presumably lost": the Danish Film Institute notes that approximately 1600 silent short and feature films were made whereas only 250 films presently exist, Not the only webpage concerned with the preservation of Silent Film, the lost films webpage from Berlin show clips and stills from fifty silent film that it claims are "unknown or unidentified".      Not only is the film in which Victor Sjostrom directed Greta Garbo lost, Sjostrom, while in the United States was to direct the first feature released by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, He Who Gets Slapped, (seven reels 1924), starring Lon Chaney, Jack Gilbert and Norma Shearer. It was Norma Shearer who was to star opposite Lon Chaney in the other M.G.M directed by Victor Sjostrom under the name Seastrom of which there are no existant copies, that film being Tower of Lies (1924, seven reels).

Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.      Writing about Greta Garbo, Richrad Corliss quotes film director Clarence Brown as also having related that he would "direct her very quietly" and never "gave her director above a whisper." In an interview during which she outlines her having met John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, as quoted by Ruth Biery in The Story of Greta Garbo, said, "When I finished The Temptress, they gave me the script for The Flesh and the Devil to read. I did not like the story. I did not want to be a silly temptress. I cannot see any sense in getting dressed up and doing nothing by tempting men in pictures." This is oddly echoed by National Board of Review magazine, in which the conclusion was drawn that "The leading contributor to the success of Flesh and the Devil is Greta Garbo." It provided a synopsis of the film that also lent the background to its addressing the desire of Greta Garbo to leave her ealier "ladies of vampish repute" characters and to be seen as a more serious dramatic, or romantic dramatic, actress. It primarily sees her as being more believable character, "Miss Garbo in her later day impersonation shows a frail physique and a fragile ethereal air. She is infinitely more civilized and all the more subtle for not being so deliberate."     ---------Flesh edit      National Board of Review magazine encapsulated the film with "The directorial skill of Clarence Brown, the cinematic slickness of the photography, and the careful attention to detail do the rest. Greta care has been taken in the scenification of the who picture to create an atmosphere in which duels and a society whose moral codes have been tinged by a military regime will seem natural."      Clarence Sinclair Bull contributed a portrait of Lars Hanson to Motion Picture Magazine, the photo-caption reading, "Here's a new hero for you. Whether its acting ability, sincerity, or sex appeal you're looking for, Lars has got it. He was a match for the screen's foremost actress in The Scarlet Letter, and we've no doubt he'll make even John Gilbert look to his laurels in Flesh and the Devil."      The portrait of Greta Garbo that year in Motion Picture Magazine had been photographed by Ruth Harriet Louise, its caption reading "We are feverishly awaiting her performance opposite John Gilbert in Flesh and the Devil"- by then it was becoming increasingly unnecessary to introduce her as a star that was rising. And yet the when the magazine reviewed the film with the article An Idyll or a Tragedy- Which? When Clarence Brown filmed the Love Scenes of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert for Flesh and the Devil, he was working with raw material, the author began with, "None of us knows very much about her."      When the film was reviewed by Motion Picture Magazine the film was praised with "Here is one of the best pictures relected upon the old screen in many a moon, the perfection of which is only marred by the ending, which appears tacked on, as an afterthought...Greta is a beautiful nymphomaniac..You never feel the chaos she causes exaggerated. She's attractive enough to wreak havoc in a man's world."      Film Daily listed the adaptation credit as Hans Kraly and the scenario and continuity credit as Benj F. Glazer, "Story Strong in Sex Appeal but Splendidly Handled." It looked at both co-stars, "John Gilbert renews his hold on the title of the screen's great lover...Greta Garbo about the most alluring creature imaginable...An overindulgence in painted backdrops and a fairly unconvincing, sugar-coated ending are the only criticism to be offered." The story of John Gilbert and Greta Garbo was often retold after the advent of the sound film. There is a photograph that appears to be from the filming of Flesh and the Devil; the photocaption is from the Photoplay article "Unknown Hollywood I Know", written by Katherine Albert in 1932, and reads, "An old and never-published snapshot of Garbo and Gilbert in the flush of romance. Garbo liked to picnic alone. Jack liked to go to parties. So they picnicked alone." The article gives an account of John Gilbert futilely waiting for Greta Gabo to call him, "Jack worshipped Garbo, there's no doubt about that..Well, she gave him a cool, dispassioned regard."  orma Shearer, who had starred under Victor Sjostrom's direction in Tower of Lies with William Haines had said that Sjostrom "was more concerned with the moods he was creating than the shadings he would have injected into my performance."      When reviewed by Photoplay Magazine, the film was seen as "a worthwhile picture spoiled by a too conscious effort to achieve art. Consequently, a human story suffers from artificiality." When further reviewed by Photoplay, it was added that, "If the director had been as concerned with telling the story as he was thinking of symbolic scenes, this would have been a great picture. As it is, Victor Seastrom was so busy being artistic that he forgot to be human. The emotions are of those of the theater, not of life." Actor William Haines later was to tell Photoplay Magazine, "But then it is strange, too, that I have worked here for several years on the same lot with Greta Garbo and have never met her."

W. S. Van Dyke that year brought Wanda Hawley to the screen in the film The Eyes of Totem, also starring Ann Cornwall. That Movie Classic Magazine included the title New Styles for Sex Appeal on its November,1933 cover featuring Greta Garbo is a fitting contrast to when the magazine had featured Garbo the silent actress on its cover during 1927 before it had changed its name, a look, from Motion Picture Classic. Alice Joyce had been the magazine's cover girl during the previous month and silent actress Betty Bronson followed during March. Included among those chosen to be covergirl for Photoplay Magazine during February of 1927 were actresses Olive Borden, Arlette Marchal, Lois Wilson, Mae Murray and Mary Brian. Actresses chosen by Screenland magazine in 1927 to grace its cover included Marie Provost, lya De Putti,Anita Parkhurst, Gilda Gray and Jetta Goudal: Each month Cal York wrote a page entitled Girl on the Cover; in regard to any personal favorite covers to Photoplay Magazine of the present author, so far there are two, both from 1926, Marion Davies and Alice Joyce. While author Deebs Taylor explains that 'it' as typified by Elinor Glyn was sex appeal, he also writes that silent film actress Clara Bow had brought the excitement of the flapper to the screen a year before her having been given the role in the 1927 film It (seven reels) during her appearance in the film Mantrap (Victor Fleming, seven reels). She appeared on the cover of Filmjournalen Magazine in 1927 and in 1929. Photoplay Magzine covers for the year 1928, featured the actresses Corinne Griffith, Marion Davies, Evelyn Brent, Billie Dove, Ruth Taylor, Ester Ralston and Eleanor Boardman.      Clara Bow is a particular instance of Lost Films, Found Magazines; a highly publicized silent actress that was often written about, if not written about in within the extra-textual discourse of fan magazines as one the earliest forms of film criticism, with the expectation that modern novels that had not yet been filmed would soon be brought to the screen, Clara Bow appearred in several films that have only been seen due to recent efforts to preserve them. Parts of silent films are missing- among the films featuring Clara Bow either still incomplete, but restored, or restored in their entirety are Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), Maytime (Gasnier, 1923), Poisoned Paradise (Gasnier, 1924), Black Oxen (Frank Lloyd, 1924) and the 1925 film My Lady of Whims. Without the films, all that is left are magazine advertisements where the screen star cordially invites our consumership, not only our consumership as spectators for the advertised product, but as spectators for the fantasies of 'a now by gone era', the look of the female directed to a time only preserved as being seldom seen on the silent silver screen, once captured by the moving camera and now guessed at through the pages of magazines. John Gilbert that  year made Twelve Miles Out (Jack Conway, eight reels). John Gilbert also appeared that year with Jeanne Eagles in the film Man, Woman and Sin (seven reels), which Photoplay reviewed as being of interest because the actresses and actor were paired together but concluded, "Miss Garbo needn't worry over Miss Eagles.", it thinking that the film and the part played by the actress was tailored in order to substitute for Garbo. "Director-and author-Monta Bell knows his city room. After that the film disintegrates into cheap melodrama." The following year John Gilbert appeared in Four Walls, made with him by director William Nigh, (eight reels), and actress Vera Gordon. "Came the talkies- came Gilbert's unfortunate and subsequently not-so-good pictures...I believe unquestionably that Jack Gilbert would have made a great motion picture star after the talkies. I believe with a little study, a little direction, a good deal of careful help and selection of stories and directors, he might have survived them as well as his beloved Greta Garbo" It was during the summer of 1935 that Adela Rogers St. Johns predicted "his bitter destruction", her writing the article What Defeated Jack Gilbert for Photoplay magazine. It might be noticed that she is in no way maudlin, but rather morbid, if not eerie. "It would be easier to bear if it had been Jack's fault. But it wasn't. Never." And yet it was six months before the actor's death; as she surveys his marriages and pronounces his love for Greta Garbo as having been all-consuming, she approaches the "beautiful letters" of literature; she is hauntingly like those actresses that had buried Rudolph Valentino, "Amid the glitter of Hollywood there have been many tragedies, but none more poignant or more heartbreaking than Gilbert's." Actress Emily Fitzroy, who appeared with John Gilbert and Greta Garbo in the 1927 film Love, had that year appeared in the films Married Alive (Emmett Flynn, five reels), with Margaret Livingston and Gertrude Claire, Orchids and Ermine (Alfred Santell, seven reels) with Colleen Moore, Hedda Hopper and Alma Bennet, One Increasing Purpose (Harry Beaumont, eight reels), with Lila Lee, Jane Novak and May Allison, and Once and Forever (Phil Stone, six reels), with Patsy Ruth Miller and Adele Watson. During 1929 Motion Picture Magazine had introduced Jearaldine DeVorak, a fashion model who was given a small salary to become "Greta Garbo's official double" when she had been noticed as an extra, working as a dancer. "'I adored Garbo on the screen,' she explained.'Once i spent the whole day sitting through five show of The Temptress...They made tests of me and dressed me in gorgeous gowns...She is so lovely and i know she taught me a great deal about acting."      In 1927 Greta Garbo had written, 'I could not believe that what I saw when I was first taken to the Metro-Goldwyn Mayer lot was a studio. I found that it covered acres and acres of ground and boasted some twenty stages, each one of which was larger than our entrie studio in Sweden.' The quote is from an article printed in Theatre Magazine entitled 'Why I am a Recluse.' and it either smooths out the extatextual discourse surrounding her on-screen sphinx-like image or was only partly written by Garbo for the studio publicity department; she had earlier renounced her 'vamp roles' in order to film melodrama- in any event Greta Garbo herself relished reading fan magazines no matter how taciturn she had been. In the article, she explains the difficulty involved in acting in the United States, 'My country, Sweden, is so small. It is also so quiet...During my first picture, Ibanez's Torrent, it was exactly as if I had to learn the making of motion pictures all over again. I was just beginning to learn the language... Now of course, things are easier for me. The second picture, The Temptress, I found less hard. The Flesh and the Devil fairly spung along, and now Love is going easier still. The studio does not seem as large as it did.'  Photoplay added, "Greta Garbo's pet hobby is Swedish fan mail." Two magazines of which copies may have belonged to her during 1928 were issues that featured Greta Garbo as a covergirl for Motion Picture Classic and Greta Garbo as a covergirl for Screenland in 1927- in regard to magazine art and the actress as model, the magazine cover as modern canvas, Greta Garbo was on the cover of six issues of the magazine Screenland: February 1927, May 1928, November 1929, June 1931, June 1934, and November 1935. Interestingly, while readers were awaiting her picture on the cover of the June 1931 issue, which included the caption "A New Slant on Garbo", her name appeared on the caption of each preceding issue, irregardless of who the actress covergirl for that month was. The cover to February's issue had read "Garbo Menace", April's had read "The Real Garbo", and July's had read  "Etching of Garbo"-  the most beautifully erotic cover of Marlene Dietrich during March of 1931 had had, below the portrait of the German actress, the words "Dietrich's Shadow on Garbo's Path." Actress Greta Garbo, while still fairly new to Hollywood, appeared on the covers of Photoplay Magazine for May 1928, August 1929, August 1930, January 1932 and January 1933. During the four short years between 1934 and 1938, Greta Garbo appeared on seven covers of the magazine Film Pictorial. It is now beyond asking if James Quirk's Photoplay is literature, it was, for the most part art, and if about the cinematic art, it was painterly. During 1928, it happenned to read, "The plans for Brown to direct Greta Garbo in "Java" have been shelved and he will now direct John Gilbert and Miss Garbo in "The Sun of St. Moritz." Garbo, incidently had declined a role in the silent film Women Love Diamonds (Edmund Goulding, seven reels,1927), it not having met with her approval; the film was to star Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Lionel Barrymore and Owen Moore. "And there I met him for the first time, except to nod to him, John Gilbert. He has such vitality, spirit, eagerness. Every morning at nine o clock he would slip to work opposite me...When I finished The Flesh and the Devil, they wanted me to do Women Love Diamonds. I could not do that story....Finally, they call me and say they have a story. I read it and went out and asked what part I was to play and they said the little part. Aileen Pringle and Lew Cody were to play the big parts...and was ready to play the little part in the picture when Miss Pringle said sh would not do it."

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW.
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In Sweden, Ragnar Hylten-Cavallius continued directing with Youth (Ungdom), starring Ivan Hedqvist, Marta Hallden and Brita Appelgren. Erik A Petschler in 1927 directed Hin och smalanningen, photographed by Gustav A Gustafson and starring Birgit Tengroth, Ingrid Forsberg, Greta Anjou, Jenny-Tschernichin-Larsson, Helga Brofeldt, Emy Bergstrom and Emy Albiin. Gustaf Edgren in 1927 directed The Ghost Baron (Spokbaronen) starring Karin Swanström and photographed by Adrian Bjurman, which was followed by Black Rudolf (Svarte Rudolf, 1928) starring Inga Tiblad and Fridolf Rhudin, both films having been written by Sölve Cederstrand. The assistant director to the film Black Rudolf had been Gunnar Skogland, it having been the first film in which the actress Katie Rolfsen was to appear. The screenplays to The Kiss (Kyssen, Feyder, seven reels) and Wild Orchids were both written by Hans Kraly during a year in which he had also written Eternal Love (Lubitsch, nine reels), Betrayal (Lewis Milestone, eight reels), The Garden of Eden (Lewis Milestone), starring Corrinne Griffith and Lowell Sherman, and The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Kraly also in the United States had earlier penned the screenplays to Rosita (Lubitsch, 1923, nine reels), Black Oxen (Frank Lloyd, 1924, eight reels), Three Women (Lubitsch, 1924, eight reels), Forbidden Paradise (1924) and Her Night of Romance (Sidney Franklin, 1924, eight reels). In Germany, Kraly had written the scripts to the films of Danish director Urban Gad, including the 1913 film The Film Star (Die Filmprimaddonna, starring Asta Nielsen. Opposite Greta Garbo from the first scene of The Kiss onward was actor Conrad Nagel. Cal York in of Photoplay in 1928 quoted Greta Garbo as then saying, "Eef I was tempermental, I would not work untill I got what I wanted." the journalist haing added that the "rumors about Garbo's temperment" at the time included that "she likes to be alone, that she is different, 'the one great exception'." If nothing else, the quote may show how inaccessible to the press, or how inaccessible it seemed she should be depicted. The context was when "Production had begun on the Greta Garbo picture War in the Dark when the fact was disclosed that the star was to wear another fur cape or coat. She stoutly rebelled saying she had worn a coat in every picture she had made and would not wear one in this." On other pages that year the magazine added a provocative photo of Greta Garbo, seductive, bareshouldered in a low cut evening dress with the caption, "Who wants movies with incidental sounds? Who would be disturbed by the smack of the kiss Conrad Nagel is planting on Greta Garbo's kneck in War in The Dark? Norma Shearer in 1928 appeared on theater marquees in The Actress (Sidney Franklin, seven reels), a film photographed by William Daniels, The Latest from Paris (eight reels) and A Lady of Chance. Silent film actress Vilma Banky was seen on the screen in theaters across the United States during 1928 with Ronald Colman in Two Lovers (nine reels), directed by Fred Niblo. That same year it was reported, "Vilma Banky's first picture following Two Lovers will be entitled The Awakening (nine reels) instead of The Innocent. It is an original Frances Marion. Victor Fleming is to direct." Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Forsythe Hardy only briefly mentions The Divine Woman in Scandinavian Film, after earlier having announced that the films directed by Mauritz Stiller in the United States also were to lay outside the province of his writing, but he appears to in general be in concordence with Bengt Forslund that the films made in the United States by Stiller and or Sjostrom were not up to par with those they may have or would have made in Sweden, although he favorably notes, "His direction of Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman had the understanding we might have expected."       ---fragment edit: For film detectives that look to piece together the scirpt details from magazine articles, the clock also appears in the 1928 review of the film in the bi-weekly The Film Spectator and it is put into relation with Lars Hanson's dialog as he relates to Garbo that his time with her could be limited, but it then chides the actor and actress for their not seeing the seriousness of their existential engagement and involvement with their circumstances.  As there are no copies of the film, I have added the entire review of The Divine Woman as it appeared in National Board of Review magazine, "Paris is the background for this romantic drama. Scorned by her pleasure loving mother, a young girl is brought up in the home of a Briton peasant. later she enters the realm of the theatre winning fame and recognition, all of which she gives up for the love of a poor peasant. The story holds the interest and the acting of the two Swedish stars, now well known in America, is excellant." The portraits of Greta Garbo published in Photoplay during the first run of The Divine Woman were taken by Ruth Harriet Louise. In an atricle entitled Love Stories, Photoplay during 1928 used a still photo from The Divine Woman that the present author was unfamiliar with as having had been published elsewhere,but added a photocaption to a still of Lars Hanson on the floor with Garbo putting her cheek next to his while nearly laying on top of him during an embrace that read, "By nature we are polygamous or polyandrous. Such love scenes between Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson are a pretty safe way of satisfying that desire to philander." There is another movie still later that only add to whether the photocaption is incorrectly, or hurriedly, used, "Because we are curious about love, because we are always seeking the perfect love affair, the screen romances of Vilma Banky and Ronald Colman have a constant fascination for us. In his Film Essays and Criticism, a valuable introduction to film, Rudolf Arnheim gives Greta Garbo only a two page "portrait", but it is from 1928 and may be more than a cursory glance, his writing, "On cat's feet, her coat pulled tightly about her and her hands folded in her lap, Greta Garbo passes censorship." Arnheim sees Greta Garbo as erotic, as an erotic object. Elevated later, to Bela Belazs, author of Theory of the Film in which she would attain, or become, Heroes, Beauty, Stars and the Case of Greta Garbo, she would "bear the the stamp of sorrow; and loneliness." Bela Belazs takes a thoughtful pause of appreciation before adding his own melancholy, "Greta Garbo's beauty is a beauty which is in opposition to the world of today." The Divine Bernhardt that was immortalized as a model for artist Alphonse Mucha exists, Adrienne Lecouvrer (An Actresse's Romance (Louis Mercanton, 1913, two reels) does not. Other than as seen advertised in magazines of the time period like Motion Picture World, the film regrettably is lost. And yet oddly, or as uncanny, Belaz features a photograph of Asta Nielsen in the film Die Ewege Natt with a caption reading, "The script-writers destroyed a growing art when they gave speech to the great mutes." Photoplay reviewed The Enemy in 1929, "This picture offers the most stirring anti-war propaganda wver filmed, yet maintains a heart interest which will thrill you every moment...Lillian Gish ceases to be the ethereal goddess. She is an everyday woman who sacrifices her man, her child and finally her honor, for the necessity rather than glory of battle."       Written by Solve Cederstrand and photographed by Hugo Edlund, Konstgjorda Svensson (1929) ,with Brita Appelgren, Ruth Weijden, Rolf Husberg and Weyeler Hildebrand, was directed by Gustaf Edgren. Also appearing in the film were Karin Gillberg and Sven Gustasfsson, the brother of Greta Garbo. Photoplay in 1929 featured a photo of the couple, its caption reading, "It's in the old Garbo blood, for Greta's brother is an actor too!! His name is Sven and he is shown rocking the boat in a scene from "The Robot", a new Swedish film. The young lady is Miss Karin Gillberg, another argument for better ship service to Scandinavia."       On his return to Sweden, Photoplay Magazine recorded, "Contentment meant more to Lars than mon. " With Asther already cast, the magazine had listed Heat as the "working title" of the film.            Before co-starring with Garbo, in 1928 alone, Nils Asther had appeared in the films Laugh Clown Laugh (Herbert Brenon, eight reels) with Lon Chaney and Loretta Young, The Cardboard Lover (eight reels), Dream of Love (Fred Niblo, six reels) photographed by William Daniels and Oliver Marsh and starring Warner Oland, Adrienne Lecouvrer, and The Blue Danube (Paul Sloane, seven reels) with Seena Owen.      That year also saw The Cossacks (George Hill, ten reels) with John Gilbert. The "portrait" of John Gilbert and Renee Adoree published in Photoplay, which, taken in costume, on the set, seems more like a publicity still than a posed portrait, was taken by Ruth Harriet Louise, its caption reading, "Love among the rural Russians...It is a story of the peasant classes." Photoplay magazine in 1930 went so far as to claim that the reason that Nils Asther was not returning to Sweden was his marriage to Vivian Duncan, but it then added that "talkies" and the advent of sound film was the responsible for his at first having been thought to be retired from film and that that might soon be reversed by his on-screen appearance. Asther had met Vivian Duncan on the set of his first film made in Hollywood, Topsy and Eva. Clarence Brown and photographer Oliver T. Marsh would rejoin Nils Asther and Lewis Stone, adding Robert Montgomery, to adapt the novel Letty Lynton for the screen in 1932. And yet during 1933 there seemed like a publicity duel between two of Nils Asther's films and their respective full page magazine advertisements, By Candlelight seeming only slightly more glossy than Madame Spy, in which he starred with Fay Wray. "The girls go into long trousers. For the sea scenes of The Single Standard, Greta Garbo wore slannel trousers with a plain, tuck in sweater and sea-going canvas shoes."      Picture Play magazine in 1929 ran the caption "Simplicity, even frugality, marks Greta Garbo's mode of living" and placed it beneath a photo credited to Genthe. It added another photo and caption, "Only self-expression draws Greta Garbo, for she is indifferent to fame and the luxury that come with stardom." In regard to her being versatile, the following it added yet another brief photocaption, "Greta Garbo portrays the torments of love, and little else."      As early as 1928 Ruth Beiry had speculated in Photoplay Magazine with the article "Will Nils Asther Retire?" After having dinner with the actor she wrote, "There is no doubt he is restless, unhappy yearning for the outlet for his work as he learned it in Europe." Asther told her, "Over here i feel I am wating my time..I want to have something to say about my stories. I want to work hand in hand with my director. I want to think about my part and then do it." He continues, "Life is too short There is so much to be accomplished...I would like to play with Von Strohiem. He would have so much to teach me."

To end 1928, Film Daily reported, Garbo Re-signed, claiming that had signed a new contract with M.G.M., one that would allow her to go on a vacation before going into effect and speculated with a fair amount of certainty that her first picture on her return would be an adaptation of a novel written by Elinor Glyn. Louise Lagertstrom of the Swedish Film Insitute titled her webpage on the career of Greta Garbo for the period 1928-1929 Superstjarna. While in Sweden, during 1928, Garbo had come across the actress Vera Schmiterlow, whom she had known well and whom she had hoped would venture to Hollywood and also while in Sweden had renewed her acquaintance with the actress Marte Hallden. Lars Saxon, who twice published Greta Garbo in his magazine Lektyr, and who corresponded with her while she had been in the United States at MGM, met her as she was travelling. It was also while in Sweden that she had first met Gösta Ekman, who greeted her by saying , 'But you're so ordinary.' Later she visited Ekman's dressing room to thank him for the use of his seat at a theatrical play that Stiller had directed when it had first began its run. Ekman was purportedly in hope of sharing the Swedish stage with her in a theater run of Grand Hotel.       Greta Garbo Complementing this, Lewis Stone has been quoted as having said, 'She was Garbo, and that said it all. No one has ever created such an impression.', whereas Edmund Goulding is quoted as having said, 'I don't believe that Garbo's astounding success depends on any mystery. She has movie sex appeal, if I may say so, but her success depends more on her unique ability to work and her will to achieve absolute concentration before the camera.' He added, 'For all her enormous success, she is just the same as when we worked together in Love; only perhaps a little more shy and solitary.' Garbo had been slated to film Ordeal with Lon Chaney under the direction of Marcel de Sano, it having been left unmade.What is meant to be fascinating is that after being deemed, or deigned a recluse, when it was announced that she was in a position to consider retirement, interest in Greta Garbo went to a depth that reached Greta Gustasfson and biography about the actress appeared; magazines were still interested in publishing stills Garbo had posed for in Sweden during the the film Peter and the Tramp and, after his death, were still probing into her affection for John Gilbert and Garbo's intention of marrying him in Mexico. In the 1937 article, After Twelve Years Greta Garbo Wants to Go Home to Sweden, readers in the United States discovered, "in 1936 she bought an estate outside Stockholm. Having finished Conquest she will go there to spend a few months, or many." Greta Garbo appears on the cover of the magazine quite possibly only by dint of the photo being in costume from the set of the film. Photoplay magazine included two, if only two and not more, items of interest, "Mauritz Stiller, the Swedish director, is leaving Paramount to spend three months abroad." to which it added later on the same page, "Tod Browning is leaving Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer." As 1929 began Photoplay had reported, "Mauritz Stiller, director and discoverer of Greta Garbo, died suddenly in Stockholm. Miss Garbo was prostrated by the new and work on her picture has been held up." In the article Going Hollywood, Ruth Waterbury wrote, "Today Stiller is dead. He died a lonely, defeated, heartbroken man, an exile from the city that made Greta famous."Greta Garbo had appeared in the film Peter and the Tramp (Luffar-Peter, 1922 five reels) with Gucken Cederborg, Tyra Ryman and its director, Erik Petschler. With Greta Garbo, also listed as being in the film Luffar Peter is Mona Geifer-Falkner. The first film Mona Geifer-Falkner had appeared on the screen in had been Alexander den store (1917), directed by Mauritz Stiller. Eric Petschler gives an account of his having given Garbo the address of Mauritz Stiller and of her having not only having tried to see him twice before they were to meet at the Royal Dramatic Academy, where she was to study under Gustaf Molander, but of his having arranged a third meeting where Stiller had asked for her telephone number. Petschler had then introduced Garbo to the director Frans Enwall. Before directing Greta Garbo, Eric A. Petschler directed the film Getting Baron Olson Married (Gifta ort Baron Olson, 1920), starring Gucken Cederborg and Varmlanningarna (1921), the first film in which Rosa Tillman was to appear. Ragnar Ring directed the short film Paul U Bergström AB Stockholm(1920)-Greta Garbo appeared in the short film, also titled Herrskapet Stockholm ute pa inkop, it also being the first film in which the actress Olga Andersson was to appear, as well her having appeared in the short Reklamfilm PUB Greta Garbo (1921), both films photographed by Ragnar Ring. In 1923 Ring directed Helene Olsson in the film Har Ni nagot att forakra.  Directing A Modern Hero in the United States with cameraman William Rees in 1934, G. W. Pabst, the director of Greta Garbo's second feature film, had entered into the directing of sound film with the films Westernfront 1918 (1930), Die Greigroschen Oper (1931) and Kameradschaft (1932). His actress seemed to be Louise Brooks, whom in 1929 he had directed in the films Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl (Das Tagebuch einer verbrenen). After her having appeared with Edvin Adolphson in the film Brollopet i Branna (1927), directed by Erik Petschler, Mona Martenson in Norway starred with Einar Tveito in People of the Tundra (Viddenesfolk) (1928) written and directed by Ragnar Westfelt for Lunde-film, in Germany starred with Aud Egede Nissen in the film Die Frau in Talar, in Norway starred in the film Laila (1929) directed by George Schneevoigt for Lunde-film from a script adapted from a novel by Jens Anders Friis, and in Denmark starred in the film Eskimo (1930), also directed by George Schneevoight- it had not only been Greta Garbo and Victor Sjöström that had made the transition from silent film to sound.

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Mordant Hall claimed to conduct an interview with Greta Garbo during which it was attributed as her having said, "If they want me to talk, I'll talk. I'd love acting in a talking picture when they are better, but the ones I've seen are awful. It's no fun to look at a shadow and somewhere out of the theatre a voice is coming." Writing in 1929, the author added, "There is no longer any Swedish coterie in hollywood, for Victor Seastrom is no longer there. Lars Hanson is back in his native land, to which lesser lights have flown."      After returning to Sweden in hope that it was there that his daughters would be raised, Sjostrom appeared with Lars Hanson and Karin Molander in a short 1931 beauty contesst film, Froken, Ni linkar Greta Garbo, where Eivor Nordstrom was chosen to be most like Greta Garbo. Its photographer was Ake Dahlquist. With Per-Axel Branner for an assistant director and actress Karin Granberg in the first film in which sshe was to appear. Victor Sjostrom returned to the screen with Brokiga Blad, in which he cast Lili Ziedner.

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Photoplay in 1930 noted, "At the end of every picture Greta Garbo gives an entire day to new portraits. She takes it seriously...She will be photographed on in the only in the clothes she wears in her pictures...One Garbo belongs to the public, the other is a private individual. To keep in the sustained mood she likes to have sad music played on the phonograph. To end the silent era two months before Greta Garbo's last silent film, The Kiss (Jacques Feyder), Clarence Sinclair Bull became her gallery photographer. Author Mark A. Viera writes, 'She liked him because, like Clarence Brown, he spoke softly, if at all.' When Geocites closed, the still photographs scanned from the orginal negatives that Mr. Vieira sent via yahoo e-mail to the present author, and the two letters he wrote were transferred to my google blog. They include a still photograph of Greta Garbo in The Kiss left over from his editorial decision. Apparently he owned more photographs than he needed to publish and sent the unused ones to me. Please accept that I may have been the author to introduce the photos to a Swedish readership, years after they were unearthed. As the reader will notice, the photo used on the cover of Mr. Vieira's was sent to without the title Cinematic Legacy lettering. One published photograph taken by Clarence S. Bull found by the present author was in an issue of International Photographer from 1931, a portrait of camerman John W. Boyle, who had only just then returned from Scandinavia filming a "multi-color film" in Denmark and who would make Sweden, Land of the Viking, a travel newsreel shot on color film stock. Before his having met Greta Garbo, the photography of Clarence Sinclair Bull had been published in periodicals under the name Clarence S. Bull. During 1922, Picture-Play magazine ran his portraits of Helen Chadwick and Claire Windsor; in 1923 his portraits of Mae Busch and Mabel Ballin.  His portrait of Colleen Moore had appeared in Screenland Magazine in 1922 "The Great Garbo talks- and remains great! A faultlessly directed picture with superb characterizations by Garbo, Charles Bickford, Marie Dressler and George Marion." - Photoplay "The Garbo Voice. What will it sound like? The whole world waits to hear the Swedish enchantress for the first time in "Anna Christie" -Picture Play George Marion, who starred with Greta Garbo in the film, had also played the same role, that of Anna's father Kris, in Thomas Ince's earlier silent version, starring Silent Film actress Blanche Sweet. In addition to his having filmed Anna Christie, in 1929 Greta Garbo photographer William Daniels was cinematographer to the films Their Own Desire and Wise Girls (Kempy (eleven reels), both directed by E. M. Hopper. Other romances that actor Charles Bickford had appeared in before filming with Greta Garbo were to include South Sea Rose and Dynamite; to end the silent era he had co-authored the play The Cyclone Lover.   Film historian and theorist Leo Braudy has written, "The lighting that William Daniels created for Garbo's early silent films rendered her more erotic than any spoken dialouge." That is not to say that that is the extent of his contribution to film history; Daniels had been trained on several of Von Strohiem's important films, beginning with Blind Husbands in 1919 and continued in Hollywood passed the 1939 film Ninotchka untill 1970.

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"There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you. Your joys and sorrows- and you can never, never tell them. It is not right that you should tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself when you tell them"Silent Film actress Greta Garbo, Photoplay Magazine
While waiting for the release of Anna Christie, Picture Play magazine included a portrait of Greta Garbo taken by Clarence Sinclair Bull. Edwin Schallert wrote, "Greta Garbo has demanded her private life. She has gone to the extreme even exacting it within the studio itself...Garbo has pursued the same phantom. The ordinary news gatherer, and even a majority of the extraordinary, are not permitted on her set. It is told that once even some of Swedish countrymen of the press came to visit her and were ritzed, or felt they were." With the superlative photography of Clarence Sinclair Bull, Greta Garbo inherited Photoplay Magazine author Katherine Albert, who summarized her writing during 1931 by herself paraphrasing her "I'm bored with Garbo", her looking for and at sensation differently with the articles "Did Brown and Garbo Fight" and "Exploding the Garbo Myth", the former concerned with "the carefully guarded, walled in stage where Greta Garbo was starring in Inspiration, the latter making an event of Greta Garbo objecting to a line of dialog on the set of the film Romance including a photo-caption that read, "The writer, who knows her, says there is no mystery about" After explaining how successful, artisticly, the work of Clarence Brown and Greta Garbo had been, it asks what had happenned during the film Inspiration, "The piece is an adaption of Sappho. The book is now old-fashioned. So is the play. A new script had to be written and neither Garbo nor Brown were entirely satisfied, but there was nothing to do but experiment on the set and se how it read. In order to get anything out of it they must rehearse and rehearse and change and change. That's where the trouble began. Garbo would not rehearse."
Photoplay magazine qualified iteslf in 1935 by quoting its own prediction in its August 1930 issue that had announced, "There is quite a definite rumor that Garbo's next picture will be 'Camille', by telling its readers that it would again print the exact same thing. Interest in Greta Garbo certainly continued as silent film was being shelved, shelved in fact almost in its entirety, and the interest continued for Ruth Biery, who published the article The Garbo Jinx on Her Leading Men in Photoplay Magazine during 1932. The photocaption read, "They were overshadowed by the Garbo jinx" and it included a list of Greta Garbo's leading men, "Garbo has proved to be an absolute jinx to eleven of the twelve men who have been her screen loves in the sixteen single starring pictures she has made since she came to this country. Look down the list of Garbo's leading men. Recall what happenned..." She included Richardo Cortez, Antonio Moreno, John Gilbert, Lars Hanson (who returned to Sweden), Conrad Nagel, Nils Asther, Gavin Gordon and then the author departs into Robert Montgomery "And Clark Gable. You saw him at his worst in 'Susan Lenox.'" Journalist Ruth Biery also brought Greta Garbo another Photoplay Cover; during 1932 Biery, who Garbo may apparently have declined to speak with, added another facet to the extra-textural discourse that was keeping the off-screen Greta Garbo secretive, enigmatic, "She spent many hours giving me the material. I was fascinated by her sincerity, her warm earthly qualities; her utter lack of affectation. After my story was printed, she said to me, 'I do not like your story. I do not like to see my soul bare upon paper." Beiry's answer was seems as though it is in her opinion, a bombshell- Hollywood had not been fair to Greta Garbo. She profiled four men whom she thought had been kind to her, Stiller, Lon Chaney, Jack Gilbert. Jack Gilbert is credited as have kept her in the limelight but out of public view, "He told her not to pose for pictures, which she did not understand and did not like, not to talk to interviewers if it made her nervous." 

Motion Picture magazine during the release of Susan Lennox, Her Rise and Fall was explicit; it published a portrait of Garbo by Clarence Sinclair Bull with the caption "The One- and Only" Underneath read: "There's only one gown in the world like this, just as there is only one Greta Garbo. It was designed by Adrian." Photoplay journalist Amelia Cummings in 1933 queried "Is the Garbo Rage Over?" with the subtitle, "Can the popularity that the world is eagerly curious about be on the wane?" During 1932 it was well within the knowledge of "all the more studious Garbo fanatics" (Picture Play Magazine) that Greta Garbo was on screen with Clark Gable, "Thier attraction for each other is understandable, their antagonism predestined, and their desperate reunion at the end of the picture holds no hope of tranquility." Picture Play magazine thought highly of Garbo, adding, "Nor does she triumph in spite of her picture. It is strong, entirely worthy of her.."

     Paul Rotha hesitates. In his second quickly penned masterwork on the advent of the new art form of sound film, Celluloid Today, which had followed on the heels of Film Till Now, the film critic, while lamenting the death of silent film director F.W. Murnau, appraises the need for suitable roles for Greta Garbo, by then one of the greatest actresses, after having had been being paired with Gilbert, of the silent era. He calmly includes the film Anna Christie among a trio of films that accordingly are brilliant for the visual expression in their opening scene, but lapse into pure dialogue insufficient to explain character.
Writer Louise Lagterstrom in fact characterized the successful transition on the part of Greta Garbo that marked her continuing from a silent actress to a star of talking pictures by titling her webpage for the Swedish Film Institute "Nya roller".
     Journalist Ralph Wheelwritght reviewed the film Mata Hari for Photoplay magazine, "Announcements of the co-starring assingment for Mata Hari sounded signal guns for rumors, conjecture and prognostication of all description..Those who have seen Miss Garbo about the lot during the making of the picture commented upon the gorgeousness of her costume, her unruffled contentment." The author mentions that her co-star had only met Greta Garbo socially on one or two occaisions, "On her dressing room table that morning, Garbo found a huge mound of pink roses." He had sent a card reading, "I hope that the world will be as thrilled to see Mata Hari as I am to work with her- Ramon Novarro".
     Katherine Albert later that year outdid herself with the 1932 article, "How Garbo's Fear of People Started". Cal York was needed for the next glance at Greta Garbo, his quickly dismissing the opinion that she and Barrymore could not work together. "John Barrymore and Greta Garbo instantly warmed to each other...She worked as never before studio associates say. No rehearsal was too arduous; no camera angle too difficult to figure out." During 1932 Picture Play magazine included another portrait from Clarence Sinclair Bull- it began by using the word Dazzling in huge letters beneath a still from the yet to be released Mata Hari, which was followed by the portrait by Clarence Sinclair Bull with the phrase "Good News" in large letters, beside which was the caption, "Oh calm these fears, ye fans whose numbers comprise an army greater than the world has ever known- Greta Garbo is not retiring from the screen." It followed that with another movie still beneath which were the words "At Last!" in large letters with the caption, "Garbo finds a happy ending in As You Desire Me. Of the film Mata Hari it had held, "Certainly it is streching a point say that the picture frequently drags, that the story of a female spy is shallow fiction."
     Fritiof Billquist, the author of Garbo, A Biography was in Sweden during 1932, starring with Gun Holmquist in the film Landskamp, directed by Gunnar Skoglund.
      During 1933 Motion Picture magazine left the explanation of the mystery of Greta Garbo to journalist
Sven Nordstrom, who penned the article Garbo- Now it Can Be Told,"her desire to go on stage is intense...Garbo not only wants to go on stage; she wants to play the most exacting roles ever created- roles written by the dour, morbid, compelling Henrik Ibsen. She would like to interpret every drama, every tragedy he wrote...After ibsen, the playwright whose drama most appeals to her is August Strindberg, also a Scandinavian, also a realist. She would like to do his play The Red Room.

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The whereabouts of Greta Garbo was in most ways far from being kept as secret during 1936; according to Photplay Magazine, Garbo owned a villa in Nyokoping, Sweden and was celebrating her thirtieth birthday. During 1937 it confidently mentioned, "Garbo will make another picture instead of a trip to Sweden". The Swedish Film Institute (Svenska Filminstitutet), which provides an extensive cataloging of the history of Swedish silent film from its earliest beginnings to present, is thorough in its filmography of Greta Garbo, thorough enough to list her having been included in the film The Romance of Celluloid (Celluloidens romantik), made in 1937.      1937 was a year in which during which Photoplay was still providing biographical data on the elusive Garbo, "She phoned to the Grove and asked for the maitre d'hotel...Garbo herself flung the door open to his knock. She was evidently "in the pink"...Since the day Stiller left Hollywood, heart broken by his failure, Garbo never revisited Coconut Grove.      Ruth Waterbury was so thrilled with her performance that while praising the actress's performance of death scenes in Camille (Kameliadamen, George Cukor, 1937) suggested that Greta Garbo star in "Marie Anoinette, "if Shearer decides not to make it." A photocaption in the article reads, "Garbo, entering her eleventh year as a star. She had to die- to live more glamourously than ever." It announced that she would soon appear in the film Countess Walewska wearing a new type of jockey cap, which would have a "deep long bill hanging down in front."      Warner Oland returned to Stockholm in 1938 and, just as those who had known Mauritz Stiller in the United States  had heard the news of his death, Oland passed away in Scandinavia before finishing the film Charlie Chan at Ringside.

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