Trivia

Left John Gilbert standing at the altar in 1927 when she got cold feet about marrying him.

She disliked Clark Gable, a feeling that was mutual. She thought his acting was wooden while he considered her a snob.

She was prone to chronic depression and spent many years trying to "cure" it through Eastern philosophy and a solid health food regimen. However, she never gave up smoking and cocktails.

She was criticized for not aiding the Allies during WWII, but it was later disclosed that she had helped Britain by identifying influential Nazi sympathizers in Stockholm and by providing introductions and carrying messages for British agents.

Became a US citizen in 1951.

Director Clarence Brown said of her, "Working [with her] was easy because she trusted me. I never directed her in anything above a whisper. She was very shy, so we'd go through the changes I wanted in a little quiet whisper off in the corner, without letting others know what I was telling her. I learned through experience that Garbo had something behind the eyes that told the whole story that I couldn't see from my distance. Sometimes I would be dissatisfied with a take, but would go ahead and print it anyway. On the screen Garbo multiplied the effect of the scene I had taken. It was something that no one else ever had".

During filming, whenever there was something going on that wasn't to her liking, she would simply say, "I think I'll go back to Sweden!", which frightened the studio heads so much that they gave in to her every whim.

Although it was believed that she lived as an invalid in her post-Hollywood career, this is incorrect. She was a real jet setter, traveling with international tycoons and socialites. In the 1970s she traveled less and grew more and more eccentric, although she still took daily walks through Central Park with close friends and walkers. In the late 1980s failing health decreased her mobility. 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.

Never married, she invested wisely and was known for her extreme frugality.

She actually hoped to return to films after the war but, for whatever reason, no projects ever materialized.

Her sets were closed to all visitors and sometimes even the director. When asked why, she said, "During these scenes I allow only the cameraman and lighting man on the set. The director goes out for a coffee or a milkshake. When people are watching, I'm just a woman making faces for the camera. It destroys the illusion. If I am by myself, my face will do things I cannot do with it otherwise.".

In late 1934, after Queen Christina (1933) and The Painted Veil (1934), which were both huge hits in Europe (making twice their budget in the UK alone) but underwhelming US successes, she signed a contract with MGM saying that she would only make films under David O. Selznick and Irving Thalberg. Her next two films, Anna Karenina (1935) and Camille (1936), were notable hits at the US box office, and produced by Selznick and Thalberg respectively. In 1937 her contract had to be revised, as Selznick left the studio in 1935 and Thalberg had died. She made only three films after "Camille".

Her personal favorite of all her movies was Camille (1936).

Her volatile mentor/director Mauritz Stiller, who brought her to Hollywood, was abruptly fired from directing her second MGM film, The Temptress (1926), after repeated arguments with studio execs. Unable to hold a job in Hollywood, he returned to Sweden in 1928 and died shortly after at age 45. Garbo was devastated.

Gary Cooper was reportedly one of her favorite actors. She requested him for several of her films, but nothing ever materialized.

Except at the very beginning of her career, she granted no interviews, signed no autographs, attended no premieres and answered no fan mail.

A photograph of her, probably cut from a movie magazine, was one of several images of movie stars, royalty, pieces of art and family members used as decoration by Anne Frank on the wall of her room in the "Secret Annex" in Amsterdam where she and her family hid from July 1942 until their capture by the Nazis in August 1944.

First Swedish actress to be nominated for an Academy Award. The others are Ingrid Bergman, Lena Olin, Ann-Margret, and Alicia Vikander who won the Oscar. The only Swedish actor to be nominated is Max von Sydow.

Is going to be on the Swedish 50-kronor banknote in 2015.

Her parents were Karl and Anna Gustafson, and she also had an older sister and brother, Alva Garbo and Sven Garbo. Her father died of nephritis when she was 14 and when she was 21 her sister died of lymphatic cancer.

She was voted the 8th Greatest Movie Star of all time by "Premiere Magazine".

Popularized trench coats and berets in the 1930s.

Director Jacques Feyder recalled working with her: "At 9 o'clock a.m. the work may begin. 'Tell Mrs. Garbo we're ready,' says the director. 'I'm here,' a low voice answers, and she appears, perfectly dressed and combed as the scene needs. Nobody could say by what door she came but she's there. And at 6 o'clock PM, even if the shot could be finished in five minutes, she points at the watch and goes away, giving you a sorry smile. She's very strict with herself and hardly pleased with her work. She never looks at rushes nor goes to the premieres but some days later, early in the afternoon, enters all alone an outskirts movie house, takes place in a cheap seat and gets out only when the projection finishes, masked with her sunglasses".

Pictured on a 37¢ USA commemorative postage stamp issued 23 September 2005, five days after her 100th birthday. On the same day, Sweden issued a 10kr stamp with the same design. The likeness on the stamps was based on a photograph taken during the filming of As You Desire Me (1932).

Letters and correspondence between she and poet/socialite/notorious lesbian Mercedes de Acosta were unsealed on April 15, 2000, exactly ten years after Garbo's death (per De Acosta's instructions). The letters revealed no love affair between the two, as had been rumored.

Her favorite American director was Ernst Lubitsch, although Clarence Brown directed her in six films, including the classics Flesh and the Devil (1926), A Woman of Affairs (1928), Anna Christie (1930) and Anna Karenina (1935).

Once lived in the famed Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles (8221 Sunset Boulevard).

In the mid-'50s she bought a seven-room apartment in New York City (450 East 52nd St.) and lived there until she died.

She was as secretive about her relatives as she was about herself and, upon her death, the names of her survivors could not immediately be determined.

Before making it big, she worked in Sweden as a soap-latherer in a barber's shop.

She was voted the 25th Greatest Movie Star of all time by "Entertainment Weekly".

She was originally chosen for the lead roles in The Paradine Case (1947), My Cousin Rachel (1952) and "The Wicked Dutchess". She turned down these roles, with the exception of "The Wicked Dutchess", which was never shot due to financial problems.

Was offered the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950), but turned it down. Gloria Swanson was cast instead and went on to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.

Her greatest confidante was Salka Viertel, a German friend who had known her back in Sweden. Viertel proved to be very manipulative of her, including relationships (particularly with Mercedes de Acosta), film choices and general living. It was Viertel, in fact, who persuaded her not to return to films. Ironically, Viertel was friendly with Marlene Dietrich, Garbo's enemy, whom Salka had known back in the period of Germany's Weimar Republic, and she had a lot of dirt on Dietrich's deepest secrets and past. Garbo's film choices were largely determined by Salka's persuasion; they co-starred in the German version of Anna Christie (1930), and shortly after that Garbo insisted that Salka be placed on the MGM payroll as a writer for her films.

When she heard that David O. Selznick, who had produced her hit Anna Karenina (1935), was leaving MGM in 1935 to start his own studio, she begged him to stay, promising that she would let him personally supervise all of her pictures exclusively. He said that it would be a great honor but he had other plans. Ironically, the usually very finicky Irving Thalberg, Garbo's other favorite producer, was the first person to give Selznick money to start his company ($200,000).

Interred at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery, Stockholm, Sweden.

Once voted by The Guinness Book of World Records as the most beautiful woman who ever lived.

She was Adolf Hitler's favorite actress.

According to her friend, producer William Frye, he offered Garbo $1 million to star as the Mother Superior in his film The Trouble with Angels (1966). When she declined, he cast Rosalind Russell in the part--at a much lower salary.

Her first film appearance was in a short advertising film that ran in local theaters in Stockholm.

According to a 1974 Michael Parkinson interview with Orson Welles, Garbo did two bread commercials for theater use before she changed her name. The films existed at a Stockholm archive at that time.

Director Albert Lewin, on casting the leading role in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945): "One day I received a message from Cedric Gibbons, who wanted to see me on a matter of urgency and secrecy. Gibby was the only close friend of Greta Garbo around the studio, and he had been deputed to tell me that Garbo wanted to play Dorian. Indeed, it was the only role she would come back to the screen for. Of course, I moved heaven and earth to set it up. But everyone had a fit: the censorship problem, formidable anyway, would have become insurmountable with a woman",.

At the Swedish School of Drama, where she studied from 1921-24, she became close with Vera Schmiterlöw, which grew into a lifelong friendship. The intimate correspondence between the two are saved in the National Archives of Sweden. In 2005 three of these letters were stolen from the archives and have not yet been found.

Was offered the role of Mama Hanson in I Remember Mama (1948), but she turned it down. Irene Dunne was cast instead and went on to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.

In 2006 "Premiere Magazine" ranked her performance as Ninotchka in Ninotchka (1939) as #25 on its 100 Greatest Performances of All Time list.

Lived the last few years of her life in absolute seclusion.

Her first "talkie" was Anna Christie (1930).

Was named #5 Actress on The American Film Institute's 50 Greatest Screen Legends.

Throughout her MGM career she insisted that William H. Daniels be cinematographer on her pictures. This may not have been purely superstition, as the two notable films she made without him--Conquest (1937) and Two-Faced Woman (1941)--were her only notable flops.

Spanish sculptor Pablo Gargallo created three pieces based on her: "Masque de Greta Garbo à la mèche," "Tête de Greta Garbo avec chapeau," and "Masque de Greta Garbo aux cils".