‘Love is not really dramatic. It is what is behind love and romance that gives us the greatest emotion. I don’t know what the greatest emotion really is. Perhaps it is sacrifice. That is of course a big part of love.’
Immediately after finishing Flesh and the Devil, John Gilbert flew alone to New York. Rumours persisted of a rupture in his relationship with Garbo, yet while he told reporters that they were ‘just good pals’, she stayed on at Tower Grove Road, with Sven Hugo Borg and Carey Wilson for company. Within days, Gilbert was back home and once more asking Garbo to marry him. ‘Jack wanted her to be the semi-official châtelaine of the house on the hill,’ Wilson observed, adding how Gilbert had told the press, ‘I am engaged to Miss Garbo, but I don’t know whether she considers herself engaged to me.’ Gilbert forked out $15,000 for a two-masted schooner and almost as much again for refitting the vessel, which he baptised The Temptress. After their wedding, he said, he and Garbo would take a year-long honeymoon trip to the South Seas. Unimpressed by the importance Gilbert attached to material possessions – the fact that to his way of thinking, love could only be bought – Garbo never set foot on the schooner and it was sold at a loss, without even making its maiden voyage.133
Irving Thalberg, meanwhile, had decided that Garbo’s next film should be Women Love Diamonds,134 the title alone of which made her cringe. This tells the story of Mavis Ray, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who lives a life of luxury courtesy of a benevolent uncle, who is actually a sugar-daddy. Borg was again given the task of telling Thalberg that she was not interested, resulting in Garbo’s ‘unacceptable’ behaviour being repeated to Louis B. Mayer, whose reaction was more severe than usual: unless she toed the line, he would have her deported! This cut no ice with her: scarcely a day dawned when she and Borg were not plotting to return to Sweden – Lars Hanson, Einar Hanson and Mauritz Stiller had already made plans to leave Hollywood when their contracts expired. Also, Garbo had another weapon with which to fight her ‘oppressors’: she could marry Gilbert, become an American citizen, and sign to another studio, which would not treat like a chattel, once her own contract expired.
Once this reached the press, Garbo received hundreds of letters from fans who did not consider the philandering Gilbert good enough for her. One fan, Robert Reud from Detroit, offered to marry her to save her from deportation, then divorce her with no financial restraints once she had sorted out her problems with the studio. Reud so touched her heart with his words of encouragement that she met him and they remained close friends for many years. Mayer attempted to call her bluff and on 4 November sent a telegram, informing her that she had now forfeited her part in Women Love Diamonds and ordering her to report to the studio, or else. She ignored this, and the next day Mayer dispatched a letter by personal courier:
You have disobeyed this instruction and we have not heard from you either directly or indirectly … We desire you to know at this time that it is our intention to engage another artist to play the part assigned to you. Until further notice you are instructed to report daily to our studio at 9 a.m. During the period of any insubordination on your part, your compensation under the said contract will be discontinued.135
Puzzling, on the face of it, was Sven Hugo Borg’s letter, dispatched at around this time to Garbo’s New York lawyer, Joseph Buhler, which concluded: ‘The difficulties with Miss Garbo and the studio are, in my opinion, the fault of Miss Garbo. But as Mr. Louis B. Mayer holds Miss Garbo in high regard, I am certain that everything will be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.’136
Buhler’s immediate response was to read the letter to her over the phone, or so he alleged, insisting that she fire her ‘secretary’ at once. Some years later, Borg observed, ‘Had I been employed by her instead of the studio, she would have done it.’137 Considering his utterly selfless devotion towards Garbo – even after she had left him for another man – it is extremely unlikely that Borg would have been acting out of spite. It may well be that she had asked him to write the letter, in the hope that if she adopted a Machiavellian stance and humbled herself to Mayer by admitting, through Borg, that she was in the wrong, then she might get more of her own way. Also, there was no way that Garbo would have dismissed Borg – she could scarcely function without him. Indeed, Borg was Garbo’s rock at this time, and had quite possibly become her lover again. John Gilbert was away much of the time shooting The Show for horror supremo Tod Browning and, as usual, was unable to keep his trousers buttoned. Within days of beginning work on the film, Garbo received news that he was sleeping with his French co-star, Renée Adorée, his old flame from when they had been shooting The Big Parade.
One question must now be posed: could one of the reasons for Garbo’s tetchiness and seemingly persistent fatigue have been something more than anaemia? Could she actually have been pregnant? There is a curious passage in Norman Zierold’s 1970 biography of Garbo, where he observes:
An author friend states that he worked for years with Garbo on her autobiography, that Stiller was the obsession of her life, that there was a child which died at the age of five. At the time of Stiller’s departure for home, he reportedly begged Greta to come with him … She stayed and Stiller went, leaving her only with sad memories and guilt. In 1964, when this autobiography was finally completed, Garbo withdrew permission to have it published. There were too many frank revelations, she felt, and now was not the time to air them.138
Zierold, writing in the more cautious late-1960s, makes no reference to Stiller’s homosexuality and the fact that he, unlike Borg and Lars Hanson, never slept with women meaning that if there had been a child, it would almost certainly not have been his. Therefore, who was the father: Gilbert, or Borg? Though coming to any satisfactory conclusion may be purely speculative, it is possible to find some convincing answers in the events of the next few months. Garbo confided in Borg about her desire to have a family. Therefore who better with whom to produce the perfect fair-haired, blue-eyed Swedish child than this towering, handsome specimen? Gilbert seems determined not to have wanted children with her: ‘She hates Hollywood,’ he said. ‘She wants to buy half of Montana or whatever state it is that has no people in it, and turn it into a wheat farm and raise wheat and children. Frankly, I don’t want to marry some dumb Swede and raise wheat and kids miles from civilisation.’139
Her desire to have children is also implied by Borg’s recollection of Garbo’s reaction when an Italian baby crawled towards them one day while they were on the beach:
Garbo’s face became transfigured. With arms outstretched she talked baby talk to him, and when his mother had come and taken him away, Garbo said to me, ‘Borg, some day I want a little one like that – all of my own.’ I have often noticed this inclination of hers towards children. I have seen the mother-hunger too often not to believe what she said. People have placed Garbo on too high a pedestal. They have made it difficult for her to live a normal life, and it is difficult for them to visualise their goddess with normal womanly instincts. Nevertheless they are there.140
These events are reflected in a scene in The Temptress, which has absolutely no bearing on the storyline. A peasant baby crawls into Elena’s room. At first, she ignores it, then looks like she might be about to shoo it away. Then, her expression melts: she gathers it into her arms and sings it to sleep with a lullaby, sending the message to cinema-goers that even a heartless vamp may have maternal feelings. Why did Garbo insist on such a scene not in the original script? Was she saying, back then, that she wanted a family of her own?
It was only now that Garbo acquired her first agent, though the only way of contacting her would still be through Sven Hugo Borg: Harry Edington was John Gilbert’s agent-business manager, who later married his Flesh and the Devil love-rival, Barbara Kent. Edington never charged Garbo for his services – she was listed on his books as a ‘prestige item’ – though by the summer of 1927 MGM would be secretly paying him $20,000 per picture to ‘keep her sweet’ and prevent her from returning to Sweden. ‘He became convinced that I was not as terrible as the papers made me appear,’ she told Ake Sundborg, ‘He understood that what I wanted was not to make a fuss. I hate fuss. I wanted only the opportunity to make good pictures.’141
The ‘good picture’ looked like being Anna Karenina, based on the novel by Tolstoy. Irving Thalberg had made the decision without even reading the book and was now horrified to learn that the story ends with Anna flinging herself under a train. Obviously, this was unsuitable for Hollywood: while a new ending was commissioned, Garbo – by way of Borg – was instructed to report to MGM’s costumes department. His response to this was, ‘Miss Garbo is tired and does not want to do it.’ Louis B. Mayer exploded, ‘Send the dishwasher home!’ Thalberg called for patience and understanding, at least for the time being. The studio was finding it almost impossible to cope with Garbo’s ‘quiet tantrums, illnesses and indifference’ – but they had also become used to the vast revenues her films were bringing in.
More speculation over whether Garbo may have been pregnant can be drawn from the compromise which was reached. The studios had a no-nonsense approach to unmarried stars who ended up in the family way: they could have an abortion, or be sent away until the child was born and put up for adoption – or they could marry the father, whence the birth would subsequently be reported as premature. Otherwise they were fired. Garbo was no ordinary star who could be pushed around and did not care whether she stayed in the movies or not. Therefore, as if aware that she would be absent for some time, Thalberg hired a bit-part actress, Geraldine Dvorak, who was not just the exact height, weight, and shape as Garbo – broad shoulders, large feet, wide hips – but who acted, walked, talked (in a fake accent) and so looked like her that anyone meeting her for the first time could not tell them apart. Officially, Dvorak’s job was to stand in for Garbo at costume fittings, and in long-shots where her face would not be seen; unofficially, to stand in when her swelling figure might be detected if the shot called for her to be standing sideways.
Privileged journalist Rilla Page Palmborg, who was married to a Swede and who had met Garbo at the home of their mutual friend, Victor Sjöström, was permitted to attend Dvorak’s costume fittings, and subsequently watch the pair working:
‘Gott! She looks like me!’ exclaimed Greta the first time she saw Geraldine modelling gowns. Never did any girl enjoy her work more than the double of Greta Garbo. All day long she sat close to the star studying her every movement … and imagined what it would be like to be the great Greta Garbo. Stardom bored Garbo, and when the day’s work was done she left its glittering, dazzling garments at the studio. Then Geraldine, with her hair slicked back from her face like Garbo’s, wearing the clinging, exotic garments of the Garbo of the screen, would sit at the table in a gay night club, looking more like Garbo than Garbo herself – while Garbo, dressed in a rough tweed coat, with a slouch felt hat pulled down over her eyes, hurried home to quiet and peace.142
Texas-born Dvorak (Jeraldine Matilda Dvorak, 1904–85) appeared in several Garbo films, and as one of Bela Lugosi’s brides in Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931). When Jean Harlow died halfway through shooting Saratoga (1937), Dvorak was brought in to double for her in a number of unfinished scenes, where she is seen in long-shot or with her face covered. For a while there was speculation over whether Garbo and Dvorak had actually met, but several photographs do exist of them together. It was she, and not Garbo, who met director Dimitri Buchowetzki in the foyer of the Miramar Hotel in late January 1927. Buchowetzki (1885–1932) had been chosen to direct Anna Karenina because of his reputation of being able to handle ‘tetchy Europeans’ such as Pola Negri and Emil Jannings. According to one journalist, ‘Garbo’ walked up to him, listened to his protestations on behalf of Thalberg, and of how enthusiastic he was about working with her – then rounded on him with, ‘But I do not wish to work with you!’143
Meanwhile, while Garbo was in hiding – only Sven Hugo Borg appears to have known where she was – Harry Edington met with Mayer and attempted to explain that maybe his client was only being awkward because her name was now as big as John Gilbert’s, while MGM were paying her less than one-tenth of his salary. Mayer argued that he was paying her what he believed she was worth: on 18 September, her twenty-first birthday, her salary had risen to $750 a week. Edington pressed for a minimum $5,000, which Mayer refused to even consider. Borg’s response to this was that, until he capitulated, Garbo would be ‘staying home’.
Over the next few months, journalists reported numerous ‘sightings’ of Garbo, none of which actually happened. Dorothy Herzog had Garbo and Gilbert jumping into his roadster and heading for Santa Ana – she thinking that they were about to enjoy a weekend break, until he pulled up at a marriage bureau, whence she fled to the washroom, locked the door and climbed out of the window and hurried to the nearest hotel, where the bellboy called a cab to take her back to Los Angeles. Rival gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, who for thirty years made many a star’s life a misery with their holier-than-thou preachings and caustic reports, vied for the best stories. Hedda claimed the ‘escape’ had taken place when Gilbert stopped at a service station. Louella claimed to have seen Garbo, clinging to Gilbert’s arm at the 3 February premiere of Flesh and the Devil but no one else did, and despite the barrage of press present at the event, there are no photographs to substantiate the story. And when Hedda rubbished the story, Louella came up with another scoop: a Valentine’s Day wedding. ‘GARBO WEDS GILBERT – FRIENDS SAY!’ the headline screamed. Again, the story was made up.
On 23 February 1927, John Gilbert was photographed leaving the Glendale Hospital: the press were told that he had been kept in overnight for observation, but refused to specify why, resulting in more specification. Had Garbo’s lover attempted suicide because she had ended their relationship? Had her Swedish secretary really driven her to and from the hospital, rolled up inside a rug on the floor of his car? And why were her closest friends – Stiller, Rolf Laven, Lars Hanson, and Einar Hanson – steadfastly refusing to speak to the reporters? Then, four days later, the news broke that Mayer did not know where she was either – moreover that MGM had suspended her, without pay.
Garbo and Borg had in fact retreated to La Quinta, the recently founded resort in California’s Riverside County, twenty miles east of Palm Springs. Established by entrepreneur Walter Morgan and later famed for its golf tournaments, in its early days it provided a well-protected hideaway for Hollywood stars and socialites wishing to avoid scandal: the movie moguls brought their mistresses here, actresses recuperated here after secret abortions, or waited out the last months of their confinements safe from the prying eyes of the press. Garbo and Borg rented La Casa, a three-room bungalow tucked into a quiet corner of the resort, so discreet that over the next twenty years she returned time and time again.
On 6 March, Garbo dispatched a six-page telegram of complaint to Robert Rubin, head of the legal department at Loew’s Inc., MGM’s parent company. In this, she defended her actions for not wishing to negotiate another contract once her current one expired, and accused Mayer of victimisation – obviously she was referring to his threat to have her deported. She berated MGM for purposely giving her a bad press, with their persistent references to her temperament, and their criticism of her for rejecting roles which she found unsuitable – and further accused them of compromising her health by expecting her to make a minimum of three films a year, without breaks in between. Mayer’s reaction to her going over his head was to offer another ultimatum: she had rejected Anna Karenina, which he now claimed she had asked to play in the first place, and unless she pulled herself together and reported for duty, the part would be given to someone else. Garbo ignored him again and, realising his bullying tactics were getting him nowhere – and that he would be a fool to let her go – Mayer capitulated early in May and offered her a contract which, after some deliberation, she would eventually sign on 1 June 1927.
The new deal was for five years, backdated to 1 January to compensate for the revenue Garbo had forfeited while on suspension. She would be starting out on a weekly salary of $3,000, raising to $5,000 over the term of the contract. It was unique in that she was the only Hollywood star to be paid fifty-two weeks of the year as opposed to the usual forty. She pressed for this because, she said, she never took vacations – therefore what would be the point of her hanging around for the other twelve weeks, doing nothing?
In the meantime, the search resumed. On 18 March, Louella Parsons claimed that Garbo had been waylaid by reporters outside the Miramar, and coerced into giving a brief statement, ‘I think a lot of Mr Gilbert. I admire him very much indeed – as a friend, not as a possible lover or husband.’ Again, this was pure invention: she was not even at the hotel. On 11 April, Gilbert was arrested after a fracas at the Beverly Hills police station: drunk, he barged into the place claiming that Mauritz Stiller had just tried to kill him and when an officer laid a friendly hand on his shoulder and asked him to calm down, Gilbert drew a gun on him. Cuffed and thrown into a cell, the next morning he was brought before a judge, and sentenced to ten days in jail. The judge was quoted in the press as having told him, ‘Nobody makes a monkey of the Beverly Hills police and gets away with it!’ Louis B. Mayer let him ‘stew’ for the night before assigning MGM Chief of Police Whitey Hendry to his case. Money exchanged hands and Gilbert was released: Mayer needed him back at work because he was scheduled to begin shooting Twelve Miles Out, with Joan Crawford.
Adela Rogers St Johns recalled how Gilbert had confided in her about one of his rows with Garbo, and of how she had reacted with the same indifference towards this as she did everything else: ‘When in sheer desperation he threw her off the balcony and down the Beverly hillside, she climbed back over the rocks and through burrs and tumbleweed.’ Often, if Gilbert was in one of his moods, Garbo would call a cab, head for the Miramar, and spend the night with Borg. Gilbert also tried to make her jealous by picking up prostitutes and recounting his adventures with them in clinical detail over the breakfast table – though Garbo did not really care what he was getting up to any more. Howard Dietz recalled an incident when Gilbert told her, one evening before going out, not to expect him home because he had arranged to have sex with sultry Chinese-American star Anna May Wong – to which Garbo replied, matter of fact, ‘I’ll leave the door open, Jack.’ Borg told the story of how Gilbert once wept on his shoulder, convinced Garbo did not love him but Mauritz Stiller. Little did he know that her real comfort zone was the big man in whom he was confiding.144
Gilbert is alleged not to have wanted to work with Joan Crawford, but that Mayer ordered the pairing as part of his ongoing plan to destroy Gilbert in the wake of the Boardman-Vidor wedding incident: he was hoping that the two would find each other irresistible – that someone would relay the news to Garbo, who would abandon all hope of ever marrying him. He needed to keep Garbo single once she signed the new contract binding her to MGM – this time, if she stepped out of line again, he really would arrange for her to be deported. Gilbert, however, was not interested in Joan, nor she him. ‘He was like a caged animal – he resented every moment he was not with Garbo,’ she later told his daughter.145 146
On the day Garbo emerged from her self-enforced solitude, Harry Edington, morally supported by Borg, read Mayer the riot act. From now on, his client would be treated with respect – she was a human being, not one of the studio props or a lesser employee they could bully and humiliate. Also, from now on she should be known only as Garbo and any future interviews would be sanctioned by him, and only if Garbo desired to be interviewed – which effectively would be never. The idea of ‘building up’ on her mystique, however, appears to have come from Borg, who told her one afternoon as they lay sunbathing on the beach at Santa Monica:
I know you are not acting, Greta, when you hide from people. But just the same it is something that fits your personality to be mysterious and secretive. By playing up to it, you will kill two birds with one stone and you will get your privacy and also get people talking about you.
To which she responded, ‘You think so, Borg? Yes, maybe it is a good idea.’147
A few years later, in her one and only exercise in putting pen to paper for a press feature, she observed:
When I first went to Hollywood under the wing of Mauritz Stiller, I used to go to parties regularly and attend premieres. But my work began to suffer. Also, making public appearances destroys the illusion that surrounds the shadows of the silver sheet. The creative artist should be a rare and solitary spirit.148
On 21 April, Garbo reported for work on Anna Karenina, the first time anyone other than her intimates had seen her in twenty-seven weeks. Sven Hugo Borg drove her to the studio: she had celebrated her ‘windfall’ by exchanging her car for a much larger Packard, too big for her to handle – later, the studio provided her with a chauffeur. It was the first time she had faced a camera since 13 October, when shooting the alternative ending for The Temptress, and it was also the first anniversary of her sister Alva’s death. Remembering how Lars Hanson and Lillian Gish had comforted her then, she dropped in on the set of their latest film, The Wind, before returning to her own set.
Dimitri Buchowetzki’s Anna Karenina was doomed from the start: within minutes of the cameras rolling, Garbo was denouncing Buchowetzki as ‘The worst director in the world’. Her co-stars for the production were Lionel Barrymore, who she liked and, with John Gilbert still shooting Twelve Miles Out – Ricardo Cortez, her co-star from Torrent with whom she had vowed never to work again. She also disliked the cameraman, Merritt Gerstad, and said that she would only work with William Daniels. Again, Louis B. Mayer refused to budge, and on 28 April, Garbo fell ill with what she said was food poisoning: Borg took her home, and there followed yet another lengthy period where she seemed to disappear off the face of the earth.
Though no official statement was given to the press, the ubiquitous Louella Parsons had all the answers. Writing in her column that Garbo was seriously ill, she added that ‘a friend of the star’ had confirmed that she nevertheless was expecting to return to work within the next few weeks. Again, this was pure speculation. Next, MGM announced that Ricardo Cortez had been assigned to another film, and that Irving Thalberg would be replacing him with Norman Kerry. Finally, when one of Thalberg’s secretaries was unable to locate Garbo, and when her friends refused to divulge her whereabouts, he closed down the production – at a loss of over $200,000.
By 18 May, Garbo was reported to be recovered from her malady – an announcement which coincided with MGM’s press-release detailing drastic changes to the Anna Karenina production. Dimitri Buchowetzki had been fired and replaced with the more amenable London-born director Edmund Goulding, who had already built up a rapport with Garbo during his Sunday visits to Tower Grove Road. She became especially fond of Goulding (1891–1959) because, like Mauritz Stiller, he never directed ‘by the book’, preferring to allow his actors to use their initiative as much as possible. His first move was to replace Merritt Gerstad with William Daniels. John Gilbert was also free by now, and Thalberg cast him as Anna’s lover, Vronsky. This meant that she would be dropped down to second-billing, but this she did not mind. Next, Thalberg changed the title: Anna Karenina too much of a mouthful for some Americans, he declared, so he incorporated the new title into the slogan, ‘Garbo & Gilbert … In Love!’ MGM were, however, still taking a calculated risk, given Garbo’s indifference and mercurial temperament: though she had made a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with Louis B. Mayer, she had yet to sign her new contract.
This was duly signed, and everyone at MGM breathed a huge sigh of relief. Yet just two evenings later, on 3 June, there was another setback. Garbo, Borg, Mauritz Stiller and Rolf Laven had thrown a small dinner party at the Miramar to cheer up Einar Hanson, who was having problems in his private life. Since arriving in America, Garbo’s co-star from Die Freudlose Gasse had completed two films with Pola Negri, but was finding it increasingly hard coping with the strain of hiding his sexuality – something which would never have happened in the more liberal Sweden – and begun drinking heavily. Driving home the worse for wear after Garbo’s party, and ignoring pleas to stay the night at her apartment, Hanson – accompanied by the latest ‘love of his life’, his pet Airedale – had skidded off the Pacific Coast Highway, near Topanga Canyon. Trapped beneath the wreckage for several hours before being rescued, and with his faithful dog standing guard, he had died soon afterwards in the Santa Monica Hospital.
He had been two weeks shy of his twenty-eighth birthday and his death hit Garbo hard. Once again, she retreated from the world and there was talk of her giving up her career. What was the point of staying in such a prejudiced environment? Who could do this to a young man? Certainly there was no encouragement for her to stay from John Gilbert: he had cheated on her throughout their now deteriorating relationship with any number of women – though the same may be said for Garbo who, when fleeing back to the Miramar to evade his drunken, bad-tempered binges had invariably ended up back in the arms of Borg.
Who got her to change her mind – Borg or Goulding – is not known. She returned to the set, leaning on Borg’s arm for support and informed Goulding she no longer wished to be photographed in close-up during her menstrual cycle when she looked pallid and gaunt. Since the previous summer she had suffered from irregular periods, accompanied by excruciating pains – some sources attributing this to a recurrent ovarian infection. This led to further speculation surrounding Garbo’s recent disappearances – a total of 251 days ‘in some wilderness’, aside from the seven days she had worked on the cancelled Anna Karenina.149
Again, this leads to speculation. The ‘recurrent ovarian infection’ could have been the result of a difficult labour and birth, or the result of a botched abortion conducted by a studio doctor. There was also worse speculation: a miscarriage, brought about by a beating during one of John Gilbert’s psychotic episodes.
The pregnancy theory was touched upon by Garbo biographer Mark Vieira, who cites ‘an unpublished 1962 interview with a television producer,’ – given by Garbo’s intimate screenwriter friend, S. N. Behrman, wherein a stenographer’s notes are reported to have read, ‘Mr Behrman said he thought she might have had a couple of abortions and that this had given her a terror of sex.’150 However, given Garbo’s proven maternal instincts and desire to have children, one could assume that an abortion would have been totally out of the question, even to save her career, which she was never really bothered about saving in the first place. Indeed, being pregnant would have offered her the perfect excuse to carry out her oft-repeated threat and return to Sweden. And if there had been a baby, and if she had given it up for adoption – or maybe asked someone to care for the child until she had decided whether to remain in America or not – who better for the job than one of her trusted Swedish friends, or even Anna Gustaffson? Lars Hanson and his wife had already announced they were leaving Hollywood for good, as had a number of Swedish technicians who had worked with Garbo: any of these would have fit the bill, if required.
So, if there was a child, what happened to it? There seems little doubt that there was a cover-up, aided by Whitey Hendry and Los Angeles district attorney Buron Fitts, for whom such things were almost a weekly occurrence. A similar situation would arise in November 1935, when Loretta Young gave birth to Clark Gable’s daughter, Judy. To avoid the ‘shame’, the baby was placed in a San Diego orphanage from which, two years later, Loretta ‘adopted’ her. It would take another twenty years for the truth to emerge. Yet over eighty years after Garbo’s confinement, if there was one, we are no closer to solving the mystery – other than knowing that those missing eight months had nothing to do with any ‘strike’.
Another important point to consider is Garbo’s sexual preference from this point on: once Gilbert had exited her life, so far as can be ascertained, aside from Borg there appear to have been no more physical relationships with men. Nils Asther and Ramon Novarro admitted to sharing a room with her but denied that sex had taken place. From now on, the only men permitted within her intimate circle would be gay or bisexual and only as friends, never to provide her with ‘lavender’ cover. It was as if she was saying – if she had fallen pregnant – that she would not be taking the risk of making the same mistake twice.
Love finally began shooting on 22 June 1927, by which time there were days when Garbo and Gilbert were not even speaking, let alone in the mood for love-making in front of the camera. MGM had employed the photographer William Grimes to take ‘candid’ shots of the couple without their knowledge, to prove to doubting fans that they were just as much in love as they had always been. Unfortunately, Grimes’ pictures told another story and the shots of the couple between takes, looking glum and sometimes hostile, were never used.
Tolstoy’s novel begins at one railway station and ends at another. The Hollywood version opens on the road to St Petersburg, during a snowstorm, when Anna’s horse drops dead and her troika is stranded. Rescued by a passing captain, Count Alexei Vronsky, she is driven to an inn, where they shelter for the night. (Gilbert, looking considerably more macho than he had in Flesh and the Devil, but sports a silly cropped hairstyle and a cheesy grin, and hams it up with one of the worst performances of his career. The restored print, with a haunting new score, was screened at the University of California’s Royce Hall in 1984 before a live audience and their reaction – mostly laughter at Gilbert’s expense – was left in.)
At the inn, the hostess assumes they are spending the night together and puts Vronsky’s clothes in Anna’s room. (The shot of their slippers, side by side, and Gilbert fondling Garbo’s discarded stockings was cut from some prints.) He kisses her, but for now that is as far as it goes and when he leaves, she wipes her mouth in mock derision.
The two meet again at the cathedral, during the Easter service; then at the Grand Duke’s ball, where they fall in love and brazenly dance in front of her stuffy elderly husband, Karenin (Brandon Hurst); and finally, at a wolf hunt, at which she tells him they must cool things off for a while.
Cut to Anna in her apartment (and the essential ‘Garbo takes stock of herself in front of the mirror’ sequence, which had featured in all of her films since Die Freudlose Gasse), where she realises that the real man in her life is her little son, Serezha (Philippe De Lacy).
Much has been made of the fact that Garbo was only twenty-two, while her on-screen son was ten years old. In the film, the relationship between mother and son is almost incestuous, resulting in three of their scenes being heavily censored. In the first one, Garbo kisses the former child model (who had played the young Leo in Flesh and the Devil) several times on the mouth. One biographer praised De Lacy’s ‘Pre-Raphaelite sensuality that made him the perfect love object for a repressed and doting mother’, while Alexander Walker, comparing her with her later rival, observed:
Dietrich and Garbo, outwardly femmes fatales in their films, women of the world who sought out the little boy in the men who pursued them, would deploy their femininity in scenes with children in such a way as to summon forth and flatter the latent manhood of their screen offspring. The flirtatious De Lacy, a remarkable child actor who resembles a male Shirley Temple, behaves like a miniature adult: and the love-starved Anna turns him into a substitute love-object.151 152
A scandal erupts when the lovers meet at the racetrack, where Vronksy rides in the steeplechase: Anna’s hysterical reaction when he takes a tumble gives the game away. They leave Russia and travel to Italy, where they are miserable, he missing his regiment and she her son. During a riverside picnic she sees a boy who resembles Serezha and demands, ‘Give me a kiss!’, causing him to shrink back in horror while Vronsky turns his back in disgust.
The pair return to St Petersburg, where Karenin has told Serezha that his mother is dead. She sneaks into his room: it is his birthday and she has bought him a train set. (This is the film’s most heart-rending scene, a moment so genuinely sincere that one can only assume Garbo was thinking about the child she had almost certainly lost.) Karenin catches her. ‘Better you were dead than to live, a constant reminder to him of your disgrace,’ he says, ordering her never to see her son again.
Karenin has arranged for Vronsky to be dishonourably discharged from his regiment, and this Anna’s conscience will not support. She visits him to say goodbye, and though she pretends that all is well, the title suggests that Vronsky knows what she has in mind: ‘Anna, even death could never part us.’ She kisses the handle of his sword, then him, and the next time we see her she is standing at the platform edge, about to end it all as the train’s headlights flash in the distance.
Preview audiences reacted badly to such a dramatic ending, however, so Thalberg commissioned Frances Marion to sabotage one of the greatest works in the Russian literary canon:
Vronsky returns to his regiment. The story moves forward three years, during which time he has searched in vain for his lost love, and Vronksy discovers that Serezha is now attending military school. He goes to see the boy and learns that Anna has been coming to visit every day since Karenin’s death. Then the door opens, she appears, and (to hysterical applause from the audience) flings herself into Vronsky’s arms.
Though it fared exceptionally well at the box-office, Love did not represent Garbo’s finest moment thus far in her career. It was her film – she dominates every scene she appears in, easily out-acting John Gilbert, which by this stage of his career was not hard to do. But it has to be said that she shared the honours with Phillipe De Lacy – and cameraman William Daniels, whose close-ups of her were nothing short of stunning.
In Flesh and the Devil, audiences had Lars Hanson to light up the screen alongside Garbo’s cool Nordic beauty – along with Nils Asther and Robert Taylor, by far her most engaging and believable leading man. In Love they had only Garbo. When the film premiered at the Capitol in New York, the manager of the theatre attempted to dispel the rumours that Garbo and Gilbert were no longer an item by projecting a large red heart on the stage curtains while the orchestra was striking up the overture.
Mordaunt Hall observed in the New York Times:
Miss Garbo may lift her head the fraction of an inch, and it means more than John Gilbert’s artificial smile … It is not often that one feels that the mere watching of a screen actress is more interesting than the story, but it is the case in this film … Anna, at least, is real and therefore it does not matter that the other characters occasionally look as if they have stepped out of a musical comedy…153
And from Motion Picture:
Lovers of Tolstoy will be disappointed. Those who like to study the Garbo-Gilbert embraces will be disappointed. In fact, the only people who won’t be disappointed are those who have always thought of Greta Garbo merely as the woman in pictures who dresses worse than Alice Terry. Because Greta is surprising, and her beauty and fine acting make a cheap, melodramatic picture into something at least interesting, if not good.154
Variety was certainly off the mark with its predictions for the couple’s future:
Peculiar combination, this Gilbert–Garbo hook-up. Both sprang up suddenly and fast, Miss Garbo from nowhere. The latter isn’t now as big as she should or will be, always remembering it’s the stories that count … Miss Garbo and Mr Gilbert are in a fair way to become the biggest box-office mixed team this country has yet known.155
There was just one problem. The love affair dubbed by the press as ‘The Romance of the Century’ – having survived by the skin of its teeth throughout the shooting of Love – had ended long before the cameras stopped rolling.
133 ‘Jack wanted…’: John Bainbridge, Garbo (Doubleday: 1955).
134 Women Love Diamonds, directed by Edmund Golding, was re-cast with Pauline Starke, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Lionel Barrymore. It proved a costly flop.
135 ‘You have disobeyed…’: Alexander Walker, Garbo (Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 1980).
136 ‘The difficulties…’: Walker, ibid.
137 ‘Had I been employed…’: Sven Hugo Borg, ‘The Private Life of Greta Garbo’ (unedited), Film Pictorial, 1933.
138 ‘An author…’: Norman Zierold, Garbo (Stein & Day: 1969).
139 ‘She hates…’: Zierold, quoting Adela Rogers St Johns, ibid.
140 ‘Garbo’s face…’: Borg, ibid.
141 ‘He became convinced…’: Ake Sundborg, ‘That Gustafsson Girl’ (unedited), Photoplay, 1930.
142 ‘Gott…’: Rilla Page Palmborg, The Private Life of Greta Garbo (Doubleday: 1931).
143 Agnes Smith, ‘Up Speaks A Gallant Loser!’, Photoplay, February 1927.
144 ‘When in sheer…’ Adela Rogers St Johns, ibid.
145 Leatrice Gilbert Fountain & John R. Maxim, The Dark Star (St Martin’s Press: 1985).
146 Howard Dietz, Dancing in the Dark (Quadrangle: 1974).
147 ‘I know you are not acting…’: Borg, ibid.
148 ‘When I first…’: Liberty.
149 Karen Swenson, Greta Garbo: A Life Apart (Simon & Schuster: 1997).
150 ‘Mr Behrman said…’: Mark A. Vieira, Greta Garbo: A Cinematic Legacy (Harry N. Abrams: 2005), Source Notes, p.275, ‘Notes between Mr Behrman and Mr Davidson,’ unpublished transcript.
151 ‘Pre-Raphaelite sensuality…’: Richard Corliss, Garbo (Pyramid: 1974).
152 Walker, ibid.
153 ‘Miss Garbo may lift…’: Mordaunt Hall, New York Times, December 1927.
154 ‘Lovers of Tolstoy…’: Motion Picture, January 1928.
155 ‘Peculiar combination…’: Variety, January 1928.