One month ago, on April 15, 30 years have passed since the day the Greta Garbo passed away. The "biggest star of silent cinema", as she was rightly called, in addition to being a great actress and acting talent, also had a life that has always been a mystery to the Hollywood world. After all, she herself as a man he was mysterious, but also mysteries.
«I want to be alone». The above phrase is one of her most famous atrocities, which she allegedly said before deciding to thunder it all down and spend more than half a century in a kind of isolation. And we say "allegedly" because she denied that she had said exactly that, stressing that her statement was:I want you to leave me alone».
The truth is that they never left her alone, since the "isolated" in New York lonely and strange Greta was a challenge for the paparazzi of the time. However, for more than 50 years, the great star of world cinema has managed to live as she wished. In one "quarantine", Like the one the planet lives on today. Only in her case she had chosen it herself, wanting to be protected from the virus of publicity. At least that's what he believed.
The truth is that Garbo was one of the strangest creatures in Hollywood and her character could hardly be deciphered. Snobbish, narcissistic, possessive, monotonous, lonely, anti-social. These are some of the not at all flattering adjectives that accompanied it, but everyone agreed that it was his absolute diva. Hollywood.
A diva who did not want many social contacts, was "sick" of overcrowding and secularism and applied her own "social distancing" before becoming a "fashion" in recent months around the world, due to coronavirus. In fact, the Swedish actress never signed autographs, did not respond to letters from her fans, hated interviews (which she never gave) and never attended social events.
So one can understand that her character - on the verge of misunderstanding - gave the opportunity and the space in bad languages to talk about her, without her trying very hard to refute what was being said. For example, it was said that Garbo was ashamed of her humble origins and the work done by her father, who was a toilet cleaner for the five-member family living in Stockholm.
He was ashamed, it is said, of the fact that he never managed to finish school, since he only went to primary school. This is because her father fell ill with it Spanish flu (died a year later) and then-12-year-old Greta had to take care of both the family and the family.
In fact, she got a job as a saleswoman, but later enrolled in drama school, where she paved the way for the success and glory that the poor girl from Stockholm had not predicted even in her wildest dreams. But the fact that she didn't have a school education was something that always haunted her.
Her acting talent was great and it was not long before she appeared in the silent Hollywood cinema, where she soon became a big star. Glory, fame, success, Oscar nominations, money, everyone was on their feet. But she didn't seem interested. We said, socialities and all this glory did not concern her. He was also a strange character.
So, at the age of 36, she decided to thresh everything and be isolated in her 7-room luxury apartment in Manhattan. Isolation in bustling and secular New York? And yet, it happens and she succeeded for about half a century, when she passed away.
And she did it at a time when she had a great career with many successes in her assets, although her last two films were described as failed. Greta Garbo, therefore, chose to enter her own "quarantine", emphasizing that she was not alone, just lonely. After all, all these years she met her own people and friends. He traveled to Europe (he had also visited Greece in the early 60s), but was always incognito. But photographers always discovered her, and she always showed her displeasure.
For a long time she gave her own battle with her depression, while it is said that he also suffered from bipolar disorder. But how did the big Hollywood star spend her "quarantine".
She came out of her apartment just to take walks, always disguised and wearing huge black glasses so they wouldn't recognize her. But he didn't always succeed, as the paparazzi lurked for a click of the lone star. However, Garbo received a last burst of publicity when nude photos of her, taken with wide-angle lenses, were published in People magazine in 1976, where she was taking care of herself and enjoying a bath.
She had spoken about her isolation through the letters which she sent to her close friend, Salka Virtel (screenwriter of "Anna Karenina") and who saw the light of day a few years ago.
"I'm not going anywhere, I'm not seeing anyone… There's a dark irony to this isolation - being alone while I'm a public figure," he wrote in a letter to an anonymous collector.
In another letter, Garbo wrote: "It's very difficult to be so alone. But, sometimes, it's even harder to be with someone. I don't know why we come into this world and in our short lives we can't treat each other with more kindness. I don't know why God did not allow us to be young and strong forever. "
The big Hollywood star died in 1990 at the age of 85 from pneumonia.