Greta Garbo became especially the late 20s and the 30s of the twentieth century in many American films, tragic female roles. She is considered one of the greatest movie legends, has the Hollywood ever produced. Their presence has been described by critics as the Divine with the nickname, Swedish Sphinx or princess dreams of eternity.

Greta Garbo was born on 18 September 1905 in Stockholm as the youngest of three children of Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871 to 1920) and Anna Lovisa Johansson (1872 to 1944) was born. Her parents lived in precarious financial circumstances in a working-class neighborhood in Stockholm. The couple already had two children Sven Alfred (1898 - 1967) and Alva Maria (1903 to 1926).

Greta was 14 years old when her father died. To support the family, she worked as tvålflicka (Einseifmädchen ") at a hairdresser. Your income improved when she got a job at the famous department store in Stockholm, Paul U. Bergström (PUB). She worked occasionally during this time as Model for the in-house catalog. So they brought in for some spending several hats. the way she appeared in two short promotional films.

Be decided early on to an actress, Greta Garbo was in September 1922 the entrance exam for the prestigious drama academy of the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. Decades later, she told me that both the audition and the subsequent inclusion in the academy, the most exciting and happiest moments were their lives.

In the summer of 1922, Greta Garbo was, nor as Greta Gustafsson, for the first time in a film production - in the slapstick comedy Luffar-Petter. The film was an amateur production with no real dramatic and distinctive characters. But all parties had evidently great pleasure in turning. In the academy, such trips were not welcome in the movie business, so they refrained from any further such deals.

Even during training, but was discovered by the internationally renowned Swedish director Mauritz Stiller, putting together the cast for just the filming of the novel Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf. Stiller screen test and was prompted by the natural talent and charisma of the young actress impressed. He gave her in 1923, a major supporting role in the production of Gosta Berling, which premiered in March 1924. Quiet it was, who invented the stage name Garbo. About the origin of which was a lot of speculation early on. So shall originate in the word Gáborné ( "Forest Spirit") are located. Another common theory is of the opinion that these are also the phonetic evolution of the original proposal Mona Gabor, who leaned in the name of a former prince of Transylvania.

Gosta Berling has been a great financial and artistic success. Stiller received an invitation to Germany, where he was filming a drama about the escape of a young Russian nobleman before the October Revolution with the title "The Odalisque of Smolny. In November 1924 Garbo left an acting career and went with Stiller to Bulgaria and Turkey to find the right locations to. In the end, the plans were dashed, however, Garbo had, instead of in Georg Wilhelm Pabst's The Joyless Street (1925).

That same year, Stiller signed a contract with the newly-founded Hollywood studio MGM. Greta Garbo followed her mentor to meet with Louis B. Mayer, the studio boss. Mayer was most impressed by the young Swedish woman and gave her a contract with a term of three years.

In the first two films floods of passion and Temptress was Greta Garbo in the role of South American used with loose morals. Critics immediately discovered her talent and praised the actress as an exciting discovery.

Significant for the further course of her career was working with cinematographer William H. Daniels. He quickly realized that the beauty and intensity of their presentation were the best in extreme close-up advantage. Recording in mid-shot of Garbo films since then have been the exception. Daniels participated in almost all her movies. He was then pushed through also that the locations (sets) for visitors and trespassers were hermetically closed, as the actress responded sensitively to disturbances and could not concentrate to the extent that it deemed necessary.

After their first films were financially quite successful, the breakthrough as a star in 1927 was with it, the Greta Garbo once began as a femme fatale. The attraction between John Gilbert and her, who fell in love while shooting each other, was not overlooked on the screen. The strip, which was based on a play by Herman Sundermann, became a huge box office success. Garbo here first worked with director Clarence Brown, who later often directed by their films.

The success of the film left the audience and the producers are calling for a new Garbo film. But the actress was unhappy, always - as she called it - to play bad wives and therefore refused the role in the melodrama Women Love Diamonds. Greta Garbo was also believes her weekly salary of $ 500 is too little for a star, wanted everyone to see on the screen. They went on strike for seven months, until the studio on her salary increased $ 5,000 and given a wider range of roles guaranteed.

Immediately afterward, she turned to John Gilbert an abbreviated version of Anna Karenina. From the film, two alternate endings were filmed: for the American market, a happy ending, while the rest of the world was more familiar with Tolstoy's work, got to see the tragic end of the template. The film has been renamed and advertised with the simple slogan of Gilbert and Garbo in Love.

Most silent films, which turned Garbo still were far from becoming classics of the genre, but they recorded the production cost and also threw from profit. In general, the plot revolved around a young woman, the romantic entanglements between a passionate lover and the mostly older husband - preferably Lewis Stone - must exist. One exception is presented of the strip invisible shackles, the Garbo in 1929 as a young American with progressive ideas about the relations between the sexes. The heroine spends a time quite frankly, together with a man, played by Nils Asther, without being married. The two cruise on a sailing ship called The All Alone in the South Seas. Even the actress makes frequent walks alone in the rain. Both are more or less subtle references to the withdrawn and solitary attitude of Greta Garbo, who had already become her trademark.
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