Garbo: Her Story

by Antoni Gronowicz

Hard back and pages are in very good, clean and clear condition. Jacket shows light edgewear and colour-fading to spine.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Film, History, Biography Memoir, Media Tie In

476 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw Grand Hotel starring Greta Garbo and she really steals the show with her performance at the end of the movie you fear for her when she finds out what has happened. She is believable and not unlike the diva she plays totally human. She only made 22 movies in her career and she then quit the business.

Greta Garbo is a legendary screen goddess and even the small amount of movies she made both silent and talkies are a credit to her, she shines like a few have done. Even if her movies are perhaps less watched by a modern audience because basically the focus in movies has changed totally. Even modern costume dramas have a higher pace than then movies from the thirties were she was doing her job.

As a Biography it was an easy book to read, well written and even if it basically a book from her birth to her final movie, her later years outside of the spotlight of Hollywood are not really documented. Her awkwardness, shyness and strong working ethos are well documented as is her love and demise of her relationship with Max Schiller. The book also shines a light on her drive which was really money over the content of her movies, even if she was really immersed into the content of most of her movies which was a large part of her working and acting style.

She is a fascinating woman who decided early on that she wanted her independence guaranteed and did not join the Hollywood system even if her whole working life in Hollywood was created and spotlighted by the the studio system of which you learn through the eyes of Garbo herself.

She was a complicated woman with plenty of issues and her personal life as she shows in these pages make for interesting reading and I am sure any decent psychologist would certainly have is conclusions after reading this book. But she was an interesting character in the early days of Hollywood and still a goddess in my humble opinion.

The biographer admits that he slept with Greta Garbo and he got her to talk about her life in the movies, I do not have an opinion about a biographer sleeping with his subject that is the business of two grown people. He did write an interesting book about a fascinating woman and I really enjoyed reading it. So I guess I'll be looking for more Garbo movies to watch even if they are probably not my cup of tea (prefer coffee myself) but she is bloody amazing on the screen.

The book is also an interesting story about the studio systeem in Hollywood and what it did with people. Great Garbo entered it on her their rules and left the system under her own steam independent and free. Not free of her ghosts but the public perception with whom she created the Garbo legend.

A good and decent read if you can find it.

[Reese Lightning · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given this 5 stars if not for the prologue, in which the author insists on recounting his experience of sleeping with his subject, and manipulating her into revealing personal material secretly compiled for his unauthorized book, published only after her death. I hate to say the rest was actually quite well-written. Still, fuuuck this guy.

[Mary Gill adams]

it was well written, but the author ruined the end with his last comments in the final chapter - she must have angered him by not sticking out the interview process.... she was an interesting person. not terribly likeable, but her time in the film industry was golden!

[Mrs Hadson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Secondhand account of a first rate opportunist. Written in the first person by a third person makes the whole writing suspect.
If you are a Greta Garbo fan I would not recommend this book.
The author prologue sets the tone of Greta Garbo being manipulated and engineered by the men in her life. The writing flows well but you are constantly pondering “did she really say that?” “did she really think that about herself, others”?? There is no way to know the validity of accuracy of the account.

[Audrey]

Didn't get past page 40.

[TriCedratops · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars to give the decent writing it's due merit but the word that comes to mind on this one is 'junk.' If you're looking for a book about Garbo, find something else.

Halfway through this one, I found myself teetering on the line of abandoning it or pushing through since I've dragged it around for 10+ years. So I opted to half-committedly skim through it.

The book opens with the author claiming Garbo dragged him into bed in what sounds to be just hours of meeting him and the rest of the book generally follows cycles of:
Blah blah blah movie making
Blah blah blah older director tells me how to act, molds me, creates me, I love him - kind of
Everybody loves me everybody wants me - name drop, name drop, name drop, and they've slept with half of Hollywood name drop name drop name drop but clearly I'M the first and only they've ever been in love with
Blah blah blah movie making
More people love me, want to be me - and it generally cycles like this

Actual line from the book that irks me so much, yet I can't stop laughing at it's ridiculousness:
"I made up a list of everyone who was in love with me or who played at being in love. I immediately crossed off all the females"

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only thing good about this book was the cover. I actually bought this piece of junk in hardcover, when it first came out which I rarely do. I was fascinated with Garbo and there was a big runup before the book was published. And of course since I was young and stupid, I bought into the hype. Doubt very strongly the "author" had more than a passing acquaintance with her.

Do not recommend.

[Päivi P. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Garbon elämänkerta, jonka julkaisuun näyttelijä ja perikunta eivät antaneet lupaa, mutta jonka kirjailija kertoo kirjoittaneensa Garbon kanssa käytyjen keskustelujen perusteella. Garbo kasvoi elämään omaa legendaansa mystisenä erakkona.

[Matthew Steiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and fun to read but at the end of the day it was really just fluff.

[Luke Devenish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crikey, what a weirdo! A fascinating weirdo, but still a weirdo. I might even go so far as to say that she was as nutty as a date pud. Not that this remotely detracts from her luminescence on screen - it doesn't - but what this book illustrates above all else is that Garbo barely lived off screen at all. She was only at her best when the cameras were on her, and when they weren't (ie, for the last fifty years of her life), she had one big Swedish peasant foot planted in self-indulgent crazy. What is refreshing about her though is her degree of self-awareness. She knew she was nuts, and stingy, and 'legend' obsessed, and dislikeable. She didn't shy away from any of it. She didn't try to amend any of it very much, either. Some of her bahaviour really is reprehensible at first glance. Dropping Marie Dressler like a hot rock (that they were scissor sisters at all was quite a revelation) and then shedding not a tear when Marie went to her early grave was pretty unkind. I can only presume this was because of the present Marie sent when Garbo was setting sail to Sweden - the one that paranoid Garbo sniffed the hand of Mayer behind. Ditto John Gilbert and his even earlier grave. His demise was ghastly and she didn't seem cut up about it at all. Indeed, the discrepancy between the still much lauded 'great romance', as popular legend has it, and Garbo's own very backhanded dismissal of the whole thing, is one of the most startling aspects of her story. Still, there must have been SOMETHING between them, even if he did compel her to take her frock to the dry cleaners, Lewinski style. Other memorable moments for me were Mercedes da Costa's lunatic mysticism (another weirdo!), pre-dating the Beatles-go-swami by thirty years; the fling with the strapping ship steward (that was very sexy - wish there were snaps); and the extraordinary episode of saving suicidal Hazel the maid. Overall, I suspect there's a better biography than this one to be read, and I shall endeavour to find it. Antoni Gronowicz had unprecedented access to her, and he captures 'her own words' very well, but it lacks an incisive assessment of her character, preferring to allow Garbo to achieve that herself. For that reason, grains of salt are required, I think. The chapter at the very end was a bonus but it stuck out a bit. Would have appreciated more of that earlier. Still, this was a highly entertaining read, consistently, if not objectively illuminating, about one of Old Hollywood's most compelling stars.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die meisten Biographien sind voreingenommen und subjektiv, alle sind eingeschränkt in dem, was sie zeigen können. Das gilt auch für diese Biographie. Allerdings wird dies hier nicht verschleiert, sondern in der Darstellung der Beziehung des Autors zu Garbo offen thematisiert. Vielleicht ist es auch falsch, dieses Buch lediglich als Biographie wahrzunehmen. Der Autor, ein polnischer Lyriker und Romancier, teilt hier seine ganz persönliche Wahrnehmung der Garbo mit seinen Lesern. Das Ergebnis ist mehr eine Art Liebeserklärung in Form eines Romans, dessen Charaktere zufällig realen Menschen entsprechen.

Gronowicz' Darstellung der Filmikone besticht durch diese überaus persönliche Qualität, noch verstärkt durch den allmählichen Wechsel in die Perspektive von Greta Garbo selbt. Stellenweise scheint ihre Figur überzeichnet, beinahe wie eine ihrer Filmrollen, aber immer plastisch und eindringlich.

Als Grundlage wissenschaftlicher Bemühungen eignet sich diese Biographie kaum. Man darf die faktische Genauigkeit von Gronowicz' Schilderungen ruhig bezweifeln. Das tut dem Unterhaltungswert seiner Schilderungen keinen Abbruch und mindert nicht die Faszination, die diese komplizierte und vielschichtige Persönlichkeit immer noch auf ihre Bewunderer ausübt.

[Michela Derry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Assurdo l'autore si dichiara amico della Divina, ed avrebbe trasposto nel libro le confidenze da lei ricevute, quando lei stessa ha negato tutto e gli eredi non hanno dato l'ok per la pubblicazione. Eppure il ritratto che fa della Divina sembra veritiero, anche se lei non ha mai concesso un'intervista in vita sua e parlava poco di sé. Scrisse Natalia Aspesi su Repubblica: “I pochi conoscenti ancora in vita della diva definiscono il libro una beffa, un falso, una porcheria; mentre l’unica erede della immensa ricchezza accumulata dall’avida reclusa, la fortunata nipote Gray Reisfield, dopo essersi opposta alla pubblicazione, si è accordata con l’editore Simon & Schuster, non si sa su quali basi finanziarie, e l’ha consentita”. Ma si attese la sua morte, nel 1990, per mandare in stampa questo libro, già pronto nel 1976 (l’autore era morto nell’85).

[Abb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a couple book in Garbo but what I like about this one is that most of it is written as if Garbo is doing the talking. I enjoy books on the old movie stars such as Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner etc

[Sparkler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading about this woman was absolutely fascinating! And tragic.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a sad, complicated lady. I don't know if anyone truely knew her.

[Ulla-riitta Mankki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was written without the permission of the close relations of Greta Garbo. Anyway it was fascinating to read the story of life of one of the great divas of last century.

[diego]

not the best, and the opening with the writer allegedly sleeping with the subject plus the controversy that Garbo never met him killed this for me.

[Emilyhmartin · Rating 1 out of 5]

never got good