The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

James Montgomery Flagg Reveals The GARBO YOU NEVER KNEW Continuing our series, of favorite stars of famous people, James Montgomery Flagg, famous illustrator, says, "Garbo's face has as much character as Abraham Lincoln's has for a man. Fortitude! She's magnificent!" IT is the opinion of James Montgomery Flagg that Greta Garbo is the greatest of the film stars. The silent Swede, says the renowned artist, has everything. He places no crown on her golden head — but a halo. According to Mr. Flagg, Greta is greater than art. It sounds like a Hollywood rave. Moreover, to your correspondent who laid siege to Mr. Flagg in his New York studio for his selection, it was — at first — a nuisance choice. I had never before contributed so much as a gram to the tons of tripe that weigh down the fabulous Garbo. And I hesitated, in the early stages of our interview, crestfallen at thus being forced to commit a violating act. But, so help me, the Flagg Garbo is no one you have ever met before. She emerged through his summation, not the pseudo-sphinx shunning the quoted word, but a melancholy Swede, a mystery woman whose screwy reactions, indeed, rudeness, are born of sorrow. And I don't mean a yearning for the dead Stiller. It seems Mr. Flagg knows Garbo. Let us get to his characterization at once. "She vibrates, does things to you. She has a terrific lot of dignity. She carries around with her a Swedish phonograph record of laughs; no words recorded, no music, just laughs — belly-laughs, hysterical chortles, loud guffaws, laughs that are insane, satiric, happy, derisive, sardonic — every degree of emotional response in laughter. Then she'll play it on her host's or hostess's phonograph and watch the reaction. I don't know what it means. . . ." Perhaps I should explain that Mr. Flagg is picturing Miss Garbo after an all-afternoon social contact with her at a party given by a director some years ago when he was in Hollywood. She was Garbo in person. She was apparently at ease in his company and spoke, on the word of Mr. Flagg, with earnest freedom. "We sat together on a sofa. I didn't find her aloof, reticent, or rude, as others are said to have found her. True, she wasn't voluble at the start. But something clicked in me when we met, and I have often wondered if she realized it too. Realized what it was. She certainly gave me the key at the start with an astonishing revelation. She confessed to me that she suffered from melancholia. "Well, years ago as a youth, studying in England, I had been a victim of melancholia, and I was sympathetically bonded to her at once. This might well be a spiritual affinity, Moreover, she told me that she had experienced melancholy in her youth, so I discounted the stories I had heard of her sorrow for the dead Mauritz Stiller, her first di By DOUGLAS GILBERT rector in Stockholm, and the man she is said to have loved — he who was responsible for her success. "Success? I wondered just how much it meant to her. I recall how she characterized herself to me during her conversation; it was 'Svenska flicke," which means, I believe, 'just a little Swedish girl/ While we were talking I asked her if she'd pose that I might sketch her. She agreed, graciously and with charming politeness, and I began to wonder again at the tales I had heard of her rudeness. "She tilted back her head, revealing her lean neck, which is one of the most remarkable characteristics of her features, and I began. I was interested, tremendously interested, and took some pains to make a finished drawing, not just a hasty sketch. I said, 'you are tired?' And she said, 'no, I am not tired. You are the first real artist I have met in America.' It shut me up, for a moment. But she never betrayed the slightest sign of kidding me. She really sounded very sincere. I finished the sketch and gave it to John Gilbert. "Then I did something unpardonable, and to this day I can't tell you why. I reached down, picked up her tea-cup, and drank from it. She looked at me for a moment, steadily, with just a trace of disdain. Then she said, "Are those American manners?' I would have given an arm not to have had it happen. Yet it was worth seeing her coldness, an indescribable frozen contempt. "Millions admire her I know. I'm not traveling with the herd; I just think they have good taste. And another thing, she hasn't got big feet, it's all damn nonsense. She's tall, about five feet six inches; if her feet were smaller they'd be disproportionate. And her face to me has as much character as Abraham Lincoln's has for a man. My feeling for her art is best summed up in her final scene in 'Queen Christina.' I shall never forget her bravery as she goes forth, standing there at the prow of her ship — such fortitude, such utter renunciation. She is magnificent." Says Mr. Flagg. Now let's take a breather and get down to case histories. Frankly, I am at a loss to understand Mr. Flagg's rave. So far as I know he has never committed himself to superlatives with such abandon before. Indeed, as a forthright artist in New York for some forty years, he has always insisted upon calling a spade a spade and not a "garden implement." Now he goes haywire over Garbo. I suspect that his affection for her artistry is more than "a melancholy affinity." They have more in common than that. Like Garbo, Flagg shuns the multitude. Both run on independent tickets. Both are courageous, Garbo shrewdly silent in her fortitude, Flagg with outspokenness. He once characterized the nation, indignantly commenting upon some mass response, as "the United Sheep of America." He is really one of the remarkable characters of commercial art, so prolific he was once accused of being a syndicate. His was no beginner's garret. He was in the money almost from the start, earning when sixteen, a stipend for his drawings for Life, St. Nicholas and other magazines that would be a fairish figure today. A native of New York born of New England stock, he studied in art schools for six years; all wasted time, he says, "unless I had gone to college in which case the time wasted would have been appalling." There is less nonsense about Flagg than almost any other commercial artist. Is the illustrator's field art or business? Flagg will tell you — business. Says it has to be so in an industrial nation where a man is appraised by what he has or what he earns. He has no highfalutin' views about art for art's sake. // A publisher of educational (Please turn to page 63) The list of Greta's leading-men is staggering. See the photographs below. With JOHN GILBERT ... HERBERT MARSHALL ... RAMON NOVARRO . . . JOHN BARRYMORE . . . and GEORGE BRENT The New Movie Magazine, April, 1935 I7