Screenland (Jun-Oct 1935)

for October 1933 15 REALLY TALKS! By Hettie Crimstead with the joy of life, her happiness reflected in her shining eyes and the gaiety of her perfect smile. This Hollywood's baffling star of the strange disguises and the cynical silence ! "Is it really — it can't be Garbo !" My Swedish friend laughed. "You thought she was stern and unapproachable? Perhaps she is in America but now she is at home in Sweden so it is different. Come. I will present you." Two wide sea-blue eyes looked up at me. Sun-tanned fingers clasped mine in friendly fashion. "But of course," said Garbo, "I shall be delighted. Won't you sit down?" I took the chair beside her, conscious of her faint perfume like a shy spring breeze. She was dressed entirely in smoke-grey, a tailored flannel sports suit over a soft silk shirt, low-heeled grey suede shoes, a grey and white peasant scarf twisted round her throat. Her lovely hair hung in a golden cascade on her shoulders but curling down on her forehead too instead of being swept back in the familiar screen style. Her meal was a generous Swedisch repast with soup and pickled herrings and savoury meats and cold vegetable dishes arranged in fanciful shapes. "You see I do not diet," she laughed. "I am afraid it would make me bad-tempered to go without my dinner !" She talked quite frankly about her plans and ambitions, eager — even anxious — that I should understand her finer feelings. "Nothing I have ever done on the screen has come up to the standard I have set for myself," she said. "In every part I have seen some mistake I have made, some shortcoming, some moment when the film has fallen into the commonplace. The critics have praised, perhaps, but that does not matter to me. Please do not think me egotistical. I am only being honest and I must satisfy myself before I can feel content. I have not done so yet." "But surely 'Queen Christina' pleased you?" "On the contrary, I was bitterly disappointed in it. I had hoped for so much from that film ! I wanted it to be a saga of my native land so that all the world should see a page of our glorious history. But I could only do what I was allowed to do." She shook her head sadly. "The spirit which pervaded that film was not genuinely Swedish." Though she knows she cannot realize it yet awhile, her cherished dream is to head her own producing unit with which she can make the pictures that would please her sensitive artistic conscience. Particularly does she want to play a woman of the people, not "glamorous Garbo" but a simple creature of homespun, human and lowly, working out the tangled pattern of her unnoticed life just as thousands of women are plodding every day all over the world. "So much I must strive for," Garbo said, half smiling half sighing. "Yes, I find Hollywood supremely interesting, but my life there is enormously exacting for I have to give myself so closely to my work every day and then in my leisure I must read and study constantly. It is Wide World The Swedish Sphinx speaks, and her words are recorded in this exclusive Screenland feature. Read what Greta thinks about her pictures, her future. Share her hopes and her dreams. necessary if I am to achieve and not stagnate. That is why I refuse invitations and spend so much time secluded in my own home. You have heard I am eccentric, eh? That is not true. I love life as any other woman — the beauty and the color and the music of it all strike my heart. But I am too busy for pleasure every evening and in any case I prefer my few friends whom I can trust to a large circle of acquaintances, so many of whom are usually self-seeking." Garbo admits that she does not greatly care for parties