NINOTCHKA = THE REASON I MARRIED A RUSSIAN GUY
I started learning Russian after watching this film, then I married a Russian boy thanks to my Russian language and dancing classes. I am very grateful to it. Now I´ve got a half Russian son. Russian people can be so cold and so passionate at the same time. Thanks Greta. Indeed Greta seemed more Russian Rather than Sweddish.
Hollywood unfair to Greta,
So, how is Hollywood unfair to Garbo?
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Wow, that's interesting! ;)
As for Greta vs. Hollywood... Yes, the big bosses wanted her out - but it was Greta who ended up having the last laugh. Here we are, 102 years after her birth, still discussing her and admiring her. ;)
Which is much more than can be said of certain studio executives...
Not to change the topic, but "Which is much more than can be said of certain studio executives... " made me think of the unknown guy who fired *both* young Clint Eastwood and young Burt Reynolds on the same day.
Ok, back to Garbo!
I think Garbo is just at fault as well. She become very picky about the movies she wanted to do and with actors. In old Hollywood with the big bosses, if you pissed them off you were out of the picture industry. Look at Clara Bow, John Gilbert, and Louise Brooks.
share"...made me think of the unknown guy who fired *both* young Clint Eastwood and young Burt Reynolds on the same day..."
I remembering hearing Burt Reynolds tell that story.
He and Clint are walking off of the lot, commiserating about not getting jobs.
- Burt "so, why didn't you get the job?"
- Clint "they said I can't act."
- Burt "they told me I didn't look the part."
- Clint "well that really sucks for you."
- Burt "what do you mean? You didn't get a job either."
- Clint "yeah, but I can learn to act."
I heard it a long time ago, and I'm badly paraphrasing, but it's a cute story.
an actress with the success she had, had every right to demand only the best and work with the best of everything. If you have worked for your fame, you deserve all the perks, especially when they are related to the quality of one's work.
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Always without you
Who knows? Today she might have been Meryl Streep.
shareWho knows? Today she might have been Meryl Streep.
I know they lost the foreign market and thats why MGM let her go, but still shocked nobody else wanted her immediately. MGM based their firing on one flop?
shareRobert:
Greta Garbo was not fired. Her MGM contract expired in 1944. She was greatly disenchanted with the film business and had planned a long break from filmmaking until World War Two was over. She felt totally out of step with Hollywood during her career and would've left Hollywood for good in 1932 if MGM hadn't acquiesced into letting her film "Queen Christina", so much a marketable star she was then.
By the end of 1941, when she made her last film, "Two-Faced Woman", the image Garbo created in her dramatic films was, to MGM executives, out of touch with the hyper-American content of films during World War Two. She did make a screen test for a film an Italian producer wanted to produce but the financial backers pulled out of the film after seeing Garbo's 1949 screen test. After that episode, she never deigned to think of acting. After "Two-Faced Woman", she chose not to act anymore. A similar situation happened with her colleague, Norma Shearer.
The MGM queens of the 1930's had lost favor with the audiences or had moved on to other, non-film endeavors during the war. Norma Shearer retired. Joan Crawford asked to be released from her contract. Myrna Loy took off from filmmaking in order to devote herself to Red Cross activities. Jeannette MacDonald's career had run it's course and her type of musical seemed dated by then. Jean Harlow had died years before and Greta Garbo felt her image had passed. Garbo was never fired. It was Louis B. Mayer, her boss, who saw her potential in American films and signed her to a contract at MGM.
What's wrong with Streep? I think she's exceptionally more diverse than Garbo. No, they're not in the same league, but they're acting styles are incredibly different. Garbo was exceptional within a particular range. This was a step away from her established profile.
Streep on the other hand has taken on a much more complicated and diverse range of characters than Garbo took on. Garbo knew her strengths and definitely played them to their full advantage. Wise cookies, both of them.
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Sic vis pacem para bellum.
Thank you for the fascinating tidbits from you bio: that you dig Russian language & culture, married a Russian and have a son with him. However, your told us precisely nothing about your main point - that Hollywood was unfair to Garbo.
shareboo-hoo! Vivian Leigh gave the best female performance in 1939.
Top 250 Foreign Movies
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls076565151/
Garbo's possible return was in 1948 in Balzac's Duchesse de Langeis, to be produced by the independent Walter Wanger. She did a color screen test filmed I believe by James Wong Howe. When the financing collapsed she was scared off and that was the end.
Some write that she was unwise to take the advice of her friend Salka Viertel in choosing roles before Ninotchka, in particular the remote, glum costume dramas Anna Karenina and the awful Conquest. (Camille is the exception.) David O. Selznick, who produced Anna Karenina, urged her to do Dark Victory instead. Such modern films might have strengthened her U.S. appeal.