Word: garbo
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...seems in pain, yet amused by her misery, when she confesses to John Barrymore, "I want to be alone." That line, from the 1932 Grand Hotel, was often taken as Greta Garbo's autobiographical declaration. The unique actress remained above and apart from the Hollywood community in her 16 years there, and she compounded her aloof allure when, on quitting films at age 36, she took up residence in Manhattan and became the world's most famous, most observed recluse...
...Garbo's early retirement was a gift to her fans, as if she wanted to protect the image of her screen beauty before they saw it crumble into mere middle-aged attractiveness. But she must also have known that her standing was secure. She saw that in 1941; we realize it today, as the world celebrates her centenary. There's a knowing, sumptuously illustrated book (Mark Vieira's Greta Garbo: A Cinematic Legacy), a tribute in films and photographs at New York City's Scandinavia House, a monthlong retrospective of all her extant Hollywood films on Turner Classic Movies...
That take-charge attitude was modern but not feminist. Garbo didn't represent a different sex from men. She was a different species, an emissary from a higher world of thought and feeling. In her one indisputably great film, Camille, she bestows love on the youthful Armand (Robert Taylor) as a gift from the gods; and, with her anguished, rapturous death, she leaves it with him. Her performance raises melodrama to a feature-length epiphany. No actress today could play a courtesan's self-sacrifice at such a high and perfect pitch. None would dare...
...most accessible to later audiences. But by then she was an anachronism, a piece of crystal under glass in the museum of antiquated acting. Europe, her biggest market, was closed when World War II began. As for the boys in uniform, they wanted heat from their stars, not Garbo's dry ice. So she retired, to be seen only with her hand up like a traffic warden's, fleeing prying paparazzi. Her hermitry made her even more renowned. Nothing attracts a crowd like hiding from...
Tony Baekeland grew up with two competing family identities. His great-grandfather, Leo Baekeland, was the inventor of Bakelite and the "father of plastics." His parents fancied themselves aristocrats. They socialized with Greta Garbo and Tennessee Williams, the Duchess of Sutherland and Yasmin Aga Khan. But they were vagabonds, getting by on good looks, lordly manners and copious spending. Brooks Baekeland was a self-proclaimed writer who never published. His wife was an artist too busy to paint. Each of them had a love of danger and a propensity for violence. Each seemed more interested in boasting of Tony...