
Garbo
Her Life, Her Films
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Narrated by:
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Maria Tucci
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By:
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Robert Gottlieb
Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo and the culture that worshiped her.
“Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s minds, hearts, and dreams.” Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in 16 short years, to infiltrate America’s subconscious; her decision to suddenly end her film career at the age of 36 only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in only 24 movies, yet her impact on the world - and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed - was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe. She was a phenomenon, a Sphinx, a myth, but also a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard.
In Garbo, acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb attempts to capture the ever-elusive essence of Garbo through the eyes of others: In addition to a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, Gottlieb combs through glimpses of Garbo in literature, music, private letters, and, of course, films, in order to better understand her. Discovering her within Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and in the letters of Marianne Moore, and following her from her early movies with MGM to her career-defining, Academy Award-nominated role in Camille to her world-stopping decision to leave the limelight, Gottlieb crafts a biography of unprecedented intimacy and scope in the hopes of capturing the woman that only the camera knew.
©2021 Robert Gottlieb (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















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Gottlieb wrote Garbo with the same precise detail balanced for breadth and depth as one would expect from an historian. Were I to ask Gottlieb, “Why Garbo?”, I’d be surprised if the subject emerged from lifelong fandom; but rather, I suspect Gottlieb is a man in-the-know who believed he could make a contribution in all the places where predecessors have lacked. Although there is an excellent Garbo biography, such as by Barry P., most have an agenda or extracted information through unethical means like Sven B. that makes it impossible for me to read.
That Gottlieb keeps an appropriate emotional distance from Garbo to maintain objectivity is evident time and again. No emotional apologetics for Garbo or baseless nonsense about her being part of Old Hollywood’s “sewing circle.” The sine qua non of a biography I immediately dismiss as complete garbage is one that indulges persistent and baseless rumors about the subject’s sexuality.
When a tome cites Mercedes de Acosta or Cecil Beaton’s Diaries as “proof” of sexual fluidity, I know the author is either not well-researched, being salacious for the sake of being salacious, or pandering to get buyers. Excuse me, I meant readers. Because the only proof those memoirs offer is that Mercedes and Cecil were shamelessly obsessed with Garbo. I really appreciated Gottlieb had the integrity to present the facts and not speculate as to that which we will never know.
The book closes with a smattering of fantastic Garbo for all time. I hope this book becomes the foundational work in the Garbo canon. If you are looking for a Garbo biography written with academic integrity, you will not be disappointed in Gottlieb’s very fine work.
Academic integrity/research and no pandering!
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I LOVED Maria Tucci’s narration!
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Fascinating listen
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I was wrong. Highly recommend!
You don't know everything about Garbo!
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Very good and very not good
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Well, it’s Garbo
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Narrator
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Very disappointing
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Turns out that people referred to her as a peasant girl and she did little to grow or expand herself beyond that perception. She was cold, unfriendly, and uninterested in other people. The book focuses heavily on her movies. Complains considerably about her leading men. (So which man in Hollywood would have been worthy of Garbo at the time? If none of the one's she acted against were?) The book talks endlessly about her beauty.
Towards the end when the book moved on to stories about Garbo. I was interested and hopeful once more that I might at least conclude the book with some kinder and softer impressions of Garbo. After a bit the stories turned back into the usual where Garbo is cold, uninterested, and has no emotional attachments to other humans. She didn't give to charity, didn't like fashion, and had no pets that the book focused on, didn't like people, and just wanted to be private.
I had hoped the book would give me a new appreciation of Garbo’s films but rather it left me struggling to not outright dislike Garbo as a person.
Garbo: Just a pretty face.
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