Alone (29 page)

Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise.
Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, starring Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Jean Hersholt, John Miljan, Alan Hale, Hale Hamilton, Hilda Vaughn, Russell Simpson, Cecil Cunningham, Theodore von Eltz, Marjorie King, Helene Millard, and Ian Keith. MGM, 1931.

Fleeing an arranged marriage with thuggish Hale, Garbo stumbles into the arms of Gable, a hunky construction engineer. He plans to marry her, but while he’s away on business, Garbo hops a carnival train to escape her father’s pursuit. Gable returns, only to leave again when he learns that she’s become involved with the owner of the carnival. When they meet again, she’s changed her name to the eponymous Susan Lenox, and has become the mistress of a rich politician. Again Gable leaves, but she tracks him to South America, where he’s fallen on hard times working at a construction camp in the jungle. Eventually all misunderstandings are swept aside, and they are a couple at last.

It’s a steamy film—even the scenes not set in that ubiquitous tropical exile—and the viewer who knows Gable mainly as the hail-fellow-well-met-con/he-man of
San Francisco, Boom Town,
and
It Happened One Night
gets an unadulterated dose of the “Dangerous Man” of Mick LaSalle’s take on pre-Code Hollywood. With the possible exceptions of the world-weary John Barrymore and the urbane Melvyn Douglas, Gable seemed the only man in pictures capable of handling Garbo, and of upstaging her in her own scenes. Perhaps that’s why they were never matched again.

Mata Hari.
Directed by George Fitzmaurice, starring Greta Garbo, Ramon Novarro, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, C. Henry Gordon, Karen Morley, Alec B. Francis, Blanche Frederici, Edmund Breese, Helen Jerome Eddy, and Frank Reicher. MGM, 1931.

Garbo is the notorious Mata Hari, spying for the Kaiser under the cover of a cooch dancer in Paris. Novarro falls for her, enabling her to secure military secrets he’s been entrusted with as a lieutenant with the Russian Army. Recalled to Russia, Novarro’s plane is shot down and he’s blinded. Garbo comes to visit him, declaring her love. He’s still in bandages when he goes to speak with her in prison; she convinces him she’s in a hospital, recovering from an illness. He doesn’t know that she’s pleaded guilty to espionage to keep him from being called in to testify and find out about her past. After he leaves, she is taken from her cell to face a firing squad.

This is arguably Garbo’s campiest role, celebrated mostly for its turgid earnestness and That Costume, which is reduced nearly to its headdress during her salacious dance with a pagan idol. Novarro, whose homosexuality is often cited for his apparent discomfort in macho roles (there’s no sign of such conflict in his Ben-Hur), seems out of his element as an ardent swain; but that may have more to do with his inexperience acting in talkies. His career high was six years in the past.

Grand Hotel.
Directed by Edmund Goulding, starring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, Robert McWade, Purnell B. Pratt, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Rafaela Ottiano, Morgan Wallace, Tully Marshall, Frank Conroy, Murry Kinnell, and Edwin Maxwell. MGM, 1932.

Garbo, a great ballet star undergoing deep depression, is prevented from committing suicide by John Barrymore, a down-on-his-heels aristocrat engaged in burgling her room at the Grand Hotel in Berlin. They fall in love, but before they can run away together, Barrymore is slain by Beery after robbing Beery’s room in an attempt to secure valuables to free himself from his past. Unaware of this event, Garbo checks out, blissfully looking forward to her future with Barrymore.

Grand Hotel
is a precursor of those Universal extravaganzas that placed Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein’s monster in the same feature; it’s MGM, seeking to reverse the Depression’s drain on the box office by placing as many of its “more stars than there are in heaven” in one feature as it can get away with. It paid off, and industry watchers were astonished when Joan Crawford, in one of several separate stories loosely connected to the others, garnered notices equal with the great Garbo’s. (Beery, cast against his usual lug type as a ruthless and desperate business tycoon, merits special mention as the only one of several supposedly German characters to speak with an accent.)

This is the film in which Garbo speaks the immortal line, “I want to be alone”—several times.

As You Desire Me.
Directed by George Fitzmaurice, starring Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Erich von Stroheim, Owen Moore, Hedda Hopper, Rafaela Ottiano, Warburton Gamble, Albert Conti, William Ricciardi, and Roland Varno. MGM, 1932.

Amnesiac cabaret entertainer Garbo is identified as the wife of Douglas, who believed her to have been slain during the Austrian invasion of Italy during the First World War. Seeking to break her ties to the Svengali-like novelist von Stroheim, Garbo flees Budapest to rejoin Douglas. Despite an abortive attempt by von Stroheim to brand her as an imposter, she remains with Douglas, although she is still in doubt as to whether she is whom he thinks she is.

This film has more Hollywood history than most movie documentaries. Garbo, cinematographer Daniels, and von Stroheim are reunited, albeit this time von Stroheim is in front of the camera, not behind it, as when he directed
Greed,
and this is the first feature to pair Garbo with Douglas, who was one of the few to hold his own. Legendary gossip columnist Hopper makes one of her last acting appearances; and any picture that lets von Stroheim wear his monocle is worth a look.

Queen Christina.
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone, Elizabeth Young, C. Aubrey Smith, Reginald Owen, Lawrence Grant, David Torrence, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Ferdinand Munier, and George Renevent. MGM, 1933.

Christina, Queen of Sweden, falls in love with Spanish ambassador Gilbert and abdicates her throne so she can marry him and avoid a diplomatic wedding with the King of Spain; but before the lovers can run away together, Gilbert is killed in a jealous rage by a former love interest of Garbo’s. Alone, she sets sail toward an uncertain future.

The plot has a stronger historical base than
Mata Hari,
and until Edward VII gave up the English crown to marry a commoner, represented
the
great worldly sacrifice in the name of romance. The film also lays to rest the myth that Gilbert had a high, squeaky voice that cut short his career when the screen learned to talk. It was a pleasant light baritone, and he’d mastered subtlety since his unfortunate first attempt; but it was too late. He died three years later.

Mamoulian, it’s said, coaxed that haunting, enigmatic last shot of Garbo at the prow of her ship by telling her to make her mind absolutely blank. It’s an iconic moment, and makes up for an awkward early scene in which Gilbert manages to mistake Garbo for a boy because she’s wearing trousers when they meet.

Anna Karenina.
Directed by Clarence Brown, starring Greta Garbo, Fredric March, Freddie Bartholomew, Maureen O’Sullivan, May Robson, Basil Rathbone, Reginald Owen, Reginald Denny, Phoebe Foster, Gyles Isham, Buster Phelps, Ella Ethridge, Joan Marsh, Sidney Bracey, Cora Sue Collins, Olaf Hytten, Joe E. Tozer, Guy D’Ennery, Harry Allen, and Mary Forbes. MGM, 1935.

The Tolstoy chestnut about a respectable married woman who throws everything away for the love of a dashing military officer, then throws herself in front of a train.

She made it once before, as a 1927 silent that stripped the epic novel of most of its social elements and even its title:
Love,
moreover, was presented in modern dress, with no counts or czars. The second version is closer to its source but, like every other attempt to translate a sweeping novel of class war to the big and small screen, reduces it to a bourgeois love triangle.

(NOTE: For all his knowledge of cinematic history, Valentino is not infallible; in
Alone,
he scorns
Love
for its tacked-on happy ending. In fact, both adaptations end with her suicide, although in the first American release of
Karenina,
she survives. However, most existing prints preserve the tragic ending that appeared overseas.)

Ninotchka.
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi, Sig Rumann, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach, Gregory Gaye, Rolfe Sedan, Edwin Maxwell, and Richard Carle. MGM, 1939.

Garbo is sent by the Soviet government in Russia to expedite the sale of the imperial crown jewels in Paris. Discovering that the three plenipotentiaries who preceded her in the mission have been corrupted by the West, she at first repels the advances of Douglas, working on behalf of former Grand Duchess Claire, then embraces him as he in turn falls in love with her. Claire offers a bargain: Surrender Douglas, Claire’s pet, go back to Russia, and she’ll give up her claim to the jewels. Garbo agrees for the sake of her countrymen, but with the help of the three corrupted comrades, Douglas lures her back outside the Iron Curtain and into his arms.

This is the best romantic comedy of all time, and makes one wish Garbo had sampled the genre much sooner (although her next foray,
Two-Faced Woman,
was a disaster and may have influenced her decision to retire from the screen at thirty-six). “Garbo Laughs!” exclaimed the publicity, and the scene where she loses it is Hollywood gold.

Remade as
Silk Stockings,
a musical, in 1957, the story still worked, thanks to the pairing of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, a fabulous Cole Porter score, and Rouben Mamoulian bringing his Garbo chops to the director’s chair, but it won’t make you forget the original. (If only
Dracula
star Lugosi could have been resurrected to repeat his rare comic cameo. . . . )

**

2. Related

Garbo Talks.
Directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, Carrie Fisher, Catherine Hicks, Steven Hill, Howard da Silva, Dorothy Louden, Harvey Fierstein, Hermione Gingold, and Mary McDonnell. MGM/UA, 1984.

Bancroft, returning to type as a feisty old broad, is terminally ill, and makes one last request of her son, with whom she has a difficult relationship: She wants to meet her idol, Greta Garbo. Son Silver, reprising his trademark schlep, stalks the elusive recluse throughout New York City, corners her at last (at a flea market), and persuades her to visit Bancroft on her deathbed. The actress playing Garbo (Leonard Maltin says it’s Betty Comden, of the comedy-writing team of Comden and Green, but another source says it’s a professional Garbo impersonator) doesn’t speak onscreen until the final scene, when she encounters Silver on the street after his mother’s passing: “Hello, Vincent.”

It’s a breezy little film, funny and sad by turns, with a dynamite performance by Bancroft, who was never less than memorable, and belongs on the same bill with other Hollywood cannibal fare like
Being John Malkovich
and
Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff.
(Garbo, it’s said, was Not Amused, and peeved at her old studio for making her au courant—and fair game for the paparazzi—once again.)

MGM: When the Lion Roars.
Directed by Frank Martin. Turner Pictures, 1992.

A retrospective documentary celebrating the rise and fall of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, copiously illustrated with archival footage interspersed with interviews with surviving contract players, directors, studio executives, and other eyewitnesses.

This three-part series, aired on the TCM network and issued on VHS (now out of print), is a matchless history of the studio that ushered motion pictures into the industrial age and ended its sixty-year reign with a chilling memo from Kirk Kerkorian, a robber baron out of the nineteenth-century school of Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, announcing to the world that MGM was now primarily in the hotel business. The remastered footage is glossy and gorgeous, and the interviews, many of them with people who are no longer with us, are fascinating and suggest total recall. It’s emceed by an unusually buoyant Patrick Stewart on an eye-popping Art Deco set drenched in Metrocolor. Garbo, Gilbert, and all the rest of the giants live again here.