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Greta Garbo

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:75,000.00 - 85,000.00 USD
Greta Garbo

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Auction Date:2018 Nov 07 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Archive of 21 ALSs in Swedish, plus one TLS in English, mostly signed "Gurra" (with a few signed "Greta" or "G"), from Greta Garbo to fellow actress Mimi Pollak, totaling 85 pages, dated from 1924–1970. Greta Garbo’s letters to fellow actress, Mimi Pollak, are perhaps the only extensive personal record of the future screen legend during the pivotal period of her arrival in Hollywood and the earliest years of her film career. Writing candidly to her closest friend, Garbo covers her stay in New York, the impact of the tragic death of her sister, Alva, the devastating failure of her mentor, Mauritz Stiller (Moje), her difficulties in adjusting to the Hollywood studio system, and the cultural dissonance of America for a European. Deeply conflicted about her personal life and trapped in the Studio System, a lonely Garbo writes from “cheap and vulgar” Hollywood, longing for home. A remarkable archive of her early years in America. In overall very good to fine condition. Accompanied by 16 original mailing envelopes, plus translations for each of the letters.

A sampling of the content:

Culver City, October 4, 1925: “I haven’t started yet. We lived in New York for two months and were just at the point of returning home. Everything went sort of haywire. Stiller has been unlucky lately. It has been a pity for him.”

Christmas letter, December 16, 1925 on Miramar Hotel Stationary: “But it is sad that no one, no one is allowed to be really happy. If you knew how I long for home…Let me tell you how I exist. I started my first film [Torrent] with an American director [Monta Bell]. Up at 6 and home at six or seven. Fall into bed and sometimes can’t sleep. And alone, alone. God how terrible it is. This ugly, ugly America, all machines. It is soul destroying in the highest degree. I never go out at night—just home to my dreary hotel. I never dress so people here must believe I live on starvation wages. Soon I won’t care about anything. If I only had a little money, I would go home….You must believe that all the brilliance with which we surround the American film is dimmed here. There isn’t a trace of elegance or style.”

On the death of her sister Alva, June 3, 1926: “Can you understand that those we love leave us and even if we should live for a hundred years ourselves, we would never get to see them again. Never—can you understand that? I was not even given the chance to do something for her….The feeling you experience when you say that you were not given the time that feeling cannot be expressed by any human tongue….I have been working and working so hard, it is too much for a woman. After this movie [The Temptress] I intend to take the consequences and ask for permission to go home. I cannot stand it. I have to go home and see my mother and Alva’s grave….I am not able to put any feeling into my work now anyway so I am going to work and then I am going home again, like a machine. “

On the firing of director Mauritz Stiller, June 3, 1926: “You know that Stiller was supposed to be the director of my second movie [The Temptress], the one I am making right now. But only a week after my little sister’s death another punch hit me. Moje, poor Moje. It has been like a living hell for him here. The Americans have been awful. They do not allow him to make movies the way he is used to. They interfere and all his inspiration disappears. Poor Moje, he was so wearied and tired that he just left everything. He was such a nice guy, you know, he did not shout. Did not quarrel. He subsided and ruined things for himself…I do not earn much at the moment, only enough to live 'all right' but if my movie is a success I might earn more and I am hoping for a raise. I do hope that I will get rich.”

On life in Hollywood, September 15, 1927: "You know I see red when I think that there you are at home and everything around you that I also like, and I have sold myself and have to stay here. If it wasn’t so terribly tasteless and cheaply vulgar and ugly here. But it can’t be described, it has to be seen. God how we complain we Europeans. And I shouldn’t have anything to say since I haven’t seen the world and I can’t point out its good points. But I am complaining the loudest. I must exist since I work. But I am like someone who has no idea of what one is doing and why….Strange the whole thing. I continue to live very much alone. Still at my old hotel with suitcases on the floor so I can always see them and be reminded that one day we’ll go home."

On the studio system, January 28, 1928: “I don’t put my foot in the studio unless it is necessary. You don’t know this little land, so you can hardly understand what I mean when I say that I am postponing life until I can go home again. It is so boundlessly uninteresting here that you can’t do anything else. The sad thing is I am not interested in my work. It is only a factory here."

Garbo attended the Royal Dramatic Theatre [Dramaten] school in Stockholm with Pollak from 1922 to 1924, where she developed a deep infatuation with Pollak. It is unclear whether this was an unrequited love, but Garbo’s letters offer extraordinary insight into her private personal life and unveil a dimension of her enigmatic sexuality. Even when Pollak was happily married to actor Nils Lundell and pregnant with their child, Garbo wrote to her saying she believed they were meant to be together. Garbo and Pollak maintained a famous sixty-year correspondence, portions of which were published only recently. As an amazing collection of early and incredibly personal letters to the object of her affections, these letters are of the utmost rarity and desirability.