{"product_id":"garbo-9780374298357","title":"Garbo","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAward-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.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,\" Robert Gottlieb writes in \u003ci\u003eGarbo\u003c\/i\u003e, \"Greta Garbo is in people's minds, hearts, and dreams.\" Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in sixteen short years, to infiltrate the world's subconscious; the end of her film career, when she was thirty-six, only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in just twenty-four Hollywood movies, yet her impact on the world--and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed--was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe's. She was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged nineteen, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world's most famous actress. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eGarbo\u003c\/i\u003e, the acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world--her desperate, futile striving to be \"left alone.\" He takes us through the films themselves, from M-G-M's early presentation of her as a \"vamp\"--her overwhelming beauty drawing men to their doom, a formula she loathed--to the artistic heights of \u003ci\u003eCamille\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eNinotchka\u003c\/i\u003e (\"Garbo Laughs!\"), by way of \u003ci\u003eAnna Christie\u003c\/i\u003e (\"Garbo Talks!\"), \u003ci\u003eMata Hari\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eGrand Hotel\u003c\/i\u003e. He examines her passive withdrawal from the movies, and the endless attempts to draw her back. And he sketches the life she led as a very wealthy woman in New York--\"a hermit about town\"--and the life she led in Europe among the Rothschilds and men like Onassis and Churchill. Her relationships with her famous co-star John Gilbert, with Cecil Beaton, with Leopold Stokowski, with Erich Maria Remarque, with George Schlee--were they consummated? Was she bisexual? Was she sexual at all? The whole world wanted to know--and still wants to know. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn addition to offering his rich account of her life, Gottlieb, in what he calls \"A Garbo Reader,\" brings together a remarkable assembly of glimpses of Garbo from other people's memoirs and interviews, ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Tallulah Bankhead to Roland Barthes; from literature (she turns up everywhere--in Hemingway's \u003ci\u003eFor Whom the Bell Tolls\u003c\/i\u003e, in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the letters of Marianne Moore and Alice B. Toklas); from countless songs and cartoons and articles of merchandise. Most extraordinary of all are the pictures--250 or so ravishing movie stills, formal portraits, and revealing snapshots--all reproduced here in superb duotone. She had no personal vanity, no interest in clothes and make-up, yet the story of Garbo is essentially the story of a face and the camera. Forty years after her career ended, she was still being tormented by unrelenting paparazzi wherever she went. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eIncludes Black-and-White Photographs\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Farrar, Straus and Giroux\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/07\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780374298357\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 448\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal Prepub Alert\u003c\/i\u003e 07\/01\/2021 pg. 12\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 10\/25\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 10\/15\/2021 pg. 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 11\/01\/2021\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Robert Gottlieb","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41334693953717,"sku":"9780374298357","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_cc2fe72b-ccf0-4b94-b774-6eddad73d025.jpg?v=1636434108","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/garbo-9780374298357","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}