Greta GarboFilmography

Hollywood

Synopsis: Produced for Britain's Thames television in 1979, Hollywood is a 13-part overview of the silent film era, lovingly assembled by historian Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Each episode runs one hour, and each concentrates on a separate aspect of the art of the silent cinema. Chapter titles include Read More

That's Entertainment Part II

Actors: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn

Synopsis: This represents MGM's 1976 sequel to its enormously successful compilation film That's Entertainment (1974). In lieu of the multi-narrator device of the first film, director Gene Kelly chooses to limit the hosting chores to two people: himself, and his friendly rival Fred Astaire. Another Read More

The Love Goddesses

Synopsis: One subject that has always been popular in the movies -- and is likely to stay that way for a long time to come -- is beautiful women, and this 1965 documentary explores the history of the Hollywood sex symbol, from the earliest days of Thomas Alva Edison's first silent films to such Read More

MGM's The Big Parade of Comedy

Actors: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gary Grant

Synopsis: This compilation film is one of the few Robert Youngson productions to incorporate sound as well as silent excerpts. All the clips are culled from 40 years' worth of MGM comedy material. The silent scenes spotlight such funsters as Marion Davies, Buster Keaton, Karl Dane and George K. Arthur Read More

30 Years of Fun

Synopsis: The fourth of Oscar-winning short-subject director Youngson's comedy compilations (the earlier ones were Golden Age of Comedy, When Comedy was King, and Days of Thrills and Laughter) is, amazingly, almost as full and fresh as those earlier efforts, containing highlights from such silent comedy Read More

Two-Faced Woman

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Constance Bennett, Ruth Gordon, Robert Sterling, Roland Young

Synopsis: Attempting to Americanize Greta Garbo to appeal to American audiences (since most of the foreign markets for Hollywood product had been cut off due to World War II), M.G.M.'s Two-Faced Woman succeeded in making Garbo angry enough to announce her retirement from the screen. Two-Faced Woman was Read More

The Movies March On

Actors: Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, William S. Hart, Charles Chaplin, Ben Turpin

Synopsis: The Movies March On was Number 12, volume 9 of Louis de Rochemont's March of Time series. Narrated by the stentorian Westbrook Van Vorhees, this fascinating documentary manages to squeeze 40 years of filmmaking into a mere two reels. Beginning with the once scandalous The Kiss (1898), the film Read More

Ninotchka

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Bela Lugosi, Sig Rumann, Felix Bressart, Ina Claire

Synopsis: "Garbo Laughs!" declared the ads for Ninotchka. In the face of dwindling foreign revenues, MGM decided to put Greta Garbo, a bigger draw in Europe than the US, in a box-office-savvy comedy, engaging the services of master farceur Ernst Lubitsch to direct. The film opens in Paris during the Read More

Conquest

Actors: Greta Garbo, Charles Boyer, Reginald Owen, Alan Marshal, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: Conquest was released in England as Marie Waleska, the name of the real-life historical personage portrayed by Greta Garbo. The film begins in 1807, when Marie, a Polish countess, is dispatched by her country to meet with Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (Charles Boyer). Marie has been encouraged to Read More

Camille

Actors: Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Greta Garbo enjoyed one of her greatest triumphs in this glossy adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' oft-filmed romantic tragedy. Here, Garbo stars as Marguerite Gauthier, who is born into humble circumstances but in time becomes Dame aux Camille, one of the most glamorous courtesans in Paris. Camille Read More

Anna Karenina

Actors: Greta Garbo, Fredric March, Freddie Bartholomew, Basil Rathbone, Maureen O'Sullivan, May Robson

Synopsis: This second filmization of Leo Tolstoy's novel is widely regarded as the best version. Greta Garbo plays the title character, the sheltered wife of Czarist official Rathbone. Intending to dissuade Rathbone's brother (Reginald Owen) from a life of debauchery, Garbo is sidetracked by her own Read More

The Painted Veil

Actors: Greta Garbo, Herbert Marshall, George Brent, Warner Oland, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: A W. Somerset Maugham novel was the source for the fair-to-middling Greta Garbo vehicle The Painted Veil. In a situation comparable to the plotlines of most of her silent films, Garbo is lovelessly married to Herbert Marshall, but carries a flaming torch for George Brent. (Also harking back to Garbo Read More

Queen Christina

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone, Elisabeth Young

Synopsis: If Queen Christina is not the best of Greta Garbo's films (as many Garbo fanatics insist), it is certainly the most luxuriously romantic of her talkie features. The star is cast as 17th-century Swedish queen Christina, who feels that she can best function in a male-dominated world by adopting Read More

As You Desire Me

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Erich Von Stroheim, Owen Moore, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: This complex '30s film is based upon a play by Pirandello which involved a hapless amnesiac. In As You Desire Me, the legendary Greta Garbo plays a down-in-the-dumps amnesiac (she can't recall who her husband is) who ends up singing in a low-life nightclub and putting up with the advances of a Read More

Grand Hotel

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: Based on Vicki Baum's novel and produced by Irving Thalberg, this film is about the lavish Grand Hotel in Berlin, a place where "nothing ever happens." That statement proves to be false, however, as the story follows an intertwining cast of characters over the course of one tumultuous day. Greta Garbo Read More

Mata Hari

Actors: Greta Garbo, Ramon Novarro, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: "So much for Carlotta" muses the head of German Espionage (Lewis Stone), shortly after secret agent Karen Morley is put to death. Morley's successor is exotic dancer Mata Hari (Greta Garbo), an enigmatic woman of Javanese-Dutch ancestry who seldom thinks twice about luring some poor swain to his Read More

Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

Actors: Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Jean Hersholt, John Miljan, Alan Hale

Synopsis: It was once theorized by critic Andrew Sarris that this 1931 Greta Garbo vehicle was subtitled "Her Fall & Rise" rather than the expected "Rise & Fall," because Hollywood--and by extension, the public--could not tolerate a failure. Whatever the case, modern audiences will latch onto Susan Lennox Read More

Inspiration

Actors: Greta Garbo, Robert Montgomery, Marjorie Rambeau, Judith Vosselli

Synopsis: Not every Greta Garbo film is an imperishable classic; this was seldom truer than in the case of her repetitious 1931 vehicle Inspiration. A modernized adaptation of Alphonse Daudet's Sappho, the film casts Garbo as Yvonne, a Parisian belle with "a history." When her past returns to haunt her, she Read More

Romance

Actors: Greta Garbo, Gavin Gordon, Elliott Nugent, Florence Lake

Synopsis: Greta Garbo appears here (in her second talking film) as an Italian singer who seduces a young priest into falling for her. She admits that she had been the kept woman of an older man, and when she returns to her former lover (to tell of her new love), her visit is misinterpreted by the priest as Read More

Anna Christie

Actors: Greta Garbo

Synopsis: Filmed simultaneously with the English version, this German-language film is considered by many to be technically superior. Greta Garbo, who was discovered by Louis B. Mayer in Berlin, spoke German well and her performance was highly praised. As the old lush Marthy, actress-writer Salka Steuermann Read More

Anna Christie

Actors: Greta Garbo, George F. Marion, Marie Dressler, Charles Bickford

Synopsis: Accompanied by one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Hollywood history, Greta Garbo made her "talking picture" debut in this carefully chosen vehicle, the second screen version of Eugene O'Neill's 1922 play about the Minnesota-raised Swedish girl who desperately attempts to keep her Read More

A Man's Man

Actors: William Haines, Josephine Dunn, Sam Hardy, Mae Busch

Synopsis: Adapted from a 1925 play by Patrick Kearney, A Man's Man was popular MGM leading man William Haines' final silent film (albeit released with a musical score and sound-effects track). Haines is his usual bright-and-breezy self as Mel, a likable soda jerk in love with would-be actress Peggy (Josephine Dunn Read More

The Kiss

Actors: Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Anders Randolf, Holmes Herbert, Lew Ayres

Synopsis: MGM's paranoid fear of audience reaction to Greta Garbo's speaking voice must have been the only reason for this plodding courtroom melodrama to have been made as a silent. Released with a synchronized score and two important sound effects, The Kiss would prove to be Garbo's, and Metro's, final Read More

Wild Orchids

Actors: Greta Garbo, Lewis Stone, Nils Asther

Synopsis: In this silent film, the beautiful Lili Sterling (Greta Garbo) meets up with the enchanting Prince de Gace (Nils Asther) while on a trip with her husband, John (Lewis Stone), and the two find themselves impossibly drawn to one another. However, when John begins to suspect his wife of infidelity Read More

The Single Standard

Actors: Greta Garbo, Nils Asther, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian, Lane Chandler

Synopsis: Worried that Greta Garbo's rich, deep voice and thick Swedish accent would not record properly, MGM executives kept Garbo in silent pictures longer than any of the studio's other contractees. The star's penultimate silent effort (with music and sound effects added) was The Single Standard, based Read More

The Mysterious Lady

Actors: Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Edward Connelly, Richard Alexander

Synopsis: Based on a lugubrious novel by Ludwig Wolff, The Mysterious Lady is a romance/espionage tailored to the talents of Greta Garbo. The divine Miss G plays an alluring Russian spy, directly answerable to satanic-featured general Gustav von Seyffertitz. While she's accustomed to fomenting suicides and Read More

The Divine Woman

Actors: Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Lowell Sherman, Polly Moran, Dorothy Cumming

Synopsis: One of the great directors of the silent era, Victor Sjostrom, teamed with fellow Swede Greta Garbo for this drama. The great Garbo plays Marianne, a young woman from Brittany who was neglected by her impoverished parents. Marianne longs to be an actress and moves to Paris, where theatrical Read More

A Woman of Affairs

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lewis Stone, Johnny Mack Brown, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Synopsis: Michael Arlen's notorious novel The Green Hat was considered such a hot potato censor-wise that the property's title could not be used when it was adapted to film. Retitled A Woman of Affairs, this tale of a woman destroyed by syphilis was heavily laundered for the screen. Greta Garbo plays an Read More

Love

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, George Fawcett, Emily Fitzroy, Brandon Hurst

Synopsis: This MGM-ized adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was originally titled Heat but was changed to Love when someone at the studio pointed out the possible implications of having the opening title read "John Gilbert and Greta Garbo in Heat." Heavily updated and revised, the film bore scant Read More

The Torrent

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Greta Garbo, Gertrude Olmstead, Edward Connelly, Lucien Littlefield, Martha Mattox

Synopsis: The Vincent Blasco-Ibanez novel Entre Naranjos served as the inspiration for Greta Garbo's first American film, The Torrent. Garbo plays Leonora, a full-bodied Spanish peasant girl who falls in love with her landlord's son Don Rafael Bull (Ricardo Cortez). To prevent his son from marrying beneath Read More

The Temptress

Actors: Greta Garbo, Antonio Moreno, Roy D'Arcy, Marc MacDermott, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: The Temptress was Greta Garbo's second American film, and while it may strike modern viewers as excessively melodramatic, Garbo is always worth watching. The star plays Elena, the wife of Monsieur Canterac (Lionel Barrymore) -- and the mistress of rich Parisian banker Monsieur Fontenoy (Marc MacDermott Read More

Flesh and the Devil

Actors: John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Barbara Kent, William Orlamond

Synopsis: A bulky, verbose novel by Herman Suderman was the source for the exquisitely silent Flesh and the Devil. On leave from the Austrian army, lifelong friends John Gilbert and Lars Hanson return to their loving families. At a reception in Hanson's honor, Gilbert makes the acquaintance of the Read More

Die Freudlose Gasse

Actors: Asta Nielsen, Greta Garbo, Valeska Gert, Werner Krauss, Einar Hansen

Synopsis: G. W. Pabst's The Joyless Street (Die freudlose Gasse) is an unvarnished study of post-World War I Vienna. Plagued with skyrocketing inflation, the Austrian metropolis becomes the domain of every scurrilous form of profiteering. The central character is a crooked butcher, whose negative influence Read More

Gösta Berlings Saga

Actors: Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson

Synopsis: Known under a variety of titles, The Atonement of Gosta Berling is an excellent representation of the Swedish silent cinema. Long, complex, and elaborately produced, the film nonetheless never loses sight of the human elements which motivate the story. Lars Hanson stars as Berling, a defrocked Read More

The Torrent

Actors: Eva Novak, Jack Perrin, Jack Curtis

Synopsis: Velma (Eva Novak) is unhappily married to Sam (Leonard Shumway), a user of demon alcohol and a notorious womanizer. He invites Velma and his mistress to take an afternoon trip on his sailboat. Sam tries to force Velma to drink a cocktail, and the virtuous Velma recoils in horror. Sam suffers a Read More