"The Painted Veil," Stockholm, Hollywood, & Cecil Beaton, plus Garbo's screen test

When this series of blog posts about Greta Garbo's films began, the plan was to simply march forward through time and go film by film, Well, that hasn't quite happened, but after spending some time looking at various aspects of "Queen Christina," released in 1933, it's time to take on the 1934 film "The Painted Veil." Alas, this flick (remade in the early 2000s with Naomi Watts in the Garbo role) is not very interesting. In Year 2 of this blog I did write THIS POST ABOUT THE SOURCES OF GARBO'S SOUND FILMS and THIS OVERVIEW OF THE THEMES & PLOT.

So today, here's a short clip from the movie with Garbo in her famous white turban:

The "Painted Veil" costumes are very high-style Hollywood, and a Garbo fan made this tribute video featuring the costumes the actress wears in the role of Katrin:

Had enough of "The Painted Veil"?  Yeah, me too. So I'll fill out this post with a bit about Greta Garbo's ambivalence about movie stardom. By the time she was in her early 20s, Greta Garbo had already been through five years of having head shots taken to promote her beauty. The photos below show Garbo at around ages eighteen and nineteen. 

Greta Garbo grew up in an apartment in Stockholm, the Swedish port city,  in a poor family made poorer when her father died. As a teen, Garbo took work in a shop modeling clothes for potential buyers, then appeared in early filmed clothing-store advertisements. From there, she was talent scouted and began her career in German-language silent films. 

 

 

 

Garbo lived in Berlin hotels while she became a star in  Europe, then she traveled to Los Angeles. Startiug at the steamship dock, she posed for various "European film star comes to Hollywood" shots. 

The Swedish starlet took up residence in the fancy Miramar Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. She made a number of publicity appearances for MGM, where she'd signed a contract and had her photo taken with the baby version of Leo the Lion.

As soon as the young actress entered the Hollywood star-making machine, she was put on a diet, had her teeth capped, and endured having her ankles and calves massaged to make them more shapely. A few months in, Garbo had already begun wondering if it was all worth it and considered going back go Sweden. She went back at least once to "visit family," but then returned to the U.S.

European movie star Greta Garbo:

American movie star Greta Garbo:

But then part of Garbo loved the admiration, and it must have felt great to be told how gorgeous you are and how lovely you look as photographers arrange you to thrill your admiring audience.

Cecil Beaton loved to photograph Garbo, and though she'd had her photograph taken thousands of times, she was ready to pose for Beaton. They had a difficult complicated personal relationship, and yet to my mind Beaton could capture some of what I think was the real Garbo. By the early 1940s, Hollywood was done with Garbo, and she was done with it, and yet the movie star portraits were important to her or she wouldn't have posed for them.

To finish up today's post, here's a YouTube video of a Garbo screen test.

 

 

Next week:  "Anna Karenina"

 Some of the photos in this post came from the wonderful website Garbo Forever. And the sign-off photo I use each week is one of Cecil Beaton's portraits. 

Garbo