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Few screen personalities have been totally successful in isolating their private lives from their public personas, but this enigmatic Swedish beauty certainly accomplished it. What's most amazing is that, in avoiding media scrutiny and public contact, she did so in a way that actually enhanced the mysterious allure that had been so vital an element in her success. Born into poverty, she worked as a shopgirl in a large department store and was chosen to appear in a short film promoting it. She made a few other such commercial appearances before deciding that acting might be her ticket out of the working class. Remarkably, she won a scholarship to the Royal Dramatic Theater acting school and, while doing some minor stage work, was spotted there by film director Mauritz Stiller. He tested her for and then signed her to play a role in The Story of Gosta Berling (1924).

Garbo's feature-film debut, while wellreceived, hardly made her an overnight sensation. But Stiller believed in the young actress, and took her under his wing. She played second female lead in G. W. Pabst's The Joyless Street (1924, which also included Marlene Dietrich as an extra) before going to America with Stiller, who had been offered a Hollywood contract by MGM's Louis B. Mayer. The highly regarded director used his influence to get Garbo signed as well, a move initially resisted by Mayer. She was assigned to play the female lead, a Spanish prima donna, in Monta Bell's The Torrent (1926), opposite Ricardo Cortez, and although studio brass at first had little faith in her, they were amazed by the quality of her work. Moreover, studio publicity men crafted hard-sell promotional materials that not only sold the film but launched the Garbo mystique, creating an air of mystery surrounding the naturally quiet, reticent woman.

As Garbo's star rose, however, Stiller's fell. Slated to direct her next film, The Temptress he quarreled relentlessly with MGM management and was finally replaced with the prosaic Fred Niblo. Although the picture turned out to be a middling artistic success, Garbo's femmefatale characterization attracted curious moviegoers and made it a commercial hit. For her next film, Flesh and the Devil (1927), she was teamed with John Gilbert, then MGM's reigning male star, with whom she carried on a torrid affair that, not surprisingly, spilled over into their cinematic lovemaking. The release of Flesh her best film to date, saw Garbo a full-fledged superstar. Certainly there was no one else like her on American movie screens, although other studios rushed to import similarly exotic European beauties and shroud them in synthetic cloaks of secrecy. Love (also 1927) reunited Garbo with Gilbert; she played Anna Karenina in this Tolstoy adaptation, and once again moviegoers were treated to the sight of real-life lovers playing out their passion on the big screen.

Away from the cameras, though, Garbo began to have second thoughts about Gilbert (for reasons that were never made clear). They planned to marry, but she literally left Gilbert standing at the altar, which devastated him. (By this time her mentor Stiller had returned to Sweden.) The iconoclastic Garbo resolutely clung to her individuality; she really did, as she famously said in Grand Hotel want to be left alone. And that impenetrable aloofness became an integral part of her mystique.

She continued to make silent films, all successful. The Divine Woman, The Mysterious Lady, A Woman of Affairs (all 1928), Wild Orchids, The Single Standard and The Kiss (all 1929) depended almost entirely upon her presence alone. Her characters could be pure or sullied, willing or restrained, remote or accessible-it didn't much matter. It was Garbo people wanted to see. And hear. When MGM's publicity machine cranked out promotional material for her first talkie, Anna Christie (a Eugene O'Neill play that, in retrospect, was an ambitious and risky choice for the foreign-born, thickly accented actress), the dominant message was: "Garbo Talks!" And she did, in a husky voice that, although incongruous with her physical appearance, somehow suited her perfectly.

In unexceptional films like Romance (1930), Inspiration, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (both 1931, in the latter opposite Clark Gable), Mata Hari and As You Desire Me (both 1932) she rose above often mediocre material; her mere presence made the films worth seeing. In Grand Hotel (1932) she created an archetype for herself, as the fatalistic ballerina, and got to work opposite John Barrymore, whom she greatly admired. Queen Christina (1933), which, at her request, reunited her with Gilbert (whose career had taken a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse with the advent of sound) was perhaps her best sound film. It contained several memorable moments, including a wordless scene in which, one morning af ter a rapturously happy tryst with Gilbert, she lingers in the room, touching and feeling furniture and objects so as to indelibly etch every detail of the joyous experience in her memory. Who but Garbo could have made the gesture so affecting?

After finishing The Painted Veil (1934), Garbo took the title roles in Anna Karenina (1935, a remake of Love and Camille (1937, as the doomed heroine, one of her best-remembered talkies), delivering two more memorable performances in great parts perfectly suited to her persona. After Conquest (1937), she was off the screen for nearly two years, and when she returned, it was to star in a comedy-something she'd never tried before. "Garbo Laughs!" the ads declared, and they were accurate. Ninotchka (1939), directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett script, starred her as a Russian Communist functionary who, while visiting Paris, falls in love with gay blade Melvyn Douglas. Lubitsch was the perfect choice to guide her through this territory, and she was charming in her comedy debut.

Two more years passed before she made another movie. While willing to try another comedy, Two-Faced Woman (1941) was a poor choice. With European distribution curtailed during World War 2, MGM tried to Americanize and "humanize" the star, with disastrous results. Stinging from this failure, Garbo weighed other script offers carefully. Several projects were planned, then abandoned, during the 1940s, and in 1949 she even submitted to a screen test for the backers of a proposed film. But nothing came to fruition, and it was speculated that with each passing year, the idea of returning to the spotlight seemed less and less desirable to the erstwhile actress. For the remainder of her life she lived as a loner, vacationing in Switzerland, on the French Riviera, and in Italy but making home base her apartment on New York City's fashionable Upper East Side. Once in a while she would speak to passersby who saw her on the street, but by and large she avoided the public eye. The woman whose passionate love affairs once filled fan-magazine stories with speculation never married. In 1954 she received a special Oscar (amazingly, she'd never won any during her career, although she'd been nominated for Anna Christie, Romance, Camille and Ninotchka for "her unforgettable screen performances." Needless to say, she did not accept the statuette in person.

Disclaimer: I am not associated with Greta Garbo in any way.

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