Garbo

Her Life, Her Films

By: Robert Gottlieb

Narrated by: Maria Tucci

Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Award-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.

“Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s minds, hearts, and dreams.” Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in 16 short years, to infiltrate America’s subconscious; her decision to suddenly end her film career at the age of 36 only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in only 24 movies, yet her impact on the world - and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed - was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe. She was a phenomenon, a Sphinx, a myth, but also a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard.

In Garbo, acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb attempts to capture the ever-elusive essence of Garbo through the eyes of others: In addition to a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, Gottlieb combs through glimpses of Garbo in literature, music, private letters, and, of course, films, in order to better understand her. Discovering her within Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and in the letters of Marianne Moore, and following her from her early movies with MGM to her career-defining, Academy Award-nominated role in Camille to her world-stopping decision to leave the limelight, Gottlieb crafts a biography of unprecedented intimacy and scope in the hopes of capturing the woman that only the camera knew.

©2021 Robert Gottlieb (P)2021 Random House Audio

No Pictures

was very upset that pictures not included . loved the reading of the book.

Fascinating listen

A fascinating and eloquent biography, beautifully and entertainingly read by the narrator. Am mystified by some of the bad reviews of a narration that has both personality and wit. I thoroughly loved the book and its reader.

Academic integrity/research and no pandering!

All too often, the biographies of notable people are written by ignorant conspiracy theorists, malicious iconoclasts, or sycophants. Robert Gottlieb holds none of these titles.

Gottlieb wrote Garbo with the same precise detail balanced for breadth and depth as one would expect from an historian. Were I to ask Gottlieb, “Why Garbo?”, I’d be surprised if the subject emerged from lifelong fandom; but rather, I suspect Gottlieb is a man in-the-know who believed he could make a contribution in all the places where predecessors have lacked. Although there is an excellent Garbo biography, such as by Barry P., most have an agenda or extracted information through unethical means like Sven B. that makes it impossible for me to read.

That Gottlieb keeps an appropriate emotional distance from Garbo to maintain objectivity is evident time and again. No emotional apologetics for Garbo or baseless nonsense about her being part of Old Hollywood’s “sewing circle.” The sine qua non of a biography I immediately dismiss as complete garbage is one that indulges persistent and baseless rumors about the subject’s sexuality.

When a tome cites Mercedes de Acosta or Cecil Beaton’s Diaries as “proof” of sexual fluidity, I know the author is either not well-researched, being salacious for the sake of being salacious, or pandering to get buyers. Excuse me, I meant readers. Because the only proof those memoirs offer is that Mercedes and Cecil were shamelessly obsessed with Garbo. I really appreciated Gottlieb had the integrity to present the facts and not speculate as to that which we will never know.

The book closes with a smattering of fantastic Garbo for all time. I hope this book becomes the foundational work in the Garbo canon. If you are looking for a Garbo biography written with academic integrity, you will not be disappointed in Gottlieb’s very fine work.

You don't know everything about Garbo!

An incredibly well researched, well written, and fascinating book about a legend I thought I knew everything about.
I was wrong. Highly recommend!

Very good and very not good

I am a giant fan of Robert Gottlieb and his work. And of the brilliant actress (and Gottlieb’s wife, Maria Tucci). Yet I feel I’m going to have to read “Garbo” in print to truly comment on it as the narration is so extremely melodramatic and, often, sarcastic that it changed the intention of the book itself. (And, yes, I heard the whole thing.)

Narrator

I unfortunately could only listen to about 1 hour of this book , as the narrator is impossible to tolerate.

Garbo: Just a pretty face.

I grew up watching classic film and saw several of Garbo's films as a little girl. All I knew was the Garbo had mystique and so when this book came out I thought it time to learn about what made Garbo so famous and wonderful. I was very excited to start this book after all it has glowing reviews on Amazon. However, as I listened I found it harder and harder to read. I cannot say that I came out of this book any better off in my knowledge of Garbo.

Turns out that people referred to her as a peasant girl and she did little to grow or expand herself beyond that perception. She was cold, unfriendly, and uninterested in other people. The book focuses heavily on her movies. Complains considerably about her leading men. (So which man in Hollywood would have been worthy of Garbo at the time? If none of the one's she acted against were?) The book talks endlessly about her beauty.

Towards the end when the book moved on to stories about Garbo. I was interested and hopeful once more that I might at least conclude the book with some kinder and softer impressions of Garbo. After a bit the stories turned back into the usual where Garbo is cold, uninterested, and has no emotional attachments to other humans. She didn't give to charity, didn't like fashion, and had no pets that the book focused on, didn't like people, and just wanted to be private.

I had hoped the book would give me a new appreciation of Garbo’s films but rather it left me struggling to not outright dislike Garbo as a person.