Garbo Not So Taciturn When You Know Her

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 186, 3 May 1940, Page 5

Garbo Not So Taciturn When You Know Her

TJOLLYWOOD regards Garbo as the Swedish “Sphinx.” But her coworkers know her as a very human person indeed. If there’s any fun going on between scenes on the set Garbo is always a part of it. She joins in any games or pastimes going on while cameras are being set up. __ During the filming of “Ninotchka, in -which she plays an ultra-modern woman in a sophisticated romantic comedy, she participated in tricks with an “exploding book” which Ernst Lubit,sch, the director, brought to the set and got a great deal of fun out of rehearsing the scene in which she dances with Melvyn Douglas to "swing” time. Douglas is her leading man for the second time in “Ninotchka.” Ina Claire. Bela Lugosi. Felix Bressart, Sig Rumann and Alexander Granach are others prominent in the cast. Despite the aura of mystery surrounding Garbo, Hollywood knows .a great deal about her. She is famous in the screen colony as an athlete, being one of the film colony’s expert tennis players. At home she reads incessantly. Clippings from all Los Angeles papers and all of the dailv papers of Stockholm, Sweden, are pasted on cardboard and left at her bedside each morning. She lias a large library of Swedish literature. She never wears make-up otl the screen. She wears her hair in a long bob now known as the "Garbo Bob.” She dislikes flashy things, never wears jewellery off the screen, and has definite ideas about clothes.

Garbo learned to speak English in six months, and it is with amusement that she recalls that the first word that she learned was “applesauce” because she heard it so often on her sets. Her business sense is acute and most of her money is tied up in trust to protect her in old age. She certainly does not think that Greta Garbo is a great actress. In fact, she seldom finds satisfaction in a role that she has portrayed. Perhaps it is this burning desire to improve that is the secret of her success.