GARBO AND GRACIE FIELDS WILL BOTH RETIRE FROM SCREEN IN NEAR FUTURE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 55, 20 March 1937, Page 16

GARBO AND GRACIE FIELDS WILL BOTH RETIRE FROM SCREEN IN NEAR FUTURE

Two of the screen 's most famous and most highly-paid women stars have.announced their early ' retirement from film acting. Greta Garbo recently announced in New York that her next pieture w^ald be her last" and three days later^ at London, Graeie Fields said she wouldretire after completing her new contract to make four films for 20th Cen-tury-Fox. When she made her dramatic an-. nouncement, Garbo said.it would take her only three month's to cooiplete the next pieture. She had consented • to • make this for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer- — the only Hollywood studio for which she has ever worked — ahd it would "be "Madame Walewska,,, a Napoleonie story, with Charles Boyer as the hero. She then would retire at the age of 30, and, after nearly 10 years of earning £100,000 a year as the most famous filtrt actress the world has seen, she would disappear from the public eye to live quietly in her native Swedfin. Many people in Aoierica had believed ill-health would force her retirement after, the completion of her last film, "Camille," but her more cheerful expression and more frequent public appearances since her recent return to Aaierica had led studios to hope otherwise. " Garbo now has ended tho.se hopes. "I am not well," she' said, when announcing her retirement. "I feel I. shall want'only peace and quiet. ' ' Motion pictures have brought me everything I ever desired in material things, but I do not want to go on too long. At home ih Sweden it is different. People do not point me out as something apart. ' ' I^vant to be a real person, not a curiosity, but here that is icnpossible. People crowd around me until I become frantic and run." | * Now Garbo is quietly but quickly disposing of all her holdings in Holiywood'and Beverley Hills. She has sold her homes,' and has rented anothe* hou'se until April, when she will sail for Europe, never to return to- Hollywood v/hich gave her fortune and world fame. Gracie Fields' farewell will be less complete. » TJnder her *pw contract she will xe--ceive • the salary — exceptional even for Hollywood — of £50,000 each for four pictures. Then the "£2 a minute" girl will retire to rest — if she can. "I should like to rest," said Gracie recently, "but I feel I cannot. Even when I go on holiday to cny home at CJapri I feel all the time I ought to be back on the job. It's a great strain, and I know it cannot go on for ever." Miss Fields will start the first of her four films in July. It will be directed by Mc®te Banks. d