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Title details for Garbo by Robert Gottlieb - Available

Garbo

by Robert Gottlieb
Maria Tucci
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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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 sixteen short years, to infiltrate America’s subconscious; her decision to suddenly end her film career at the age of thirty-six only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in only twenty-four 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 7, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593553923
      • File size: 326964 KB
      • Duration: 11:21:10

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 25, 2021
      "More than any other star," Greta Garbo "invaded the subconscious of the audience," writes veteran editor Gottlieb (A Certain Style) in this searching and sensitive portrait of the actor. Though "only the camera knew" what went on behind her "amazing eyes," Gottlieb follows Garbo from her impoverished Swedish childhood (during which she frequented soup kitchens) through to her beginnings in film and her remarkable career as an MGM star. He covers her life out of the spotlight, too, including her reclusive nature ("When she died, there was plentiful evidence of how ordinary and how dull the real woman had been," wrote critic David Thomson), cross-dressing (which she'd "always enjoyed"), and art collecting (within a month of getting into it, she bought three Renoirs). Garbo's life was full of contradictions, Gottlieb writes: she "insisted on being independent" yet lived mostly under the thumb of MGM, and called America home yet had "no connection to it." A lengthy "Garbo reader" full of excerpts and articles about her rounds out Gottlieb's perfectly paced account—it includes Harriet Parsons's 1931 piece "24 Hours with Greta Garbo," Kenneth Tynan's 1954 Sight and Sound profile, and quotes from her colleagues including Billy Wilder, Edmund Goulding, and Clarence Brown—and the wealth of photos is a plus. The result is a masterful look at an elusive Hollywood giant.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      The author and the narrator are husband and wife--he is 90; she 80. He is an esteemed writer and editor; she is an accomplished actor. This is only Gottlieb's second audiobook, but Maria Tucci's distinctive voice can be heard in several ensembles and in her walking tours of Italian cities. On Greta Garbo their views don't entirely coincide. Tucci's tone is more irreverent, and she is more keen on the comedy of the legendary beauty who spent her life hiding from her public. As a star biography, this is simply one of the best, most entertaining, most insightful. Tucci wins the listener over early, and her in-character renderings of the firsthand reminiscences of Garbo that end the audiobook--in particular, one by actor Tallulah Bankhead--are pure delight. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      Starred review from March 1, 2022

      Greta Garbo quickly gained notice in her native Sweden in the early 1920s, in a few films and promotional commercials for local department stores. She and her mentor, Mauritz Stiller, were sent to Hollywood at the request of Louis B. Mayer. Garbo shot to fame with her first silent film, and she reigned supreme at the MGM Studios for 15 years before her abrupt retirement in 1941. She would never grace the screen again. Her mystique was enhanced by her aloofness and an icy hostility to anyone who tried to approach her. She lived until the age of 90 and was frequently spotted walking the streets of New York City. Gottleib's (George Balanchine) entertaining book is part biography and part critical assessment, as well as an analysis of Garbo's cryptic persona (his witty personal comments are also entertaining). The last part of the book includes snippets of observations from other books as well as full articles by the likes of Kenneth Tynan, Lili Palmer, and fan magazine reporter Harriet Parsons. Actress Maria Tucci, who is married to the author, narrates. Her resonant delivery is perfect for the material. VERDICT An engrossing biography of a cinema icon, not to be missed by fans of classic Hollywood.--Phillip Oliver

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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