Garbo

By: Robert Gottlieb

Narrated by: Maria Tucci

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.

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!

I LOVED Maria Tucci’s narration!

Excellent book reinforcing the conundrum and mystery that was GARBO!! I enjoyed every minute of this one

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.

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.)