Episode 31: Robert Gottlieb on Greta Garbo

As one of the most influential book editors of his generation—first at Simon & Shuster and then, for many years, at Knopf and Random House—Robert Gottlieb has lived a charmed life. He was also one of the few storied editors of The New Yorker in the 1990s. Gottlieb’s other two passions are modern dance and cinema: He helped program the George Balanchine Theatre for decades from his editor’s desk, all while acquiring and editing myriad film books during those years. And now, at 90, he has written a film biography himself: A definitive portrait of Swedish actress Greta Garbo, whose elusiveness, he illustrates, was something she carried with her throughout her life: from her peasant-girl days in Stockholm in the early 20th century to her Hollywood years to her reclusive life in New York for five decades after retreating from Hollywood and acting in the early 1940s, just as the US entered WWII. Garbo, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is a gorgeously illustrated hybrid book with dozens of images throughout helping to illustrate the enigma that Garbo created onscreen. After Gottlieb's main narrative, the book also includes a Garbo Reader of sorts, with other published work and images about her life and times, illuminating the overall picture of this mysterious yet trailblazing woman, whose own privacy was essential to her happiness and very existence. As a child of the depression years, Garbo was omnipresent in Gottlieb’s mind as a young kid going to see films in New York. Here, his wonderful prose captures this complicated woman who became one of the most famous faces in the world, almost overnight. And yet, she retired at age 35, after acting in only 28 films. Garbo is an invaluable book for anyone interested in her work and film history; from the silent era to the Golden Age of cinema.