Greta Garbo: The reclusive Hollywood star whose Oscar led to a heated legal drama
In 1955, the Academy awarded an Oscar to one of the silent era’s biggest stars. She had been nominated four times over the course of ten years but had somehow never won. The ceremony was the Academy’s opportunity to right their historical wrongs and award her an honorary statuette for her unforgettable screen performances. But Greta Garbo wasn’t interested. In fact, she had never attended any of the Academy’s ceremonies and had retired from the screen and Hollywood in her mid-thirties.
Garbo was born in Stockholm in 1905 and was brought to the US in 1920 after MGM studio head Louis B Mayer saw her performance in the 1924 Swedish film The Saga of Gösta Berling. She became an instant success in Hollywood, with her striking features making her the perfect star for the silent era.
With the rise of sound, many silent movie stars lost their careers, but somehow, Garbo not only weathered the storm but soared to greater heights. Anna Christie, Grand Hotel, and Ninotchka were all talkies, and they were some of the biggest hits of her career. She was known for her languid, melancholy on-screen persona, and especially for a line she uttered in Grand Hotel, “I want to be alone”.
She might have been acting when she said those words, but they aligned perfectly with her off-screen persona. Garbo was famous for her discomfort with fame and her reclusiveness in Hollywood. Following her 1941 film Two-Faced Woman, she retreated from the screen, either turning down roles or abandoning them partway through production.
She moved to New York and spent the remaining 50 years of her life avoiding publicity. She was so averse to attention that the buzzer for her apartment was simply labelled as “G”, and she requested that people refer to her as Harriet Brown. She collected art, travelled, and indulged in her favourite outdoor hobbies but never returned to the screen.
When Garbo was granted an Oscar in 1955, the actor Nancy Kelly, whom she had never met, accepted it on her behalf. The statuette then went into the custody of talent agent Minna Wallis, who kept it for two years. When Garbo finally got her hands on it, she allegedly put it in a closet, never to see the light of day.
In 2017, nearly three decades after the actor’s death, the Oscar became the topic of a heated legal battle between her great-nephews, the sons of Garbo’s niece and sole beneficiary. It seems that the statuette and a carved whale tooth that President John F Kennedy gave to the actor were missing.
Craig Reisfield, a financial advisor, alleged that his brother, Derek, a venture capitalist and member of the board of directors of the San Francisco Zoo, had stolen the items by coercing their mother to sign a backdated letter gifting them to him. Derek refused to speak publicly on the matter. The Oscar’s whereabouts and the court battle’s outcome remain a mystery, which feels like a fitting end for a star who remains one of Hollywood’s greatest enigmas.
