Page "Greta Garbo" Paragraph 30

Although Garbo was humiliated by the negative reviews of Two-Faced Woman, she did not at first intend to retire.

But her films depended on the European market and when it fell through with the war, finding a vehicle was problematic for MGM.

She signed a one picture deal in 1942 to make The Girl from Leningrad but the project quickly dissolved.

Still, she thought she would continue when the war was over.

But she was herself ambivalent and indecisive about returning to the screen.

Salka Viertel, Garbo's close friend and collaborator, said in 1945, " Greta is impatient to work.

But on the other side, she's afraid of it ".

Although she was offered many roles in the 1940s and throughout her life, she rejected all but a few of them.

In the few instances when she accepted, the slightest problem led her to drop out.

She also worried about her age.

" Time leaves traces on our small faces and bodies.

It's not the same anymore, being able to pull it off ".

George Cukor, director of Two-Faced Woman, and often blamed for its failure, said, " People often glibly say that the failure of Two-Faced Woman finished Garbo's career.

That's a grotesque oversimplification.

It certainly threw her, but I think that what really happened was that she just gave up.

She didn ’ t want to go on ".

Although she refused to talk to friends throughout her life about her reasons for retiring, she told Swedish biographer Sven Broman four years before her death, " I was tired of Hollywood.

I did not like my work.

There were many days when I had to force myself to go to the studio ....

I really wanted to live another life ".