Garbo and the Swedish Queen by Elisabeth Storrs

The life of Greta Garbo, the Swedish-American actress, is a rags to riches story. Born in Stockholm in 1905 as Greta Gustafsson, she earned her living as a ‘lather girl’ in a barber shop before becoming a fashion model, and then an accomplished actress who graduated from the Royal Dramatic Training Academy.

‘Discovered’ in Sweden in 1925 by Louis B Maher, the famous chief executive of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Greta came to Hollywood with frizzy hair, crooked teeth and no English. She was transformed into a stunning beauty known for her charisma and magnetism throughout the silent screen era then into the ‘talkies.’ Maher first marketed her as a vamp in a series of steamy movies. Her role in Flesh and the Devil catapulted her to box office stardom with her sizzling on screen chemistry (and off-screen romance) with her co-star, John Gilbert. Garbo later became famous for her melancholic portrayal of tragic characters such as the dying Camille or doomed Anna Karenina. She was praised for her subtle acting style where ‘worlds could turn on the movement of her eyes.’

Unable to speak fluent English during the silent era, she was reluctant to convert to sound films until she mastered the language. Her debut speaking role in Anna Christie, (1930) was billed with the tagline ‘Garbo talks’. Her famous first spoken line was ‘Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby.’ The movie became the highest grossing film of the year and ‘Garbomania’ ensued. When she starred in Mata Hari, crowds were so rowdy that police reserves were called in to control the mob waiting outside the theatre. After appearing in the Oscar winning film Grand Hotel, Garbo was dubbed ‘the greatest moneymaking machine ever put on screen.’

In 1932, her contract with MGM expired and she returned to Sweden. However, she was lured back to Hollywood on the condition she could make a movie about the Swedish Queen Christina. The 1933 film was marketed with great fanfare as ‘Garbo Returns’. She earned a salary of $300,000 which equates to approximately 7 million today.

Queen Christina depicts the life of the unorthodox C17th Swedish queen who ascended to the throne at age 7 (although she wasn’t crowned until she turned 18). She was one of the most erudite women of her time, and has been described as the ‘Minerva of the North’ due to her strong support of arts and academics, the magnificent library she established, and her extensive art collection. Unfortunately, her extravagant lifestyle pushed the state to near bankruptcy and caused public unrest.

Her scandalous conversion to Catholicism, and refusal to marry, led to her abdication and move to Rome at age 29. Pope Alexander VII described Christina as ‘a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame.’

Christina’s father educated his daughter in the style of a prince. She wore men’s clothes and participated in fencing, horse-riding and bear hunting. She was said to be hirsute and masculine in features. Biographers vary in classing her as gay, bisexual, asexual or intersex. Christina herself wrote she was ‘neither Male nor Hermaphrodite, as some People in the World have pass'd me for.’ She was said to be romantically involved with women, in particular, Ebba Sparre. She maintained a close friendship with Cardinal Decio Azzolino (whom she made her heir) but it is doubtful theirs was a physical relationship.

Christina died at 62 having lived a life crammed with scandals, high culture and unconventional behaviour. However, the queen portrayed in Garbo’s movie was far removed from reality. The scriptwriters correctly portrayed Christina as being raised as a son who wore male clothes but the reason for her abdication is contrived. Her determination to remain celibate and convert to Catholicism is ignored. Instead, she leaves the throne for the love of a Spanish nobleman (played by John Gilbert). Garbo herself was troubled by the film’s historical inaccuracies and absurdities. She dreaded what her fellow Swedes would think. Nevertheless, the movie is famous for two scenes. The first incurred the ire of the censors as Garbo, dressed as a man, kisses Ebba. The other is the final sequence where Christina sails from Sweden to Spain after her lover has died. She stands stoically at the bow of the boat looking into the middle distance as though a living figurehead on a prow. The film became a box-office triumph and was the highest-grossing film of the year.

Garbo retired at 36 having made 28 films over 16 years. She was nominated three times for a best actress Oscar but never won. However, in 1954, she was awarded an Academy Honorary Award ‘for her luminous and unforgettable screen performances’. She failed to show up at the ceremony, and the statuette was mailed to her. The American Film Institute ranked her fifth on their list of greatest female stars in the classic golden years of cinema. In her personal life she appeared to suffer from depression and led a reclusive life. She also was said to be bisexual. Like Christina, she was an avid art collector. She is forever associated with the quote ‘I want to be alone’ when in fact she later clarified she said ‘I want to be let alone.’ She was denied her wish. To this day people rake over the details of her life, intrigued by one of the most iconic screen goddesses of the 20th century.

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. Her latest release, is Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel about stolen treasure and the Aryan Myth. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the ARA Historical Novel Prize. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Wings of Hope - Paris, November 2015, by Carol Drinkwater

                                                                         PEACE FOR PARIS. 

                                                                  I believe the artist is Jean Julien. @jean_julien



I have written and thrown out several posts for today, turning over in my mind what more could be said on the subject of the recent abominations that took place on Friday 13th in the City of Lights. An evening of darkness that has touched the world, preceded and followed by murderous atrocities in Beirut, Kenya and Mali, not to mention the lockdown of Brussels.

France Magazine is a monthly journal I have been writing a column for for close to six years. It is the bestselling and probably most comprehensive, English-language guide to all things French. It also offers excellent and well-researched articles on almost every rocky outcrop or blade of grass growing in this diverse country. As a tribute, Carolyn Boyd, the editor, has decided to dedicate the upcoming January issue to all who lost their lives or were injured in Paris during and after the atrocities of that evening of 13 November.

From a rich pool of writers and illustrators, Carolyn invited brief contributions on the subject of To Paris With Love. I was keen to be included and began to think about Paris and how it has penetrated and coloured my work. I have lived here in France, sharing my time between the capital and the south, for thirty years, a greater span of life than I spent in either of my mother countries, Ireland and England. One of the hardest calls for me is when France and Ireland play one another at football or rugby – not that these are sports I follow ardently – but who do I shout for on such occasions?

Most inhabitants of a metropolis have special corners and hangouts within their cities: the street where they live, where they work, local cinemas or meet up with friends. The murders and bombings were carried out in the 10th and 11th arrondissements, which is to say the upper east side; north of the Seine, on the eastern flanks of the city. 

                                                   Siege of La Bastille, by Claude Cholat

La Bastille sits at the heart of 11th arrondissement. Although I have never lived in the quartier, my husband, Michel, has had editing suites and offices there on and off for almost the entire time I have known him. When I first began to discover the streets and many tucked-away alleys that fan out like a star from La Place de la Bastille it was still rather scruffy, the real estate was cheap and the magnificent Bastille Opera House had not yet been built to commemorate the bicentenary of the French Revolution. I knew the little cafés where the artists hung out, where some of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and illustrators would decamp for coffee, long discussions, and many Gauloises smoked. A few filmmakers haunted this area – such as Michel – because the rent was affordable. The neighbourhood of La Bastille was cutting edge. Before my time, during the 60s and 70s, it might have been described as the Soho of Paris. I caught its flavour, I picked up on its vibrant vibe, its populaire and revolutionary spirit.

                                                                East view of La Bastille

La Place de la Bastille takes its name from the fortress that stood upon the site of this capacious square. The fortress, later a state prison, was built to protect this eastern side of the capital against the invading British during the Hundred Years War.

14 July 1789, the date that marks the beginning of the French Revolution, was when the Bastille prison was stormed by revolutionaries. By November of that same year, the mighty fortress was more or less demolished. The work of dismantling a structure that all had believed impenetrable was headed up by Pierre-Francois Palloy. The vast empty square that remained was cluttered with displays of bits and pieces of ironwork, excavated bones and stone remnants hauled from the interior of the prison. Palloy began a thriving business in Bastille memorabilia. Items were shipped all over France. 

                                             One stone carved as a model of the Bastille prison.

Models of the Bastille carved from its stones were sent by Palloy to many départements as a means of spreading the revolutionary message. In 1790, a grand ball was held in the square to celebrate the first anniversary of 14 July. 

A foundation stone was laid on 14 July 1792. It was to have been the first phase of the erection of a column to commemorate the Fall of the Bastille, but the project never advanced. In 1804, in rode Napoleon and established France’s First Empire. Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte envisaged a fountain in the Bastille square with a bronze elephant at its centre.

     The Arc de Triomphe, built during the First Empire commissioned by Napoléon Bonaparte

                                  This he did manage to realise, but not his Bastille Fountain

The First Empire Bastille Fountain only reached preliminary stage; a stucco elephant was planted there but the bronze was never commissioned due to lack of funds. However, its plinth proved useful for what was yet to come: the July Column. La Colonne de Juillet is the structure that towers over the entire Bastille neighbourhood today. 

                                                     La Colonne de Juillet - July Column

47 metres high, the monumental column, built between 1835 and 1840, is both elegant and impressive. I walk past it almost on a daily basis when I am in Paris and never fail to pause and admire it, most especially the gold-leafed bronze statue that stands atop the capitol, perched on a golden globe balanced on one leg as though about to take flight. It is a winged figure with outstretched arms. He holds in one hand a flaming torch and in the other a broken length of chain. Auguste Dumont’s iconic figure was christened Génie de la Liberté or Spirit of Freedom.

                                                              The Spirit of Freedom

Ironically, he was commissioned as a monument to another, later revolution that took place over three days at the end of July 1830. Even so, the winged angel flying high over all eastern Paris is indubitably the spirit of every step of the French Revolution, of shackles broken, every stage that led to the French Republic. He represents empowerment, a visual reminder of what France’s citizens hold dearer than anything else: the freedom of the individual.

I have been asking myself on a daily basis whether the attacks were deliberately situated around this quartier of the city, or whether the target choices were random. The neighbouring Stade de France, of course, if the suicide bombers had succeeded in penetrating the stadium, would have been a target of unthinkable proportions and would have included our President. Were the nearby bars and restaurants chosen for no reason in particular or were these murderous assassins actually making a statement against the philosophy that runs deep within the soul of every French citizen? The Bible by which we live: Liberté, egalité and fraternité. The motto that first appeared during the early days of the French Revolution. 

DAESH - I refuse to dignify that fundamentalist mob with the nomenclature, ISIS. Here is an excellent link to the understanding of the name: https://www.freewordcentre.com/blog/2015/02/daesh-isis-media-alice-guthrie/ - DAESH despises music, dancing, laughter, alcohol, women’s suffrage and liberty, sexual liberty, artistic freedom, culture; everything our modern lives celebrate. Still, any and all of these could have been punished by hitting any and every bar or restaurant around the city.

So why this neighbourhood? I don’t know, but I do know that in these days that have succeeded the horrors, there has been a veritable upsurge in the vision that is French, in what the French citizens and their notion of society represents. The winged angel, the Spirit of Freedom, still perches on his golden globe, ready to take flight. He is at the heart of this eastern quarter, at the heart of what will survive and flourish here in France. Freedom of spirit, freedom of the being. Our right to live and believe according to our own mores, while respecting our differences and our multiculturalism.

My new novel, The Forgotten Summer, to be published on 25 February 2016 by Penguin has been partially inspired by Paris.

Je Suis Charlie. Je Suis Paris  Paris, Je T'aime

www.caroldrinkwater.com