GRETA GARBO'S FOOT, OR, SEX, SOCKS AND LETTERS

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The author wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance of Elizabeth E. Fuller and Gregory M. Giuliano of the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia, and Silke Ronneburg of the Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin (MDCB), Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin. For their responses to drafts of this paper, the author thanks Sharon Bickle, Sally Newman, Ann Vickery and members of the Special Interest Section on Personal Archives (SISPA) of the Association of Canadian Archivists. Notes 1. For a brief account of de Acosta's life, see Smith (2002 Smith , Patricia Juliana . 2002 . Mercedes de Acosta . GLBTQ: An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture . Available from http://www.glbtq.com/arts/acosta_m.html [Google Scholar]). For a full biography, see Schanke (2003 Schanke, Robert A. 2003. “That furious lesbian”: The story of Mercedes de Acosta, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. [Google Scholar]). 2. Letter from Garbo to de Acosta, [March or April 1938?], Box 23, Folder 14, Mercedes de Acosta Papers. 3. Mercedes reports that Salka Viertel said to her as she left that day that ‘Greta liked you and she likes few people’ (de Acosta 1960, 214). 4. Gever notes that while the coverage was initially coy, some did hint at the nature of their relationship and she cites a 1931 ‘Film Gossip of the Month’ column that trumpeted: ‘Garbo has a new friend! And when Garbo becomes interested enough to have even a rumored friendship … it is news in Hollywood’ (2003 Gever , Martha . 2003 . Entertaining lesbians: Celebrity, sexuality, and self-invention . New York and London : Routledge . [Google Scholar], 129; original emphasis). 5. Garbo and Dietrich, rival European stars in Hollywood, claimed never to have been introduced to one another. Diana McLellan, however, demonstrates that they met in Germany in 1925 on the set of G.W. Pabst's film Die Freudlose Gasse, and even shared a crucial scene in which Dietrich catches the fainting Garbo. Dietrich is not listed in the credits but is clearly recognisable. The film was made immediately prior to Garbo's departure for Hollywood and McLellan (2000, 57–66) speculates that Dietrich seduced Garbo during the filming and then earned her eternal ire by making intimate details of the affair public. See also Conway, McGregor, and Ricci (1963 Conway , Michael , Dion McGregor , and Mark Ricci . 1963 . The films of Greta Garbo . New York : Cadillac . [Google Scholar], 41). 6. In an undated letter from the period, de Acosta wrote to Dietrich concerning her obsession with Garbo: ‘I now realize that I have been an utter and damned bore and I think you have been an angel to have put up with me.’ It is worth noting that despite confessing to remorse for her ‘boring’ behaviour, de Acosta continues on for 20 pages in this same letter ostensibly explaining her obsession with Garbo for Dietrich's benefit. The letter is a fascinating performance. Mercedes de Acosta to Marlene Dietrich, ‘Monday’ [c. late 1932]; original emphasis. Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin. 7. The absence of de Acosta's letters further facilitates the dismissal of the sexuality question if we consider de Lauretis’ argument that ‘It takes two women, not one, to make a lesbian’ (1994 de Lauretis , Teresa . 1994 . The practice of love: Lesbian sexuality and perverse desire . Bloomington : Indiana University Press . [Google Scholar], 283). 8. A selection of 30 letters (‘Garbo Unsealed’) was put on display at the Rosenbach following their opening. The display was sponsored in part by the Philadelphia-based gay rights festival, PrideFest America 2000. 9. In contrast, Cvetkovich notes that ‘subject to idiosyncracies [sic] of the psyche and the logic of the unconscious, emotional experience and the memory of it demand and produce an unusual archive, often one that resists coherence of narrative or that is fragmented and ostensibly arbitrary’ (2002, 110). 10. On Garbo's screen presence, Barry Paris comments: ‘The metabolism that photographed as listless sensuality was really closer to fatigue. What looked like a migraine on Joan Crawford was, on Garbo, “an intense form of sexual yearning”.’ Cited in Maslin (1995 Maslin , Janet 1995 . Greta Garbo's pedestrian side—Everything not on film The New York Times 14 March Available from http://www.greta-garbo.de/com/PedestrianSide.html [Google Scholar]). 11. Her correspondence with Dietrich, for example, is replete with sexually suggestive detail. In one letter dating from around 1932, de Acosta writes to Dietrich: ‘On the 16th of this month it will be eight small weeks since that holy and flaming night that you gave yourself to me.’ In another letter from the same period she writes: ‘I have missed the closeness I had with you and the nights, when in the dark, I have been able to hold you in my arms’ (Letter from de Acosta to Dietrich Dietrich , Marlene . n.d Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin . Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin . [Google Scholar], n.d., c.1932, Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin). 12. Naturally, Garbo's public utterances on the subject of her fans differed considerably. An article entitled ‘What the Public Wants’, and published under her name in the Saturday Review in 1931, included the following sentiment: ‘The popular artiste who is loved and admired by a large section of the public must in his or her turn have a boundless kindliness and affection for the public’ (1931 Garbo , Greta 1931 . What the public wants . Saturday Review (London), 13 June: 857. [Google Scholar], 857). Gever makes the point that Garbo's famous antipathy to fans’ desire to know more about her … has been interpreted in a variety of ways: cynics have wondered if her avoidance of publicity was a cunning public relations ploy intended to create an aura of mystery that elevated her above other glamorous but more accessible stars, while more recent commentators explain it as a frightened effort to keep her lesbian sexuality secret. (2003, 129) Interestingly, McLellan, in contrast, quotes Garbo telling reporter Dorothy Calhoun: ‘The thing I like best about Hollywood is that here is the only place in the world where you can live as you live and nobody will say anything about it, no matter what you do!’ (2000, 74). 13. Greg Guiliano of the Rosenbach Museum observed in relation to the scrappy nature of much of what constitutes the Garbo correspondence that: ‘You get the feeling that's what she thought Mercedes was worth’ (pers. comm.). 14. ‘I would not have had the courage to have burned these letters. I mean, of course, Eva, Greta's and Marlene's who were lovers.’ Letter from de Acosta to William McCarthy, the Rosenbach's curator, 31 October 1964, Folder 07:01, Mercedes de Acosta Papers. 15. Letter from Garbo to de Acosta [March or April 1938?], Box 23, Folder 14, Mercedes de Acosta Papers. 16. See, for example, telegram from Garbo to de Acosta, 7 March 1948 (Box 23, Folder 20); letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 26 February 1946 (Box 23, Folder 25); letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 17 September 1958 (Box 23, Folder 79), Mercedes de Acosta Papers. 17. See, for example, note from Garbo to de Acosta, 24 December [1948?] (Box 23, Folder 23); letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 18 May 1950 (Box 23, Folder 32); letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 29 July 1951 (Box 23, Folder 38); letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 25 August 1952 (Box 23, Folder 48), Mercedes de Acosta Papers. 18. Letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 8 February 1951 (Box 23, Folder 36), Mercedes de Acosta Papers. 19. Letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 19 September 1935, Box 23, Folder 15, Mercedes de Acosta Papers. The letter was actually sent to de Acosta at a Paris hotel, although in Here Lies the Heart she writes that she received the letter ‘after I returned to New York’ (1960, 268) and made the journey from there: ‘The trip was very rough. This was the month of October and the gales kept the portholes closed and even boarded up …’ (1960, 269). 20. See note from Garbo to de Acosta, March or April [1938?] (Box 23, Folder 14); letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 29 April 1950 (Box 23, Folder 30); letter from Garbo to de Acosta, [19?] December 1951 (Box 23, Folder 39); letter from Garbo to de Acosta, 17 September 1958 (Box 23, Folder 79), Mercedes de Acosta Papers. 21. Elizabeth Ezra, for example, points to how preservation works against entropy when she writes that ‘the archival impulse stems from a fear of degradation of the object, the fear of finitude, in sum, the fear of death’ (2004 Ezra , Elizabeth . 2004 . The death of an icon: Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain . French Cultural Studies 15 3 301 10 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 305).