Please Be a Stranger!

𝐒𝐘𝐃 𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐓 — 1967

Garbo had sensitive hearing and hated noise. She went to forests and deserts for their silence as well as their beauty. Like most Swedes, she loved nature, referring to “the grandeur and everlasting patience of mountains” and “the feeling [oceans give] of the infinite, of eternal life, of liberty.” It’s a myth, however, that she always wanted to be alone. She had friends; she went to parties and plays. She wanted to be left alone—by fans, journalists, and street photographers. And she had a phobia about strangers. When someone she didn’t know entered a room she was in, she became a frightened animal, running for cover. Actress Tallulah Bankhead called her fear of strangers “a disease.” Garbo said that she was “forever running away from somebody or something.”

Throughout her career, Garbo called herself “he,” “the boy,” “the bachelor,” or “Garbo.” She disliked the feminine name Greta; she often thought of herself as male. Moreover, as an adult, she sometimes became a child, speaking in a childlike manner, telling childish jokes—as though she was a Peter Pan who never grew up. And she was a rebel. She was a pacifist, an advocate of healthy living, and an explorer of Eastern religions, especially Hinduism. A dress reformer, she made trousers and turtleneck shirts acceptable attire for women. (Turtlenecks had previously been worn only by jockeys and prize fighters.) She wore no bra long before 1970s feminists discarded it.

She criticized Hollywood materialism and misogyny—by wearing male clothing and, as her friend actress Pola Negri put it, by being “the dowdiest woman in Hollywood… where smartness and an air of being well-groomed is a religion with even the poorest extra girl.” Yet, in Sweden, she had been a saleswoman in the women’s clothing department of Stockholm’s elite department store and a mannequin in fashion shows there. Once a film star, she tried to play cross-dressed and even male roles. (Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo)

Freyja