| More Lovers and Friends |
|
| Content
* Salka Viertel
* Peter Viertel
* Deborah Kerr
* George Schlee
* Valentina Schlee
* Max Gumpel
* Vera Schmiterlöw
* Mona Mårtenson
* Wilhelm Sörenson
* Rouben Mamoulian
* Prince Sigvard Bernadotte
* Aristoteles Onassis
* Count & Countess Wachtmeister
* Count & Countess Bernadotte
* Ona Munson
* Lillian Tashman
* Claire Koger
* Zsa Zsa Gabor
* Irene Selznick
* David Niven
* Lilli Palmer
* Einar Hanson
* George Brent
* Nils Asther
* Sydney Guilaroff
* Johnny Weissmüller
* Noël Coward
* Charles Addams
* Ramon Navarro
* Eva Le Gallienne
* Carl Brisson
* Fifi D'Orsay
* Sven Broman
* Louise Brooks
* Leopold Stokowsky
* Erich Maria Remarque
* Cecile de Rothschild
* George Tabori |
| |
| Salka Viertel
 
Much has been discussed of Viertel's relationships and friendships with actresses Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, as well as writer Mercedes de Acosta.
Although many rumours have suggested these relationships as lesbian, the nature of her close ties with both Garbo and Dietrich have never fully been disclosed.
|
| |
| Peter Viertel
 
Son of Salka Viertel, Greta was one of his mothers closest friends. |
| |
| Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr (1921 –2007) was a Golden Globe award winning and six-time Academy Award nominated Scottish actress.
She was married to Peter Viertel, the son of Garbo's best friend Salka Viertel. Kerr and Viertel even contributed to the Barry Paris book.
Garbo was very fond of Peter and Kerr. They married in Klosters (1960) and lived in a big hillside house, surrounded by fir trees, south of town.
Kerr, was a friend, Garbo never lost. Kerr's quiet, thoughtful ways always charmed her.
"She could be so funny and had such a wonderful way of knocking herself," remembered Kerr, whose lilting soprano voice downshifts at will into a perfect imitation of Garbo's baritone.
"Once in the late afternoon, we were about to have a glass of wine and I asked, 'Miss G, would you like red or white?' She gave me the most tragic look and said, 'Ooooh, De-bo-rah – that is a terrrrible decision!'”
"You never knew with her, whether she was sending you up or not. Peter, on the other hand, was never deferential. He would say, 'C'mon, Greta – just make up your mind!'"
In 1975, Garbo went to see Kerr in Edward Albee's Seascape and walked backstage afterward to say she admired her performance. "I was so nervous," said Deborah Kerr. "It was among the great thrills in my life that she came to see me. But she wouldn't say anything about the play."
Kerr suffered from Parkinson 's disease and died in November 2007.
|
| |
| George Schlee
   
Schlee was Greta's companion and some kind of a manager. He was by her site from the 1940s to 1960s. It seems he wanted to marry Garbo. But he was married to Valentina Schlee. He couldn't get divorce. Again we are not sure that there was love between them.
When Schlee died in 1964 Garbo was deeply shocked. She really cared for him and missed him until her final years. They met through Valentina, Garbo‘s dress designer in New York in 1941. On the Riviera, in Cap d‘Ail, George Schlee bought “Le Roc“, a spacious and well protected house, which, naturally, has never been called anything besides “Garbo‘s house“.
In 1964 George Schlee died.
|
| |
| Valentina Schlee
Valentina Schlee was an American fashion designer. She was born as Valentina Sanina in Russia on 1 May 1904. She was married to George Schlee, most famous for having an affair with screen siren Greta Garbo. She was a dancer as a young woman at the Chauve Souris Theatre in Paris before she moved to New York and opened a small couture house, Valentina's Gowns.
In 1950 Valentina also introduced a perfume, "My Own". She was always impeccably turned out, earning her a mention on the International Best Dressed List. She died in 1989. |
| |
| Max Gumpel
 
Max was a personal friend of Greta's, on visits to Sweden she would stay with Mr Gumpel.They met during the filming of the advertising film How Not to Dress. Max Gumpel, a bachelor in his early thirties and the owner and manager of one of Sweden's most successful construction firms. He often visited the set to watch his 7 old nephew Erick, who was also in the film, perform.
Years later Max said that he was very taken with the actress and Greta was very taken with his affable style and manner. One day he asked the 15 year old Greta to dine with him in his glamorous apartment. She accepted.
One day Max made her the present of a tiny gold ring with a small diamond in it. The dated for a while but one day in 1921 they separated like the good friends they had always been.
|
| |
| Vera Schmiterlöw
Vera like Greta was born in Stockholm in Sweden, she attended the Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school in Stockholm with Greta and they were close friends.
|
| |
Mona Mårtenson
Mona also attended The Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school whilst Greta was there, she was a friend of Garbo's.
|
| |
Wilhelm Sörenson
 
The son of a wealthy Swedish industrialist. Sorensen, a year GG's senior, became o frequent escort during her visit, and later followed her back to America.
|
| |
Rouben Mamoulian
 
Mamoulian was a theatre and film director in the US, he directed Queen Christina. It is said that they had an affair while filming Greta´s famous movie.
|
| |
Prince Sigvard Bernadotte
(in Treatment)
|
| |
| Aristoteles Onassis
 
Was a friend of Greta's, she and George Schlee would borrow Onassis yacht. |
| |
| Count & Countess Neils and Ingrid (Hörke) Wachtmeister
  
During her three months' stay in Sweden, Garbo and Wilhelm Sorensen were invited by his aunt Countess Hoerke Wachtmeister to stay a ther castle south of Stockholm. At first Greta was reluctant to go, fearing a crowd of fasionable and curious guests.
On being told that she and Sorensen would be the only guests she accepted the invitation, exclaiming, "Oh, how exciting. It will be the first time I stay in a real castle!". Soon after arriving however she was called back to Hollywood to film The Single Standard.
|
| |
| Count & Countess Carl & Kerstin Bernadotte
(in Treatment)
   
|
| |
Ona Munson
Munson was a Polish born actress. She wrote a love letter to brief companion Mercedes de Acosta, who was at the time the lover of actress Greta Garbo, with whom Munson also became involved.
During the mid 1930s she was involved with a married Marlene Dietrich, as well as actress Tallulah Bankhead, among others.
|
| |
| Lillian Tashman
Born in Brooklyn in 1899, Tashman was a fairly successful actress. She was rumoured to be a lover of Miss Garbo's |
| |
| Claire Koger
Born 11 July 1906, in Basel, Claire Koger was raised in Switzerland and moved to Germany when she was in her twenties . Before the outbreak of World War II, she made her way to England where, for a while, she cared for the children of actor John Mills.
After the war, she returned to Switzerland and, in the early 1950s, left for better-paying domestic work in the United States, first in Washington and then in New York It was there that Valentina Schlee discovered her through an agency and recommended her to Garbo. Her average salary over the years was about $150 per week.
|
| |
| Zsa Zsa Gabor
 
Zsa Zsa states in her autobiography, "One Lifetime Is Not Enough" that one night Greta seduced her.
Read the "Garbo Story" by Garbor HERE! |
| |
| Irene Selznick
 
The Daughter of Louis B Mayer. Claimed that Garbo tried to seduce her. |
| |
David Niven
A British born actor. In 1940, Niven married Primula Susan Rollo (1918–1946), the aristocratic daughter of a British pilot, after a whirlwind two-week romance; they had two sons, David Jr. and Jamie.
She died at age 28. He counted Garbo as one of his friend.
|
| |
| Lilli Palmer
 
Lilli was a German actress who was married to Rex Harrison. She met Greta several times and she said that they were close friends.
Read the "Garbo Story" by Palmer HERE!
|
| |
Einar Hanson
Hanson was a silent film actor; he was in Joyless Street with Greta.
It was rumored that they had an affair in late 1924.
|
| |
George Brent
 
Brent was known as a womaniser in Hollywood, and had a lengthy relationship with his co-star Bette Davis.
It was rumored that he and Greta had an affair wile filimng The Painted Veil together.
|
| |
Nils Asther
 
Attended Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm. He played romantic roles in films with Joan Crawford, Pola Negri and Greta Garbo.
It is said that they were good friends.
|
| |
| |
|
| |
Introduction |
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (1899 –1973) was an Academy Award winning English actor, playwright, composer of popular music and a friend of Garbo.
In 2007, extracts from Noel Coward's letters have been made public for the first time. Several are from actor-friends such Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead...
Garbo, in a letter of 1936, teasingly asked him to marry her ... he wrote back saying he almost accepted – even though he was “completely immune to any female charm”.
Garbo and Noël |
Garbo was introduced to the multihyphenate entertainer at a party hosted by the Wachtmeisters. Later, the pair were seen walking around Djurgården. Although rumors of a “blossoming romance” between England 's gay blade and the solitary diva from Sweden quickly circulated in the international press, a source close to the actress labeled them “pure fabrication.”
What was really happening, Coward's friend and biographer Cole Lesley agreed, was that Noël Coward could not be coerced into meeting a friend at an obscure location wearing dark glasses and a turned-up collar. He wanted to see and be seen.
So he wheedled and coaxed and bullied Garbo until she agreed to more public meetings, including a party given by Gösta Ekman attended by Stockholm 's fashionable elite, and a private New Year's Eve party thrown by Prince Wilhelm.
Regarding the possibility of a romance tryst, however, Lesley was never completely sure whether the rumors were true or whether Greta and Noël simply found it more interesting to continue the charade. “I do know that they exchanged affectionate telegrams and telephone calls for some time after, calling each other ‘My little bridegroom' and ‘My little bride,' and that she had said she ‘wished the newspapers was right.'”
Source: Karen Swenson – A life Apart
Expert taken from a Noel Coward biography: |
....By the time he got to Stockholm, where he went to alot of Christmas parties. Greta Garbo was there yoo, not always escaping being mobbed by the press and public, and when Garbo and Noel were seen together the international press understandably went mad with excitement. According to many papers there was certainly a romance between the two, and the world-shaking announcement of their engagement might be expected daily.
They enjoyed one another's company enormously, but what was really happeningwas Noel's adamant refusal to meet her at some obscure address wearing dark sunglasses and with their faces hidden by turned-up coat collars. Instead, he was wheedling and coaxing her, then, when that failed, bullying her steadily and relentlessly until she would in the end consent to go to a theatre or a restaurant with him - or even go to the party given by the great actor Gösta Eckman when, as they were going up in the lift, Garbo refused to go in the door, saying "Believe me Noel, I really and truly cannot go in, I can not face it."
Noel said he shook her, rang the bell and said "Yes you bloody well are going in" and when the door opened he pushed her in. Coward said "Once inside she soon became charming, easy, gay person she really is and refused to leave until three in the morning. She can often be funny, loving to laugh at other people's jokes."
Thanks to Meri |
George Tabori (Hungarian theatre director and novelist)
 
George Tabori was a playwright, theatre director, novelist and translator. From 1947 until 1969, Tabori worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and New York, where he mingled with the rich and famous. Tabori wrote in his autobiography that he met Garbo and even had an affair ("She never forgave me") with her.
He wrote a screen-play |
In 1948, Tabori wrote a screen play of Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg. English producer Alexander Korda bought the film rights to the novel and Tabori worked on a screenplay for six month.
Tabori and Zoltán Korda (Alexander Korda's brother) considered Garbo as Madame Chauchat, Montgomery Clift as Hans Castorp and Charles Laughton was interrested to play. It is possible that Garbo was interested but the project never wnet into production.
Tabori reveals his affair with Garbo in a German magazine: |
At Garbo's 100th Birthday the director remembers Garbo. In 1943, Tabori was a war correspondent in Bulgaria. He worked in Hollywood with Hitchcock, with Bert Brecht in Berlin and he said he loved Greta.
Was Greta Garbo a diva? |
Perhaps, but she also liked hefty meals like Koenigsberger Klopse (a German dish consisting of meatballs in a white sauce with capers) and she dressed very simple: White blouse, black trousers, hat, sun glasses.
Only once - at my 34. Birthday - she was dressed as well as she was in her films. She was wearing a black and tight long velvet dress and a great elegant hairstyle. I was speechless. She placed herself next to me in my car.
Due of all my excitement i forgot to tell her that this was the place were my dog always lies. When we arrived at the restaurant, her black dress was covered with white hair from my dog. I thought, that she will never forgive me! But she twirled herself three times and the hair flew in all directions and we went on and celebrated.
What is your first memory about her? |
She was already celebrated, when I was a little boy in Budapest. For me she is the best actress who ever existed.
How did you meet her? |
1948 in Hollywood, when i was at the dentist. I had terrible pain, a tooth had to be pulled out. There she came in the waiting room and asked me: "Aren't you well? I will bring you a coffee." She took care of me and held my hand while i was waiting.
What was so extraordinary about her? |
She was very proud, she gave up her career because her last film Two-Faced Woman was a flop. She even gave her fee back. And she was beautiful. Breath-taking. When i visited her in her mansion, she often made gymnastic at the pool - half naked! Garbo had beautiful shoulders.
How did she live? |
Seclusive and she collected works by Dalí and Giacometti. I will never forget herbed: Two golden angels graced over it over it and guarded her sleep. Like a crazy person, she loved to race with her Chevrolet. This scared me.
Do you miss your friend? |
We spend some months together. But when I left it for two weeks, in order to travel to New York, I lost her love. I still regret this. For me the time i spend with her was a gift. I still don't know, why i deserved this.
© Copyright by BZ
Thanks to RubyRed and Bea |
