Skip to main content
Books, videos, and music - all free from your public library!
LoginSign Up

Footer

Hoopla logo, Go to homepage
  • For Patrons
  • For Libraries (opens in new window)
  • For Vendors (opens in new window)
  • Facebook (opens in new window)
  • X (opens in new window)
  • Instagram (opens in new window)
  • YouTube (opens in new window)
  • TikTok (opens in new window)
  • LinkedIn (opens in new window)

Our Company

  • Our Story
  • Get Hoopla for your Library (opens in new window)
  • Get your content on hoopla (opens in new window)
  • Join our team (opens in new window)
  • Accessibility Statement

Our Content

  • Audiobooks
  • Ebooks
  • Movies
  • Television
  • Comics
  • BingePasses
  • Music
  • The Loop Blog

Help

  • Help Center
  • Submit Feedback
  • Facebook (opens in new window)
  • X (opens in new window)
  • Instagram (opens in new window)
  • YouTube (opens in new window)
  • TikTok (opens in new window)
  • LinkedIn (opens in new window)
  • Download on the App Store (opens in new window)
  • Get it on Google Play (opens in new window)
  • Available at Amazon Appstore (opens in new window)
© 2026 Midwest Tape, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use
  • Hoopla logo
  • Browse
  • My Hoopla
  • Log In
  1. Navigate Home
  2. Ebooks
  3. Garbo

EBOOK

Garbo

Robert Gottlieb
(0)
sign up
Pages
448
Year
2021
Language
English
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About

Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her.

"Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941," Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, "Greta Garbo is in people's minds, hearts, and dreams." Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in sixteen short years, to infiltrate America's subconscious; her decision to suddenly end her film career at the age of thirty-six only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in only twenty-four movies, yet her impact on the world-and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed-was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe. She was a phenomenon, a Sphinx, a myth, but also a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard.

In Garbo: Her Life, Her Films, acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb attempts to capture the ever-elusive essence of Garbo through the eyes of others: in addition to a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, Gottlieb combs through glimpses of Garbo in literature, music, private letters, and, of course, films, in order to better understand her. Discovering her within Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and in the letters of Marianne Moore, and following her from her early movies with MGM to her career-defining, Academy Award-nominated role in Camille to her world-stopping decision to leave the limelight, Gottlieb crafts a biography of unprecedented intimacy and scope in the hopes of capturing the woman that only the camera knew.

Includes Black-and-White Photographs

Related Subjects

  • Entertainment & Performing Arts
  • Biography & Autobiography
  • Adult Nonfiction
  • History & Criticism
  • Film
  • Performing Arts

Reviews

"Engaging and intelligent. . . [Gottlieb] perceptively depicts the paradox of Garbo's sociality and reserve."
Mary Desjardins, The Washington Post
"Much has been written about Garbo over the years, but Gottlieb, a former editor of this magazine, has produced a particularly charming, companionable, and clear-eyed guide to her life and work . . . By the end of the biography, I felt I understood Garbo better as a person, without the aura of mystery around her having been entirely dispelled"
and, at this point, who would want it to be?"

Artists

Robert GottliebAuthor