Who disappears from history, plus a short note on my name -- Garbo

Greta Garbo, age 23, in "The Mysterious Lady"

People often comment on my name. My middle name really is Garbo. I made it my legal middle name sometime during  my thirties,  after about twenty years of people calling me "Greta Garbo" or "Garbo" because I talked about the actress so often. 

My fascination with her came out of the blue; I didn't know who Garbo was when I first saw her on late-night TV, in the film "Ninotchka." But at age seventeen, I was impressed with Garbo's presence onscreen. This being the early Seventies, the only way I knew to find more Garbo film was to look through the television listings on the back page of the first section of  The Indianapolis News, as we didn't take TV Guide. I'd note that "Two-Faced Woman" or "Camille" was going to be on Channel 8 at 3 a.m., set the alarm, and be very tired at school the next day. 

    

We viewers only saw the Garbo talkies on television, of course. But earlier in her career, the Swedish movie star made a number of silent films, both in Europe and in the U.S. One of these, "The Mysterious Lady," is my subject for today's post. 

 The costuming looks a bit "Sheena of the Jungle meets Quasimodo" these days but I'm sure it seemed more romantic in the 20s. Happily, this guy is only a would-be suitor. 

I wandered into the path to this 1928 film slowly, by a circuitous path. I really meant to begin a new series of posts about books which became movies, and I was looking through films of 1928 and 1929 because that's the time period in which the switchover from silents to talkies began happening. You've seen a movie about that time. 

During my book-to-film research, I discovered that "The Mysterious Lady" (1928) was based on the novel  War in the Dark by a German author, Ludwig Wolff. 

 

Variety panned "The Mysterious Lady." The reviewer liked the look of the film but neither its length nor the plot of the novel on which it was based:

Secret service story [based on Ludwig Wolff’s novel War in the Dark] involving a Russian feminine spy and an Austrian officer. Using up 83 minutes to unload this yarn is ridiculous.

Productionally it is very nice. Court balls, hundreds of uniforms, big interiors and beneath the surface much intrigue. Tania (Greta Garbo) has engineered her way into the heart of Karl (Conrad Nagel) but he turns on her when his uncle says she’s a spy. For that Tania grabs some Austrian plans and Karl is court-martialed and stripped of his uniform.

The secret service extracts him from prison so he can trail Tania to Warsaw. Posing as a musician, Karl finally finds his former sweetheart who gives evidence that he’s still aces with her by returning the plans a fellow Austrian officer has slipped Gen Alexandroff (Gustav von Seyffertitz), in pursuit of Tania for years. The general becomes so wise that Tania shoots him.

Inasmuch as the opening title includes that familiar phrase, ‘Vienna before the war’, little else need be said. Garbo has done and is capable of better work.

{"The general becomes so wise that Tania shoots him"??!!  Eek. Well, moving on. . ..]

In addition to "The Mysterious Lady," Ludwig Wolff wrote a number of other books which became movies  Here are a few of the film posters; for most of these, the title, date, and sometimes the names of the cast members are all the pieces of information readily available. 

                         "The Crazy Adventure"  

                                            "A Queen's Love"

                              "Princess Suwarin"

There's a plot summary, at least, for "Princess Suwarin":

 "Two passenger ships dock in the port of Hamburg. Aboard one is the Russian princess Suwarin, who has fled from the Bolshevik homeland into German exile, while the millionaire Cyrus Proctor disembarks from the other ship. Both passengers have found their accommodation in one and the same hotel. Princess Suwarin must start looking for a job to start earning money. She tries a film production company, where she meets the movie star Tina Bermonte and falls in love with the auxiliary director Andrej Klipman."

Ludwig Wolff was not only a novelist but a screenwriter and film director. He worked closely on creative projects with Danish star Asta Nielsen, who played the leading role in a 1930 silent-era version of "Mata Hari." (Garbo was the famous vamp/spy in the 1931 soundie.)

The most well-known film down by the team of Wolff and Nielsen  was "Downfall," based on a novel of the same name by Wolff.  The story involves a young, beautiful star who becomes an aging, haggard nobody. 

Other books by Wolff became films, but for these, I could find neither a dust jacket image nor a movie poster. This next image cane up in Google Image for "Garragan," but I am unsure about whether this is a scene from the film, a publicity shot of the cast, or a photo of the director and crew with the cast. 

Another film, titled "Kopf Hoch, Charly!" ("Heads Up, Charley") is of interest mostly because young Marlene Dietrich had a small role in it.  I did find one image but had the same issue as with the "Garragan" image; I had no idea who was who. But this head shot of Dietrich is from around the time "Heads Up, Charley" was filmed. 

Of course, this next poster, for the film version of Ludwig Wolff's novel The Transformation of Dr. Bessel is very "Whoa!" 

But after putting in considerable time seeking information about the movie, all I could find was a cast list full of names I didn't know, plus a release date of 1927 and a run time of 70 minutes. (I've requested a copy of a 2008 academic paper -- which mentions "Dr. Bessel" -- about the influence of  the First World War on German cinema in the 1920s. Will my request be granted? I don't know.)

My search for Wolff's book, the source for the film, went a tiny bit better. I found one battered copy of Wolff's novel at ABE books, at a cost of five bucks plus shipping. But I can't read German, so I'll leave it for some other amateur film historian to find and purchase. 

There's no photo of Ludwig Wolff to go with this post because I can't find one that I'm confident is him. The author Wofff shared his name with a general, an academic, and a chemist. All of them  have many more online resources about them than the novelist and director who created the stories for the German cinema between world wars. Proof of the fleeting nature of fame. No matter what cool stuff you've done, you'll probably be forgotten.

Unless of course you were a gorgeous movie star, you resisted the Nazis when they tried to use your work for propaganda purposes, and you gave substantial sums of money to help feed hungry Jews tormented by the Gestapo. Oh, and you had your fourth wedding at the age of 88 when you married your 77-year-old boyfriend. 

You do that sort of thing, as Asta Nielsen did, and you need two volumes for your autobiography, which will be supplmented over the years by any number of biographies. 

Speaking of cinematic beauties whose images are preserved by historical references:  if I look on YouTube, I find  several variations on the same film clip featuring Greta Garbo in "The Mysterious Lady." Creative people have supplied soundtracks of various kinds, they've added colorization, and done other edits.  No one, it seems, is going to forget Garbo. 

I'm sure Conrad Nagel never forgot doing this love scene with the Swedish beauty. 

Next week, the actual start of the new series on films based on books.

Note: This article has good info on Asta Nielsen, and is the source for the autographed image of her used in this post.