Subject
ADA & Garbo
From
Date
Body
Anna Christie (1930)Ada, Cordula, & Greta Garbo
In Part I, chapter 27 of ADA, Van meets Cordula de Prey, Ada's 15 year-old schoolmate whom jealous Van suspects of being Ada's sexual partner. The account, first of Van's meeting Cordula at a party and again that evening in a bookshop; then of his subsequent date with Ada (with Cordula as unwelcome chaperone) near the girls' boarding school, is rife with lesbian motifs. Among them is an allusion to Greta Garbo whose image is partly projected on both girls.
Cordula at the party is described as wearing a "'garbotosh' (belted mackintosh) over her terribly unsmart turtle and held both hands deep in her pockets as she challenged his stare. Her bobbed hair was of a neutral shade between dry straw and damp. Her light blue eyes....".
Some months later, Van and Ada (with chaperone Cordula) have a most unsatisfactory date on a rainy afternoon. Ada "sported a shiny black raincoat and a down-brimmed oilcloth hat as if someone was to be salvaged from the perils of life or the sea."
The Garbo image refers to her role in her first talking film, the 1930 "Anna Christie" based (fairly closely) on Eugene O'Neil's play. Garbo's character, a reformed prostitute and man-hater, has come home to her drunken Swedish father, the captain of a grungy coal barge in New York harbor. Father and daughter have not seen each other since she was five. In a fierce storm at sea, they rescue a brash, handsome sailor. In the rescue scene, Anna appears in her oilskin slicker and hat. The slicker (sans hat but avec turtleneck) appears in the movie poster below. Note well VN's phrase "as if someone was to be salvaged from the perils ... of the sea."
Cordula not only wears the "garbotosh" but Anna's turtle neck sweater and has "bobbed hair .. of a neutral shade between dry straw and damp" as well as light blue eyes. This accords with Anna's bobbed hair and Garbo's real-life blonde hair and blue eyes (not evident in the black and white film. (But see the movie poster below.)
Rather than identifying the Garbo-Anna image with only one of his characters, VN assigns elements of it to both girls, drawing on both Garbo's dramatic role and Garbo herself. In fact, neither Ada nor Cordula bear much physical resemblance to Garbo or Anna. Narrator Van (and author VN) draw in these elements as part of Van's preoccupation with Cordula and Ada's lesbian relationship. The Garbo film has no suggestion that Anna has lesbian inclinations. But Garbo herself was widely rumored to have lesbian lovers. The issue has been vigorous promoted by some feminist scholars and, most recently, by the publication of the correspondence between Garbo and one of her alleged lovers, who is the subject of a new biography entitled "'That Furious Lesian': The Story of Mercedes de Acosta" by Robert Schanke (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003 )($45).
VN was not, apparently, an admirer of the heavily Freudian playwright O'Neil, a Nobel Prize winner in 1936. Although VN left no record of his opinion of "Anna Christie," he witheringly deconstructed "Mourning Becomes Electra" (and O'Neil himself) in his essay "The Tragedy of Tragedy."
D. Barton Johnson
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Anna Christie (1930)
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Anna Christie (1930) was advertised, in a two-word ad campaign, as the first talking picture (and 14th film) for cinema's greatest silent star - an asexual, supercool Nordic beauty named Greta Garbo: "Garbo Talks!" MGM Studios was quite concerned about their alluring, 24 year-old talented actress. She was one of their biggest stars, but she had a potential liability - her untested, heavy Swedish accent. Many other silent stars had already failed or struggled to make the transition to the sound era - Nita Naldi, Vilma Banky, and John Gilbert (satirized in MGM's Singin' in the Rain (1952)). Even after talkies were inaugurated in 1927, Garbo starred in more silents, e.g., The Single Standard (1929) and The Kiss (1929).
Finally, the star's first talkie (an "ALL TALKING PICTURE") was carefully chosen for her, mostly because it perfectly suited her Swedish accent. And a familiar director Clarence Brown was also assigned to the film, having already directed Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1927), and A Woman of Affairs (1928) (and later Anna Karenina (1935) and Conquest (1937)). The role Garbo would play, a sickly prostitute, would be in sharp contrast to the glamorous characters she had already played in silent films.
The 74 minute, black and white Anna Christie was adapted (by influential screenwriter Frances Marion) from Eugene O'Neill's play of the same name. It had earlier been a stage play, and had been filmed by producer Thomas H. Ince and director John Griffith Wray as a silent picture in 1923, with Blanche Sweet as the heroine, and George F. Marion in the same role that he played onstage (and in this version). In 1984, a film directed by Sidney Lumet, titled Garbo Talks (1984), used this film's slogan in a story about a woman whose dying wish was to meet her screen idol Garbo.
In the famed, immortalized scene that is about sixteen minutes into this over-rated and stagy drama, weary and ailing, man-hating Swedish-American streetwalker Anna Gustafson Christie (Greta Garbo), searching for her estranged barge captain father Chris Gustafson (George F. Marion) to seek redemption, makes her grand entrance into a NY Battery waterfront saloon from a foggy street. The bar's waiter holds open the door to the Ladies Entrance as she struggles in, lugging an old, weighty suitcase. She shuffles over to a wooden table across from where her father's boozing companion Marthy (Marie Dressler) sits, and drops her suitcase onto the floor. Anna takes a seat in a chair, crouches down, and finally delivers her famous opening lines. In a deep and husky, heavily-accented voice, she orders:
Anna: Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side...and don't be stingy, baby!
Waiter: (sarcastically) Well, shall I serve it in a pail?
Anna: (bluntly) Ah, that suits me down to the ground. (After the whiskey is served and downed) Gee, I needed that bad all right, all right.
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In Part I, chapter 27 of ADA, Van meets Cordula de Prey, Ada's 15 year-old schoolmate whom jealous Van suspects of being Ada's sexual partner. The account, first of Van's meeting Cordula at a party and again that evening in a bookshop; then of his subsequent date with Ada (with Cordula as unwelcome chaperone) near the girls' boarding school, is rife with lesbian motifs. Among them is an allusion to Greta Garbo whose image is partly projected on both girls.
Cordula at the party is described as wearing a "'garbotosh' (belted mackintosh) over her terribly unsmart turtle and held both hands deep in her pockets as she challenged his stare. Her bobbed hair was of a neutral shade between dry straw and damp. Her light blue eyes....".
Some months later, Van and Ada (with chaperone Cordula) have a most unsatisfactory date on a rainy afternoon. Ada "sported a shiny black raincoat and a down-brimmed oilcloth hat as if someone was to be salvaged from the perils of life or the sea."
The Garbo image refers to her role in her first talking film, the 1930 "Anna Christie" based (fairly closely) on Eugene O'Neil's play. Garbo's character, a reformed prostitute and man-hater, has come home to her drunken Swedish father, the captain of a grungy coal barge in New York harbor. Father and daughter have not seen each other since she was five. In a fierce storm at sea, they rescue a brash, handsome sailor. In the rescue scene, Anna appears in her oilskin slicker and hat. The slicker (sans hat but avec turtleneck) appears in the movie poster below. Note well VN's phrase "as if someone was to be salvaged from the perils ... of the sea."
Cordula not only wears the "garbotosh" but Anna's turtle neck sweater and has "bobbed hair .. of a neutral shade between dry straw and damp" as well as light blue eyes. This accords with Anna's bobbed hair and Garbo's real-life blonde hair and blue eyes (not evident in the black and white film. (But see the movie poster below.)
Rather than identifying the Garbo-Anna image with only one of his characters, VN assigns elements of it to both girls, drawing on both Garbo's dramatic role and Garbo herself. In fact, neither Ada nor Cordula bear much physical resemblance to Garbo or Anna. Narrator Van (and author VN) draw in these elements as part of Van's preoccupation with Cordula and Ada's lesbian relationship. The Garbo film has no suggestion that Anna has lesbian inclinations. But Garbo herself was widely rumored to have lesbian lovers. The issue has been vigorous promoted by some feminist scholars and, most recently, by the publication of the correspondence between Garbo and one of her alleged lovers, who is the subject of a new biography entitled "'That Furious Lesian': The Story of Mercedes de Acosta" by Robert Schanke (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003 )($45).
VN was not, apparently, an admirer of the heavily Freudian playwright O'Neil, a Nobel Prize winner in 1936. Although VN left no record of his opinion of "Anna Christie," he witheringly deconstructed "Mourning Becomes Electra" (and O'Neil himself) in his essay "The Tragedy of Tragedy."
D. Barton Johnson
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anna Christie (1930)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anna Christie (1930) was advertised, in a two-word ad campaign, as the first talking picture (and 14th film) for cinema's greatest silent star - an asexual, supercool Nordic beauty named Greta Garbo: "Garbo Talks!" MGM Studios was quite concerned about their alluring, 24 year-old talented actress. She was one of their biggest stars, but she had a potential liability - her untested, heavy Swedish accent. Many other silent stars had already failed or struggled to make the transition to the sound era - Nita Naldi, Vilma Banky, and John Gilbert (satirized in MGM's Singin' in the Rain (1952)). Even after talkies were inaugurated in 1927, Garbo starred in more silents, e.g., The Single Standard (1929) and The Kiss (1929).
Finally, the star's first talkie (an "ALL TALKING PICTURE") was carefully chosen for her, mostly because it perfectly suited her Swedish accent. And a familiar director Clarence Brown was also assigned to the film, having already directed Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1927), and A Woman of Affairs (1928) (and later Anna Karenina (1935) and Conquest (1937)). The role Garbo would play, a sickly prostitute, would be in sharp contrast to the glamorous characters she had already played in silent films.
The 74 minute, black and white Anna Christie was adapted (by influential screenwriter Frances Marion) from Eugene O'Neill's play of the same name. It had earlier been a stage play, and had been filmed by producer Thomas H. Ince and director John Griffith Wray as a silent picture in 1923, with Blanche Sweet as the heroine, and George F. Marion in the same role that he played onstage (and in this version). In 1984, a film directed by Sidney Lumet, titled Garbo Talks (1984), used this film's slogan in a story about a woman whose dying wish was to meet her screen idol Garbo.
In the famed, immortalized scene that is about sixteen minutes into this over-rated and stagy drama, weary and ailing, man-hating Swedish-American streetwalker Anna Gustafson Christie (Greta Garbo), searching for her estranged barge captain father Chris Gustafson (George F. Marion) to seek redemption, makes her grand entrance into a NY Battery waterfront saloon from a foggy street. The bar's waiter holds open the door to the Ladies Entrance as she struggles in, lugging an old, weighty suitcase. She shuffles over to a wooden table across from where her father's boozing companion Marthy (Marie Dressler) sits, and drops her suitcase onto the floor. Anna takes a seat in a chair, crouches down, and finally delivers her famous opening lines. In a deep and husky, heavily-accented voice, she orders:
Anna: Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side...and don't be stingy, baby!
Waiter: (sarcastically) Well, shall I serve it in a pail?
Anna: (bluntly) Ah, that suits me down to the ground. (After the whiskey is served and downed) Gee, I needed that bad all right, all right.
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