Greta Garbo and silent cinema: the actress as Art Deco icon.

The stuff [shown at the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of Decorative and Modern Arts] ... was not the normal output of commerce. It was extreme in its tendencies and not adaptable to the ordinary lives of our people. Actresses may temporarily take some of the stuff into their living quarters as a passing fad, but even they will soon replace it for another sensation.

--Arthur Wilcock, "A New York Decorator's Opinion of the Paris Exposition;" Good Furniture Magazine (1925)

As a teenager, living in Stockholm, a working-class girl named Greta Louisa Gustafson was employed by Bergstrom's--one of the city's major emporia. (1) When the establishment wanted a salesgirl to appear in How Not to Dress (1921)--a promotional film for their women's apparel line--they selected the beautiful Gustafson. She also was featured in the store's catalog, modeling hats like those she sold in Bergstrom's millinery department. Years later, she recalled that amongst all her customers, she most "envied the actresses!" (24, 26).

Greta Louisa Gustafson, of course, eventually realized her dream--leaving Sweden in 1925 to become Greta Garbo at MGM Studios in Hollywood. What is especially intriguing about the early years of her screen career is her continuing association with fashion--a factor that seems presaged in her adolescent job as department store shop girl. For, during the 1920s, Garbo would not only become a leading American actress, but a prominent symbol of the prevalent design style of the era--Art Deco. Her identification with this trend (and her constitution as one of its pivotal icons) is especially clear in those Garbo films set in the modern period, where her character is seen in a contemporary context.

For example, in The Torrent (dir. Monta Bell, 1925), Garbo's first American film, she plays Leonora Moreno, a Spanish peasant girl with an extraordinary singing voice. As a young woman, she is spurned by Don Rafael Brull (Ricardo Cortez), a rich landowner's son. Though he adores her, Rafael fails to marry her because his betrothal would displease his overbearing mother. Leonora leaves her village and travels to Paris, where she becomes "La Brunna"--a famous opera singer. In early scenes of the film, when Garbo is playing a simple rural maid, her demeanor is reminiscent of that of Lillian Gish--subdued and quasi-Victorian. But when Leonora appears in Paris, the actress's bearing is totally transformed. Not only does Leonora become "La Brunna," but Greta Louisa Gustafson becomes "Greta Garbo."

Significantly, the structure of the film moves dramatically between these two poles and stylistic characterizations. When Leonora bids farewell to her village, she sits on the back of a horse cart--a shawl draped over her head, Madonna-style. We are told that "a curtain of gray years" intervened, and that "behind it, Leonora Moreno vanished," and "from it emerged a new star--La Brunna, the idol of Paris." We then see Leonora performing on an opera stage. Shortly thereafter, a title introduces us to "The Cafe American in Paris," a tony nightclub. La Brunna is shown there in a stunning medium close-up, her hair slicked back, wearing a bold white-and-black striped fur collar. The cafe stage is done in a contemporary mode, with concentric arches and a tiered stairway. After watching the performance, Leonora approaches one of the players to offer him a tip. As she does so, we finally see the entirety of her dazzling outfit: a full-length lame evening coat completely bordered with fur. Here, in Greta Garbo's first cinematic "glamour shot" she is adorned in chic fashion and inhabits a modernist space. An Art Deco diva is born.

Throughout The Torrent, at heightened moments of the text, she returns to wearing haute Deco couture. After being reunited with Rafael in Madrid, the two plan to elope. But, again, Rafael is too cowardly to fulfill his promise. As Leonora futilely awaits him in her apartment, she wears a black-and-white, geometrically patterned cape dress, with a stiff, round, ruffled collar. Thus, as she plays the "fool" to Rafael a second time, she looks like a Deco Harlequin. (Interestingly, in Vogue magazine of 15 February 1925, there is a fashion sketch of a woman with a short, manly Garboesque haircut wearing a dress with an almost identical pattern). (2)