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Greta Garbo and Ernst Lubitsch on the set of Ninotchka
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"He was the only great director out there. Ninotchka was the only time I had a great director in Hollywood."
-Greta Garbo-
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"We were just writers at MGM-(and) I was on the stage one day,and Garbo was playing a love scene.So she went up to somebody,an assistant,and she came out and started rehearsing the scene,but in between,they put up a blackboard right in front of me.She had eyes in the back of her head.She saw me there.""Throw that man out!"".So they threw me out.And then I met her later at a party at Salka Viertel's,the grandma of the German circuit.She was here in the twenties.I met her there,and now knew Garbo a little.Then one day years later I saw her running,exercising,up Rodeo Drive.Rodeo then had a track in the middle where you could run.So she was running up Rodeo and she was very sweaty,and I stopped her and said,"Hi,how are you?I'm Billy Wilder". And she said,"Yes,I know you"."Would you like to have a Martini,something to drink?.I live right around the corner ,Beverly Drive". She said,"Yes,I would like to". I lived right around the corner so I took her home.
It was in the afternoon,and she collapsed in the chair and I said,"I will tell my wife,she is upstairs,to come fix us a drink."And I said,"Aud,come on down,guess who we have here."She says,"Who,Otto Preminger?"--somebody like that.And I said,"No,Greta Garbo".And she said,"OH,go on,go fuck yourself !". And I said,"No,honestly."So she came down and I introduced her,and Aud fixes a martini,really strong,big,and Garbo had that thing in one gulp,and then another one and then another one.They drink them like beer,those Swedish---... martinis.And then we started to talk about pictures and she said,"I would like to make a picture about a clown." I said,"Oh,that's fine"."I always am a clown,and I am wearing a mask,and I will not take the mask off. I will only be in the picture as a clown".She never made a picture again.She made one more picture after "Ninotchka" and that was it.So she wanted to play the clown,and not show her face.A clown who grins all the time.I said,"That might be difficult'.
-Billy Wilder-(co-writer of Ninotchka)
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"We were previewing "Ninotchka",and Lubitsch took the writers along too,in Long Beach.And they are outside in the lobby there,a stack of cards,with the audience invited to put down their thoughts.So the picture starts playing,and it plays well.Now Lubitsch takes the cards,a heap of the cards,doesn't let anybody else touch them.We get into the bid MGM limousine.We turn the light up.Now,so,he takes the preview cards and starts reading."Very good"..."brilliant"...Twenty cards.But when he comes up to the twenty-first card,he starts laughing as hard as I ever saw him laugh,and we say,"What is it?" He keeps the cards to himself;he does not let anybody even look.Then,finally he comes down a little and starts reading.And what he read was--I have the card--"Funniest picture I ever saw.So funny that I peed in my girlfriend's hand".
-Billy Wilder-(Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe)
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"I feel it is weird that Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch and I are even mentioned in connection to "Ninotchka".It was so much Ernst Lubitsch's own baby.He was a director in a creative frenzy at the time,and everything he did was to me wonderful and funny and stimulating"
-Charles Brackett-(co-writer of Ninotchka)
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"She was funny.And I knew she could be funny on screen.Even in some serious things she showed humor.You didn't notice how she always had such a light touch?Most of them are heavy.Heavy!But she was light,light always,and for comedy,nothing matters more"
-Ernst Lubitsch-
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"I would go to her with a suggestion,saying,'This is how I see the scene.Now you go away and think it over'.And she would go in the corner,all by herself,and brood."
--Ernst Lubitsch-
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"He wasn't just a gagman,he was the best creator of toppers.You would come up with a funny bit to end a scene,and he would create a better one.I think he thought up a bit where the picture of Lenin smile back at Garbo.I can't be to sure.He would look up our stuff and go,'Ho ho,very good',and scratch out the next line.What he did was purify,and that was made him a great writer."
-Billy Wilder-
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"Having worked with many women starts,I have found that one of the difficulties with them in their slavish devotion to the mirror.Some of them take a terrible long time to powder and make up between scenes.They are much concerned about their looks that they exhaust their vitality.In the eight weeks during which I worked with Greta Garbo she never looked into the mirror once unless I told her to do so"
-Ernst Lubitsch-
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"She was so excited.When people started to laugh ,it was the most amazing thing ! She looked around like she'd heard thunder claps!"
-Ernst Lubitsch-
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"The face,that face,what was it about that face?You could read into it all the secrets of a woman's soul.You could read Eve,Cleopatra,Mata-Hari.She became all women on screen.Not on the soundstage--the miracle happened on that film emulsion."
-Billy Wilder-
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"We still say Garbo's Ninotchka is one of the sprightliest comedies of the year,a gay and impertinent and malicious show which never pull the punch lines (no matter how far below the belt they may land)and finds the screen's austere First Lady of Drama playing deadpan comedy with the assurance of a Buster Keaton."
-The New York Times-
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"In appearance she is really hermaphroditic, almost as flat as a boy, very thin, the eyes and voice extraordinarily pure and beautiful but she has the cold quality of a mermaid or something... She scares me to death."
-Tennessee Williams-
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"Greta Garbo is the Sarah Bernhardt of Film and shy as an antelope."
-Laurence Olivier-
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"Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyse this woman's acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera."
-Bette Davis-
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WVruh95IWqw
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y173/frejoty/Signatur-21-1-1.jpg?t=1191592415
posted by Persona at 2:46 PM
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