Greta Garbo and the Rise of the Modern Woman

"Reisfield knows about Garbo what we would never know. But, fortunately, he tells us." ~ Mick LaSalle, author of Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood. Hollywood Made Her a Star. What she did for women made her a Legend. Greta Garbo dominated European cinema and Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s. With discipline and fearless self-belief, she transformed screen acting into something intimate, modern, and psychologically real. She fought studio control... and won. She challenged censors, defied social expectations, and refused to compromise her independence. More than a movie star, Garbo reshaped what it meant to be a woman on screen-self-possessed, mysterious, and unapologetically autonomous. She redefined the power a woman could hold in Hollywood. In this intimate biography, her grandnephew Scott Reisfield reveals this disciplined artist, strategic thinker, and the fiercely private woman who helped usher a closed culture into the Modern Age. "Scott Reisfield has written a history of his great-aunt, telling the story of both the star and the woman." - Bo Florin, Professor in Cinema Studies, Stockholm University