SAY ANYTHING III ( Archived) (886)

Yeah, she was a little bonkers. Thank you for idea.

Simply beautiful Galrads

I always wondered why she became a recluse to the point that she refused to see anyone in her apartment. Now after reading this it seems she was very ill




NEW YORK — During the best of times, she played "damn good" tennis, snacked on brown beans and Triscuits, owned Renoirs and pricey real estate on Rodeo Drive and spent a day running the elevators in her Manhattan apartment building when the staff went out on strike.

During the worst of times, she was a brooding old woman beset with health problems, living a ghostly existence, shuttling between her home and the hospital and bidding farewell to close friends as she neared death.

But only now, one week after her cremation, is the 50-year cloak of mystery that shrouded Greta Garbo in reclusion being lifted for a curious world.

So good at keeping her secrets while she was alive, Garbo's friends now feel somewhat freer to talk about the woman they loved.

Mimi Pollack, an 87-year-old Swedish actress who had a 70-year correspondence with Garbo, says she received a despondent goodby letter from "The Devine" two years ago. "She told me she wouldn't write any more because she was ill," Pollack recalls sadly.

Just two weeks before Garbo died on April 15 at age 84, her one-time friend and walking companion Raymond Daum said he stopped by her apartment during a trip to Manhattan. Daum, curator of the Gloria Swanson Archives at the University of Texas in Austin, hadn't seen her in some time because she had been "retreating more and more," he says. "She didn't see many people, and I was worried about her."

Garbo's doorman recognized Daum and told him the star wasn't well enough to receive him. Disappointed, Daum scribbled a chatty note to Garbo.

"Let me take it up to her right away," Daum says the doorman told him. "She's had a bad day."

It's difficult to search below the surface of the sensational headlines of the tabloid press and the relentless fawning by film reviewers to find the truth about this star who had a knack for public solitude.

In Sweden, a previously unknown Garbo heir has suddenly surfaced. And, strangest of all, are the flurry of close encounters with Garbo suddenly being disclosed, some from the most unlikeliest of sources such as political commentator Daniel Schorr and newspaper columnist William Safire.

"It's as if, with her death, a veil has been lifted," explains Bengt Forslund, artistic director of the Swedish Film Institute in Stockholm. "The problem now will be to separate the fact from the fiction."

Even now, details about her final resting place are still sketchy, though a spokesman for the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan, where private funeral services were held a week ago, disclosed that Garbo's ashes might be buried in a family grave in Stockholm. Swedish journalist Sven Broman, who interviewed the actress and wrote a book about her, quotes Garbo's niece, Grae Reisfeld, as saying it was her aunt's wish to be buried in Sweden.

Garbo's friends say Reisfeld, the wife of a Passaic, N.J., gynecologist and daughter of Garbo's brother Sven Gustafsson, is the heir to the actress' immense estate, valued by insiders at $50 million in stocks, real estate, art and antiques. Also expected to receive a bequest is Garbo's aide of 31 years, Claire Koger, who has denied tablo

I forgot to attach the link to the article I posted. Sowwy