Greta Garbo Movies

Greta Garbo is ranked as the 5th greatest screen legend actress of all-time according to the American Film Institute.

Greta Garbo is ranked as the 5th greatest screen legend actress of all-time according to the American Film Institute.

Want to know the best Greta Garbo movies?  How about the worst Greta Garbo movies?  Curious about Greta Garbo’s box office grosses or which Greta Garbo movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Greta Garbo movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Recently I decided to do a movie page on each person on the Top 50 Screen Legends of All-Time according to the American Film Institute. So I have now reached the 5th greatest actress of all-time Greta Garbo. I think I am a pretty knowledgeable person when it comes to the subject of movies, but I must admit that I really did not know very much about Greta Garbo (1905-1990) when I started writing this hub.  Prior to writing this movie page I had seen one of her movies, Grand Hotel, and had really only heard of 3 or 4 of her movies.

After appearing in a few Swedish films, Greta Garbo received a contract from MGM and moved to the United States in 1925. Over the next 15 years, Garbo would appear in 24 movies and become one of the most famous people in the world. After appearing in 1941’s Two-Faced Woman she stopped making movies, moved to New York City and pretty much stopped appearing in public….she passed away in 1990.

Her IMDb page shows 32 acting credits from 1920-1941. This page will rank Greta Garbo movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Her eight movies made in Sweden are not included in the rankings…not because I do not like Swedish films….but because the movies never got released in North America.

Greta Garbo in 1931's Mata Hari

Greta Garbo in 1931’s Mata Hari

Greta Garbo Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Greta Garbo Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Greta Garbo movies by co-stars of her movies
  • Sort Greta Garbo movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Greta Garbo movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Greta Garbo movies by how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Greta Garbo movie received.
  • Sort Greta Garbo movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Greta Garbo Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses

Greta Garbo and frequent co-star Melvyn Douglas in 1939's Ninotchka

Greta Garbo and frequent co-star Melvyn Douglas in 1939’s Ninotchka

Possibly Interesting Facts About Greta Garbo

1. Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Stockholm, Sweden. She went from a department store model to appearing in Swedish movies to signing a contract with MGM by the time she was 20. On her arrival in the United States the general consensus was MGM had made a mistake because she was “not extraordinary and could be safely disregarded”.

2. Greta Garbo’s big break occured when Monta Bell(a director) stumbled across her screen test that was accidently included in a reel of torrential rain storms that he was watching for research in his upcoming movie. Bell saw Garbo and immediately put her in his movie…1926’s Torrent.

3 Greta Garbo could not speak any English when she first arrived, that was not a problem as all of her first films were silent films. In 1930 she appeared in her first “talkie”, Anna Christie, ….the publicity for the movie was the famous line….”Garbo talks”….as the public loved her heavy Swedish voice as well as her looks.

4. Greta Garbo was nominated 4 times for a Best Actress Oscar® ….those movies were 1930’s Anna Christie, 1931’s Romance, 1936’s Camille and 1939’s Ninotchka. Garbo actually made Anna Christie twice….once in English and the other time in German….the German versus did not make the page.

5. Greta Garbo never married, never had children and lived alone. Her last years of her life were spent in absolute seclusion. She almost did marry actor and co-star John Gilbert in 1927 but left him at the alter when she got cold feet.

6. Greta Garbo was Adolph Hitler’s favorite actress. When she learned that Hitler had watched 1936’s Camille 7 times and wanted to meet her….Garbo actually considered meeting with Hitler…the catch? she wanted to bring a knife and end his life.

7. Greta Garbo wanted to keep working after 1941’s Two-Faced Women….but all the projects she was interested in making all fell apart due to financial reasons. By 1949 she had given up the thought of returning to the big screen.

8. Greta Garbo turned down these roles over the years: I Remember Mama, Airport 1975, Out of Africa, The Paradine Case, Red Dust, Sunset Boulevard, and My Cousin Rachel.

9. Greta Garbo’s nicknames were The Face, Garbo and The Swedish Sphinx. She was also very famous for being very frugal. When she passed away she left her niece over 32 million dollars.

10. Check out Greta Garbo‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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53 thoughts on “Greta Garbo Movies

  1. Fun website. I had not found it before today. But I have some quarantine time…

    One question, what is the source of your box office numbers? They seem higher than the Mannix ledger revenue numbers for studio (MGM) revenue, so I was wondering how you captured total tickets sales.

    Just to help out, the following info.

    I can give you some better information of Garbo, as she was my great aunt. The family name was always spelled Gustafson with one ‘s’ by the family. This was actually a political issue in turn of the century Sweden, with people electing to drop the double ‘s’ from their surnames and the state insisting on the old ways. So you will never see the double ‘s’ in anything written by a family member, only in state documents; things like school and church records.

    Garbo started a job at the PUB department store when she was 16. She and her sister Alva appeared as extras in two films before she got a role in a store publicity film. She then found a well known acting coach and applied to the School at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. She was admitted for the fall of 1922, but before school started she quit her department store job and had a role in a low budget Swedish film, Peter the Tramp. She was a star pupil at Dramaten.

    The director of the school, Gustaf Molander, would say about her first days, “She was gifted, of course; though it seemed as though she did not dare show it, as though she did not have the courage to be truly herself. But at times it would flash out, especially if something fired her imagination.”

    She earned the role in Gosta Berlings Saga while she was a second year student at Dramaten. She was excused from class for filming. As was Dramaten classmate Mona Martenson. Dramaten was a two year school with exceptional students asked back for a third year. Garbo got that third year, but never finished it.

    Garbo was ‘discovered’ by Louis B Mayer, at least in terms of who decided to sign her to a Hollywood contract. He never thought of her as having anything less than star potential. Though he may not have anticipated exactly how her career would evolve. As his daughter relates his response after screening Gosta Berlings Saga;

    “We went on a Sunday afternoon to a projection room to see The Atonement of Gosta Berling, Stiller’s most recent film. The only advance reservation my father had about him was the stipulation that he wouldn’t come to Hollywood without his new leading lady, an obstacle my father thought he could overcome. Instead, Miss Garbo overcame him in the first reel. It was her eyes. He said, “She reminds me of Norma Talmadge.” There was no resemblance, but what they had in common and what he must have meant was the capacity to convey feeling thought their eyes. Dad said, I’ll take Stiller all right. As for the girl, I want her even more than Stiller. I can make a star out of her. I’ll take them both.'”

    Mayer was not alone. Take this story from Hal Roach about watching Gosta Berlings Saga;

    “I was probably the first person to see her in this country. At the time I was Victor Sjostrom’s script clerk. The cutters were all my friends, and they used to get foreign pictures which the executives wanted to look at. I always saw them ahead of the executives. They had this picture from Sweden, fourteen reels with Swedish subtitles, a very complicated story called The Saga of Gosta Berling. The leading part was played by a girl named Jenny Hasselquist, whom I knew from Victor Sjostrom’s earlier pictures. But there was a supporting role played by a girl I didn’t know. There were about seven or eight of us in the room. Nobody could follow the story. It was complicated, the titles were in Swedish, and nobody would have sat through the picture if it hadn’t been for this girl. They just waited for her to come on. Every time she came on, all the cutters went “Ahhh.”

    Finally, Garbo was actually in documented project discussions as late as 1960.

    Stay safe and watch movies.

    1. Hey Scott. First of all….very very cool that Greta Garbo’s great nephew has found our Garbo page. Secondly…let me answer your question. The Mannix MGM ledgers report the rental numbers versus a gross. Through years of research we have come up a formula that moves rental numbers to gross. The rental to gross formula changes every year….many people just multiple the rental by 2 and call it a day when calculating gross. Our research has shown that is way too simple of a way to do it. So….let me provide an example. Grand Hotel (1932) has a MGM legder rental number of $1,235,000 some people would multiply that by 2 and say the gross was $2,470,000. Our stats that look at the behind the scenes costs of productions and releases say that in 1932 the actual gross was around $3,528,571….an increase of over 40% over the multiple it by 2 crowd. Is it right? Who knows. Over the years I have gotten more comfortable with our estimations…but in the end…..there are all just estimations.

      Finally….once we get the estimated gross…we can figure the tickets sold…then we can compare it to 2020 movies….so Grand Hotel would be at $146.01 million in USA….which last year would have been about what Once Upon A Time In Hollywood earned last year. Hope that helps explain our process. I will comment on your Garbo history in another comment.

      1. I understand your system for generating box office estimates. It is a frustrating thing, since box office was much more lucrative than film rental. One thing I have learned in researching Garbo for a new book is that she delivered the first-run audience more than many stars did. This was where the film companies made the most money, subsequent run zones did not deliver as good profits or margins. (80% of the average film’s revenue was realized in the first two months.)

        When you compare stars I think you should weight it by the number of films they did. Garbo basically worked half the time from 1933 on, spending most of the rest of her time in Sweden with her family. She only made seven films in 1933-1941.

    2. Hey Scott…Part 2. Thanks for sharing this information. All good information. I of course have to ask if you ever got the opportunity to meet her? Good quotes/stories from Mayer’s daughter and Hal Roach. I especially liked learning more about her The Saga of Gosta Berling. I wonder if Gustaf Molander changed his thinking as she became one of the biggest stars in the world? Once again….thanks for stopping by and checking out our Greta Garbo page.

      1. I knew her relatively well. There was a huge age difference, but I grew up outside New York and it was a small, tight-knit family. I saw her on a regular basis at our house and in New York.

        The quote I originally attributed to Hal Roach is actually from Albert Lewin.

        It’s three years after I first visited this website, and I have done a lot of additional research. Too much info to put in just a post. For her contemporaries, she was a revelation as a silent actor. She used totally different technique. Everyone copied this, rather successfully. But she was still remarkably talented even in the sound era. Here is what Basil Rahtbone had to say:

        “During the filing of Anna Karenina I watched Garbo and learned from her what I think is the secret of good screen acting; play your part with the least possible physical movement, and the greatest possible mental projection…. In films mental projection means everything. And Garbo has this power of mental projection to a superb degree. I learned from her how little to do in order to get the greatest results. My work improved one hundred percent. Now, when I play a part, subconsciously I ask myself, ‘What would Garbo do with this?’ ”

        Source: Soule, Leonard Hissed to the Heights – That’s Rathbone in Motion Picture July 1936 p 37

  2. Hey Lupino,
    I am not very interested by Miss Garbo, but in your comment you speak about a german film fron G W PABST which is called in English Joyless Street, the movie was in 1925 and i read several time that Marlene Dietrich has a little part in that movie;
    A simple question did you identify her because when they showed some picture of her in that film, i never recognize her but in the mean time i know that she was so different during her german Carrière before her Sternberg films;
    Garbo VS Dietrich was one of the big subject for magazine fans and the audience and the studios in the 30 but i am not sure that the two stars where interrersted;
    Orson Welles in this wonderful book My lunch with Orson from Henry Jaglom explains that how he presented Marlene to Greta at a party gave by Clifton Webb and how it was a curious moment for Marlene;
    Hava a good time
    Bye bye
    Pierre

    1. Bonsoir Pierre,

      of course I heard about Dietrich’s participation in The Joyless Street, but when I saw the film years ago, I didn’t recognize her.Dietrich herself denied ever having worked in silent movies in germany, imdb.com doesn’t include Joyless Street in her catalogue of films (but many other silents before her american career) and most books on her that I know don’t mention it. But Alexander Walker, in his detailed account of her life and career simply called “DIETRICH” states that she indeed had a small part in that film which mainly ended up on the cutting room floor. According to Walker, her part in the released version was hardly more than a walk-on. So, if you blinked at the wrong moment while watching the film, you missed Dietrichs part. One interesting thing about Dietrich’s pre- Hollywood years is the fact that everyone says she looked so different before Hollywood “glamourized” her- but looking at the stills in Walker’s book from her silents, she didn’t look that different…a little more “well nourished” perhaps, the hairdo not as expertly done and the face a little too heavy on make up, but most certainly easily identifiable as Marlene Dietrich 🙂
      By the way, we had an awful storm here today, I know Belgium and the Netherlands were hit badly, too, I didn’t hear anything about France in the news, though. So I hope that “La Tour Eiffel” is still standing tall 😉

      1. Hey Lupino and Pierre…..always good to see two HoFers talking movies. Good information on Dietrich….all of it was new to me…..love learning new movie things….thanks for sharing this info.

      2. Hello Lupino,
        Thank you for your answer, i was sur that you know the story for that film.
        By the way dont worry about the Eiffel Tower, and the Moulin Rouge, and everything
        Paris is always Paris, but we are very tired of storm, rain and wind
        It is from one month now and i think it is enough
        But when i see in florida they get snow!!!!!
        Where is Armstrong and his song What a beautiful World
        The best answer, lets go to see a film
        Bye
        Pierre

        1. “…and I think to myself, what a wonderful world…” Love your idea of watching a movie instead of moaning about the weather!!!

      3. Dietrich is not in ‘Joyless Street’. Someone worked it out on a calendar, though I can’t recall the exact source. Dietrich was otherwise engaged when it was filmed.

  3. Give it up for the GREAT Greta Garbo!!! 🙂 Out of the twenty four films listed on this page, I have seen eleven of them. All the movies of Miss Garbo’s that I have seen have been talkies!!! I have never seen any of her silent films. Just my opinion but NINOTCHKA and QUEEN CHRISTINA were the best movies that Greta ever made. As I have stated before on the UMR Best Actress page, I feel the lady should have won the Oscar in 1933 for her performance in QUEEN CHRISTINA. Other Garbo movies I have enjoyed include GRAND HOTEL, CONQUEST, MATI HARI, and ANNA CHRISTIE. There is no denying that Garbo gave wonderful performances in both CAMILLE and ANNA KARENINA but romantic tragedies aren’t exactly my cup of tea, shall we say. Quite frankly, the lady was an out and out acting genius. Enough Said.

    1. Hey Greg
      1. Thanks for checking out our Garbo page….it has been around awhile….but it is not a big view getter for us.
      2. Originally put this page together back in my HubPages days of 2011 and 2012.
      3. Tally counts….and they may not accurate anybody…because this was Flora and Steve’s total years ago….You at 11, Flora at 5…and Steve and myself at 4….my total is up 3 movies since I first mentioned my total of one.
      4. I was not a huge fan of Ninotchka…I thought it was ok…..but did not find it humorous at all….I enjoyed the same story more in Silk Stockings.
      5. Camille is my most recently watched Garbo movie…..she is indeed very good in the movie….though there are not too many happy moments in that one. Love Lionel Barrymore in the supporting role.
      6. Nice words on Garbo….sadly her legacy has faded….not thinking many movie fans under 40 have too much knowledge of her…..heck even Garbo Talks is 33 years old.
      Good feedback.

      1. For decades, Greta Garbo was the epitome of great screenacting. Let Gable be King and Loy be Queen of Hollywood, Garbo was “The Devine”. Her shyness and reclusiveness was not known to Hollywood, where actors and actresses did almost anything for publicity. Therefore, she created a mysterious persona for herself, that made her all the more interesting to fan magazines and audiences. She was hardly a “Blockbuster Queen” in the States, but her films did pretty well plus she was huge in Europe. So, Garbo ALWAYS received top billing and never took second best. She was MGM’s brightest star, even if others had the better box office clout. Garbo stood for consistent quality. And above all, there was that face! Highly photogenic, with those long eyelashes and well defined features, Garbo’s face was a piece of art. Add that dark voice, never totally without that well known accent. When the political situation in Europe changed, her foreign kingdom diminished, and the american audiences started to get tired of her heavy dramas. Along came Ninotchka (to Bruce: “Silk Stockings” is the remake, not Daddy Long Legs), and for a short moment, Garbo regained the status she always had. But after the next one, Two Faced Woman, she read the writing on the wall and called it a day, mastering her already known reputation as the world’s most famous recluse. Numerous directors and producers tried to lure her back, especially after Europe was free again, but she declined offers from Hitchcock (The Paradine Case) and Cukor (My Cousin Rachel) stating that she would neither play murderers nor mothers. Yet, many say that she really wanted to resurrect her career. As it is, Two faced woman remains her swansong, and in Europe, at least, she is not forgotten. Numerous photobooks have captured her unreal beauty, whenever a famous person avoids publicity the name Garbo pops up in the press.
        I have seen 11 of the movies that made this chart plus her silent Die freudlose Gasse (Joyless Street) and my favs are Mata Hari, Grand Hotel, Anna Karenina and Camille…although I never believed her dying in that one, for she looked much too strong and healthy…but thus was part of Garbo’s secret, she played a ballerina in Grand Hotel, though she was much too tall and her feet were large(!!!) so why doubt her graciously battling death while looking so glamorous? When I read in your comment to Greg that Garbo’s page wasn’t a huge viewgetter, I thought that I never even had visited it- so task fulfilled 😉

        1. Despite the edit button, I forgot to mention Queen Christina, where Garbo played with former lover John Gilbert a slightly unconventional part full of sexual ambiguity, sort of a “Queen in slacks”, not seen too often in those days when censorship ruled. You state a domestic gross of 82 million, and if the ww gross is halfway correct, it is further proof of Garbo’s appeal outside the US.
          Needless to say, QC is also a favorite of mine.

          1. Hey Lupino…..the edit button is more for errors…versus adding in new parts of a comment….so you are forgiven for not using the new edit button…..lol. I feel pretty good about the worldwide gross for Queen Christina….as the worldwide rentals are almost 4 times the domestic total. I like the “Queen in Slacks” comment. Good feedback.

        2. Hey Lupino
          1. Thanks for the Garbo thoughts.
          2. Ah…..I got the wrong movie…..but I can fix my error right here….versus having to go to the “fix error comment section”….I like the new comment widget.
          3. I was very surprised her domestic box office totals were so “unimpressive”…..but like you say her pull overseas was much stronger.
          4. I agree about what you said about her wanting to resurrect her career. Seems she just kept waiting for the perfect project….and time just kept passing.
          5. In some ways…..it reminds me of why there was no 3rd Newman/Redford movie….by all accounts….they both wanted to do it…..but by the time they found the project…Newman’s health was suffering…..and 30 years had passed since The Sting.
          6. 11 is pretty good……I am sure that is the winner…..the tally counts listed here….are now years old…as I originally wrote his page back in 2011.
          7. Good to know she is still very popular in Europe.
          8. To be one of the first pages written….her views is near the bottom of my pages…..and even more accurate way to compare is look at her numbers here at UMR.com….which started in March 2015….in that almost three years….her page has gotten the 155th most views…pretty weak for an all-time legend.
          Good feedback.

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