When Greta Garbo Walked Away: The Stories Behind Quiet Exits

what makes a woman look at the brightest room in the whole wide world take one quiet breath and blow out the lamp pull your chair in closer to the fire now and listen last week earl we sat right here and watched grace kelly trade the hollywood flash for monaco's palace gates and a royal crown that we did maeve swear on my tackle box that was trading one spotlight for another but what happens when somebody just walks out into the dark on purpose in 1941 greta garbo was 36 years of age she was the face of the century god bless her sculpted like marble with metro goldwyn mayer paying her a king's ransom and then came

two faced woman oh the critics tore that picture to pieces said metro tried to make a solemn swedish sphinx into an american girl next door doing the rumba it was vulgar pet and she knew it in her bones the box office stumbled the reviews were bitter and garbo felt the floor give way beneath her slippers wait now she didn't weep or make a speech to the papers she simply walked off the studio lot closed the iron latch behind her and said she was going to rest until the war was over now i know how that sounds people in our line of work hear folks talk about taking a leave of absence all the time but

when the war ended in 1945 metro had a new contract waiting on the mahogany desk worth a fortune garbo looked at the fountain pen and never picked it up she looked at it and thought enough it's that tiny freezing instant when the soul decides it won't sell another hour of daylight see pattern wise you look at young folks walking away today burning out on a screen and you think it's brand new it ain't garbo hit the switch eighty years back but there's a difference most folks quit because they fail she quit while she was still an icon she took herself off to manhattan to seven rooms overlooking the east river on 52nd street no grand

salon no court of flatterers just plain pine a collection of renoir paintings on the walls and the kettle on the stove and those walks i tell you what she turned walking into an art form wore heavy gray coats low heeled shoes and those giant dark sunglasses she walked 40 blocks a day faster than a freight train on a downhill grade just dodging photographers who'd hide behind parked buicks can you imagine the cheek of them crouching behind wheel hubs just to steal a picture of an old woman buying carrots at the greengrocer they made up that line you know i want to be alone she never said that she said i want to be let alone

now you stay with me here because that little three letter word changes the whole railroad track to be alone sounds like misery to be let alone is a demand for common decency it's the right to your own skin she lived another fifty years in that silence earl fifty years of turning down alfred hitchcock turning down orson welles turning down millions people said she was a ghost or a prisoner but i look at her and i see a woman who bought her own peace and paid cash on the barrel head well that's where the shoe pinches maeve did she really get peace or did spending every waking hour dodging cameras just turn her privacy

into another kind of full time job a person shouldn't have to disguise their own face just to look at the river but she had the reins in her own hands earl touch the difference between a cage and a home when she slipped away in 1990 at 84 she owned every blessed breath she'd taken for half a century swear on my tackle box that is the honest truth most people spend a lifetime trying to be seen it takes a terrifying kind of courage to decide you'd rather be invisible it does indeed astor the turf is burning down to gray ash now and the borine is quiet bank the fire love and leave the night to itself