Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 02 - Alone Read online

  Ninotchka. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi, Sig Rumann, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach, Gregory Gaye, Rolfe Sedan, Edwin Maxwell, and Richard Carle. MGM, 1939.

  Garbo is sent by the Soviet government in Russia to expedite the sale of the imperial crown jewels in Paris. Discovering that the three plenipotentiaries who preceded her in the mission have been corrupted by the West, she at first repels the advances of Douglas, working on behalf of former Grand Duchess Claire, then embraces him as he in turn falls in love with her. Claire offers a bargain: Surrender Douglas, Claire’s pet, go back to Russia, and she’ll give up her claim to the jewels. Garbo agrees for the sake of her countrymen, but with the help of the three corrupted comrades, Douglas lures her back outside the Iron Curtain and into his arms.

  This is the best romantic comedy of all time, and makes one wish Garbo had sampled the genre much sooner (although her next foray, Two-Faced Woman, was a disaster and may have influenced her decision to retire from the screen at thirty-six). “Garbo Laughs!” exclaimed the publicity, and the scene where she loses it is Hollywood gold.

  Remade as Silk Stockings, a musical, in 1957, the story still worked, thanks to the pairing of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, a fabulous Cole Porter score, and Rouben Mamoulian bringing his Garbo chops to the director’s chair, but it won’t make you forget the original. (If only Dracula star Lugosi could have been resurrected to repeat his rare comic cameo… . )

  2. Related

  Garbo Talks. Directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, Carrie Fisher, Catherine Hicks, Steven Hill, Howard da Silva, Dorothy Louden, Harvey Fierstein, Hermione Gingold, and Mary McDonnell. MGM/UA, 1984.

  Bancroft, returning to type as a feisty old broad, is terminally ill, and makes one last request of her son, with whom she has a difficult relationship: She wants to meet her idol, Greta Garbo. Son Silver, reprising his trademark schlep, stalks the elusive recluse throughout New York City, corners her at last (at a flea market), and persuades her to visit Bancroft on her deathbed. The actress playing Garbo (Leonard Maltin says it’s Betty Comden, of the comedy-writing team of Comden and Green, but another source says it’s a professional Garbo impersonator) doesn’t speak onscreen until the final scene, when she encounters Silver on the street after his mother’s passing: “Hello, Vincent.”

  It’s a breezy little film, funny and sad by turns, with a dynamite performance by Bancroft, who was never less than memorable, and belongs on the same bill with other Hollywood cannibal fare like Being John Malkovich and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. (Garbo, it’s said, was Not Amused, and peeved at her old studio for making her au courant—and fair game for the paparazzi—once again.)

  MGM: When the Lion Roars. Directed by Frank Martin. Turner Pictures, 1992.

  A retrospective documentary celebrating the rise and fall of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, copiously illustrated with archival footage interspersed with interviews with surviving contract players, directors, studio executives, and other eyewitnesses.

  This three-part series, aired on the TCM network and issued on VHS (now out of print), is a matchless history of the studio that ushered motion pictures into the industrial age and ended its sixty-year reign with a chilling memo from Kirk Kerkorian, a robber baron out of the nineteenth-century school of Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, announcing to the world that MGM was now primarily in the hotel business. The remastered footage is glossy and gorgeous, and the interviews, many of them with people who are no longer with us, are fascinating and suggest total recall. It’s emceed by an unusually buoyant Patrick Stewart on an eye-popping Art Deco set drenched in Metrocolor. Garbo, Gilbert, and all the rest of the giants live again here.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Loren D. Estleman has written more than sixty novels. He has already netted four Shamus Awards for detective fiction, five Spur Awards for Western fiction, and three Western Heritage Awards, among his many professional honors. He has written twenty Amos Walker mysteries, the most recent of which, The Left-Handed Dollar, will be published in April 2010. He lives with his wife, author Deborah Morgan, in Michigan.