Scott Reisfield Reveals the Real Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo was more than one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. She helped change how women saw themselves and how the world viewed female independence.

Rich speaks with author Scott Reisfield, Garbo’s great-nephew and the author of Greta Garbo: The Rise of the Modern Woman. Drawing from family letters, personal memories, and years of archival research, Scott separates the real Garbo from the myths surrounding her private life and abrupt disappearance from motion pictures.

In this conversation:

•  Discover why working women connected so strongly with Garbo 
•  Learn how Hollywood censorship prevented several planned films 
•  Hear why Garbo continued pursuing projects long after 1941 
•  Explore how pernicious anemia affected her work and health 
•  Understand Garbo’s lasting influence on women, acting, photography, and culture 

Scott also recommends the best films for first-time Garbo viewers and shares the surprising question he would ask his great-aunt today.

Learn more about Scott and his books at https://scottreisfield.com/.

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Transcript

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Wendy & Rich 0:01
Coming to you from the Freedom Federal Credit Union Studios, Hartford County Living presents, Conversations with Rich Bennett. 

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Rich Bennett 0:27
you ever wondered how one woman, could change not just Hollywood, but the way the world viewed women altogether? Greta Garbo wasn't just a movie star. She became a cultural phenomenon whose influence reached far behind the silver screen. But what was it about her that made her so captivating, so mysterious, and so ahead of her time? Today we're joined by author Scott Ricefield, who's fascinating new book, Greta Garbo, The Rise of the Modern Woman, explores the remarkable legacy of one of cinema's most iconic figures. And for those of you listening, if you've never seen any of her movies, I suggest you go watch it, because they are phenomenal. Together we're going to look beyond the glamour and uncover how Garbo challenged conventions, redefined female independence, and left an impact that still felt nearly a century later. So whether you're a classic film fan, a history buff, or simply curious about the people who shape culture in ways we don't always recognize, it's a conversation you don't want to miss. Scott, welcome to the show, how's it going? 

Scott Reisfield 1:45
It's going well, Rich. It's not a overly hot day today. It's just 

Rich Bennett 1:51
Oh, 

Scott Reisfield 1:51
summer. 

Rich Bennett 1:52
cool. Yeah, I know, Lace week. Well, you're in what Michigan, right? 

Scott Reisfield 1:57
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 1:57
Okay, yeah. Lace 

Scott Reisfield 1:58
and we really hot days. 

Rich Bennett 2:01
Oh, it was, it's been miserable here. I just had the MC a local 4th of July parade, colon MC at 102 degrees that side with the heat I think it was 115 and thank God, the as soon as like within minutes, after the parade finished, the sky's opened up. And we had some Relatius storms. So I'll just sat in my car waiting for new things to pass by before I had an oops. But yeah, whether 

Scott Reisfield 2:33
the same thing. 

Rich Bennett 2:34
Oh, it's nice. It's I just I can't stand the heat because you can look. Look, when it's too hot, you can only take so much off. But at least with it's too cold, you can keep putting layers on. It makes it a lot easier. I think, all right. So for those people that don't know, because I didn't, I didn't make this known in the introduction. 

Your your relationship to Greta Garbell, let everybody know what that is, if you don't mind. 

Scott Reisfield 3:08
Sure, she was my great aunt and what that meant for me, because I grew up in New Jersey, and she was living in New York, was it like having an extra Grandparent. She know, she's two generations away. So I didn't have like the kind of relationship even my mom had with her, which was much more, you know, adult to adult, you 

Rich Bennett 3:33
you 

Scott Reisfield 3:33
know, for. But you know, she would come out. She would have dinner. She would we go and walk, she'd hang out, be at a pool. She would, you know, hang out by the pool and swim, and we would go to New York and see her there. So as just someone who was in my life and she was very close with my mom's parents. And those grandparents were in New Mexico, but they came east pretty frequently and and so I would see them together and they were hooked 

Rich Bennett 4:08
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 4:08
together. 

Rich Bennett 4:10
She was beautiful too. I think even as she got older, just something about her was just captivating, I guess you could say. It's like, she just drew you right. 

Scott Reisfield 4:22
Okay. 

So 

Rich Bennett 4:26
yeah, I didn't, I don't, I just love watching those old movies too, but all right, so you're the book, it's simply just another, it's it's not really another. Well, no, it is a biographer, but it's called Greater Garber the Rise of the Modern Woman. So why did you tell her story through that particular lens? 

Scott Reisfield 4:50
Well, it came out of my research. This is a COVID project. I never would have had the time to write this book without COVID. 

Rich Bennett 4:58
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 4:59
I knew that there were errors sort of in the biographies and I thought I was going to tell quite frankly more of a classic Hollywood story. But as I did my research, I could see the numbers, the impact she was having. You know, she was filling these first-run theaters for lows, which is where they made all their money. 

Rich Bennett 5:24
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 5:25
When you look at the film industry in the studio era and you combine the studios and the theaters 'cause lows owned MGM, right? So people now talk about what the movie made for the studio, but for lows. You know, the studio made a third of the money. Right. Another third of it was in just the first-run theaters. They were incredibly profitable because it was a monopoly they kept competitors out. And the people who went to Gorbo Movies in these first-run theaters were female clerks and nurses. The women who had jobs, you know, this was the transition from the Victorian era where all women's work was unpaid, you know, 

Rich Bennett 6:15
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 6:15
in the house. Two, they would go out, they would work in factories, they would work as clerks, which was the good job. 

Rich Bennett 6:22
Mm-hmm. 

Scott Reisfield 6:23
Wow. Middle class. A female clerk made less than a male clerk 'cause that's the way it's always been. But it made more than almost all the other men working. Right. So it was a great job. And they went to movies and they loved Gorbo. 

Rich Bennett 6:40
Wow. So with the research, I guess you really had a benefit that a lot of other people didn't with some of these biographies because of her being your great aunt, right. 

Scott Reisfield 6:53
Oh, wait, that absolutely helped. I have letters. She sent to my grandmother. I have some letters she kept that revealed really important things. But I think part of it really was, I had a sense of who she was. 

Rich Bennett 7:10
Mm-hmm. 

Scott Reisfield 7:11
I knew a couple of stories were wrong. And I knew that sort of if you will, the depth of research I had to do to unpeel things because you'd find an article in the 30s and somebody would say something. And you would go, "Well, is that possible?" So for instance, Lillian Gish would write in her autobiography. Well, Gorbo sister died. And she had been on Lillian Gish's set because the Scarlet Letter co-star was Lars Hansen, who was a friend of hers 

Rich Bennett 7:46
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 7:47
from Sweden. So Lillian Gish says her sister died and she burst into tears in my arms as we talked about it more or less. Well, when Gorbo found out her sister had died, Lillian Gish was in New York. So that didn't happen. 

Rich Bennett 8:04
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 8:06
So there's a lot of that. People wanted to be part of the Garbo story because it helped you. If you were close to Garbo, it was a good thing. And so I had to find the real stories. And you know, some stories I have no idea whether they're 

Rich Bennett 8:25
not. 

Scott Reisfield 8:25
real or 

Rich Bennett 8:25
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 8:27
And some stories I could say, "No, that's not real." And there's some pretty concrete basis for saying it other than, "Well, I don't like this story." And sometimes I don't like this story, but it's true. So it gave me a new... I found a lot of it on my own, but to challenge it came from my family. I 

Rich Bennett 8:48
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 8:48
guess I was... You knew there was a lot that was wrong. So I really kept digging on things. 

Rich Bennett 8:55
Wow. 

Scott Reisfield 8:56
There were a lot of... I had to go back to twice because I learned stuff. And I'd come back and I'd sift it and put it in the And I'd say, "But I still don't understand this." And I'd go, "I've got to go back to Wisconsin." You know, to the University. And go into this file a little deeper. But I could do that because I had that time. 

Rich Bennett 9:17
Well, yeah, I think everybody had a lot of time doing COVID. Well, and that's the thing, because Dora, you wrote this doing COVID. 

And I've always... And we've mentioned COVID a lot because, well, it happened. But I think a lot of good things came out of it. And if COVID didn't happen, this book would have never came out, probably, right? 

Scott Reisfield 9:41
Right. I would not have had the time. I would have not shut down the company. I had started. 

Rich Bennett 9:46
And you probably wouldn't have learned so much about your great aunt as well. 

Scott Reisfield 9:52
Right. I had learned a lot sort of along the way. I ran my own company before I sold it. Then I went to work for an association and then I came out to Michigan and worked for a company that got sold and I had just started another really small company. The only other company's tried to conquer the world. My last company, I wanted a nice little niche business that wouldn't take up 60 hours a week so well yeah except it didn't survive but so I would I wrote a book 20 years ago that was about photographs and so I did some research for that and Garbo collected her 

Rich Bennett 10:40
there 

Scott Reisfield 10:40
own photographs 

Rich Bennett 10:40
was I was gonna say that was on her as well right 

Scott Reisfield 10:43
okay yeah but I I did some research because I wrote an essay for it and so that started me and then I traveled for work and I would go to L. A. and I would just have an extra day and do a little research 

Rich Bennett 11:00
okay 

Scott Reisfield 11:01
because I started doing photo research there and realized there were all these other things and I was just curious but it wasn't it wasn't organized with the intent right it was just for my own knowledge 

Rich Bennett 11:13
right 

Scott Reisfield 11:14
so I but I've done enough to have some idea of where I might go with a book 

Rich Bennett 11:19
okay 

Scott Reisfield 11:20
so so then COVID happens and I can't go to the archives though I know I have to but I can do all the library research because my libraries here in Michigan you know really were accommodating I could access through the University of Michigan all of their online resources as an alum as if I was in the library I mean usually they geofence it right 

Rich Bennett 11:45
right 

Scott Reisfield 11:46
you have to learn in the library to do the library stuff during COVID they just gave me access and there are a lot of things you know old articles I read a lot about photography and how it evolved as an art most of which make it into my book because it was sort of like long enough already so but it you know we got reduced a couple of paragraphs but all of that research about reading about photography theory and how the technology changed and all that I did online 

Rich Bennett 12:22
wow 

Scott Reisfield 12:22
and so there were a lot of things I could do that set me up for going to archives with real intent so now I'm going to these physical archives and you know so Washington you're outside of DC you know I would go to the Library of Congress 

Rich Bennett 12:41
right 

Scott Reisfield 12:42
would go to Catholic University which has the archives of the Catholic Church and all of the censorship archives related to the Catholic Church 

Rich Bennett 12:55
I 

Scott Reisfield 12:57
and then Georgetown which has the archives of one of the main Catholic censorship advocates who also published a trade magazine so you know and so I went to Washington twice the first time I got sort of a taste of 

Rich Bennett 13:13
right 

Scott Reisfield 13:13
everything I didn't I didn't know that Georgetown stuff was there so it was just a Catholic University and Library of Congress and I'd miss some stuff at the Library of Congress so I went back did that I learned about Georgetown because I took all the research I'd done at Catholic University it was like well can I find the personal papers of of these key players 

Rich Bennett 13:37
mm-hmm 

Scott Reisfield 13:38
yes at Georgetown there's more and quickly stuff so so I could go back to Washington and you know I think a lot of writers try to get it all done in one trip and 

Rich Bennett 13:49
right 

Scott Reisfield 13:50
as you can't I mean sometimes you can it's great if you can but if you got to go twice you just got to go twice 

Rich Bennett 13:56
what's amazing that you you're going to all these different places whereas you know some authors will only use one source but you're going to all you know I mean I I would have never heard of the Catholic winner even Georgetown yeah but that's wow that's amazing so when you were doing the research was there a moment where when you actually realized that this book wasn't to or I was going to be different from everything else that's been written about her 

Scott Reisfield 14:38
yeah I mean one of the things just sticking with the stuff in DC is I realized she was central to the censorship 

Rich Bennett 14:47
battle yeah 

Scott Reisfield 14:49
and people don't think of it that way ..because they don't understand how Queen Christina triggered serveitives, And lead, you know, not by itself other films also triggered them, but 

Rich Bennett 15:03
right? 

Scott Reisfield 15:04
it really triggered them. Not just for the sex, but for the woman in authority. She was a queen and she didn't behave the way, you know, reply quickly thought, a queen should behave, 

Rich Bennett 15:17
right? 

Scott Reisfield 15:21
But there was a lot of women, uhm, you know, so, because censorship was about the sex, but it was also about politics 

Rich Bennett 15:29
yes, 

Scott Reisfield 15:30
and labour than everything. Um, you know, how a woman should act in society. So, you know, from Queen Christina, through the, in the costume dramas that she did, had no censorship problems. That's because Faulberg and Garbo cleverly subverted censorship. They are, you know, the censors think, look, she's paying the ultimate price, she's dying for her bad behaviour. And yet the audience just loved her all the more because she proved her heart, you know. And then most people know her last film, uhm, was an issue, but it was an issue because the Legion of Decency, which was a Catholic social pressure group, condemned it. 

Rich Bennett 16:24
Was that Too Faced Woman? 

Scott Reisfield 16:26
Yeah, Too Faced Woman, they had to pull it and re-edit it to get it approved, which they did, they kind of destroyed the, the film story because it, it gives away the plot in a way. You know, once Melvin Douglass realizes that the two women are really one woman, uhm, then, then what's the point of this story, other than well, we already have it in the can, so we got to release it. But what is really, was completely missed was that Garbo tried for 15 years to make films. And censorship was not the only issue. There were some other issues with these projects. But censorship, the inability to get a script approved and concerns about what it would take to get a script approved was probably the number one issue for these, I found seven projects that she had absolutely agreed to do, or signed a contract to do. She's signing contracts in 1955 to do films 

Rich Bennett 17:39
in 

Scott Reisfield 17:39
that 

Rich Bennett 17:39
19th, 

Scott Reisfield 17:39
don't get- 

Rich Bennett 17:40
1955? 

1955. Wow. 

Scott Reisfield 17:44
Well, technically it was a TV special. 

Rich Bennett 17:47
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 17:47
She was, when Easter TV special, and it was going to be very serious, you know, when Samuel Beckett is one of the screenwriters you're considering, you know, you're talking serious drawing. 

Rich Bennett 18:00
But 

Scott Reisfield 18:02
it was going to be an Easter special. The story is the miracle, which is an old Gottfried Rhyndhardt play, very successful. And approved by the Catholic Church. And there was a silent film of it, which was also approved by the Catholic Church. But the storyline, in 1955, wow, runs a foul of the Catholic Church, because a nun leaves a comment to go, you know, commit sins for a decade. 

Rich Bennett 18:33
oh 

Scott Reisfield 18:35
And then returns. But while she's gone, a statue of the Virgin Mary steps down and takes her place in the content. Okay. That's the broad brush story. 

Rich Bennett 18:46
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 18:47
And so they ran the script by some people in the church to get there, you know, who were associated with the production code administration, but not of it. And they were like, well, a nun can't, can't sin, so it's got to be a novice. And she can't willingly leave the convent. She's got to be taken away. You know, all these little things about how they want to, you know, govern how it's done. So film doesn't get made. And that's one of the reasons, but it's also not the only reason. The film sort of evolved from a TV special, which would have been interesting. To cinemascope spectacular. And when they came to Garbo with this new script, she was like, no, this is crazy. You know, it becomes this big. George Shley, who was her romantic partner and at Williams are at the time because he had a theater background. He wrote back. I don't see how this can't be schmaltsy. you know, it's not a barbo type I think. So you know, so partly, you know, and there's some reasons you can see in the, on the production side, there were two people involved in the production, and the guy with a better sense of the moment and ability to land a deal left. Right. 

Rich Bennett 20:18
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 20:19
So then it was just Norman Belgetis and he just doesn't have that touch, whereas Harry Saltsman is just a master of making things happen. You know, he made look back an anger and he got Richard Burton to do it at half his price, right? He's just the guy who can do these things. And he would end up founding with the broccoli's, the James Bond franchise. Right. So he had a real sense of the industry and what would work it out and cut the deal. And then he was out. So the thing didn't get made. 

Rich Bennett 20:53
Alright, so because you said Miracle's 1955, but it never got complete it, right? 

Scott Reisfield 21:00
It never got started. 

Rich Bennett 21:02
Oh, it never got started. Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 21:04
It made by a completely production team two years later, starring, starring Roger. 

Rich Bennett 21:13
So with her last film being two-faced woman, that was 1941. 

Scott Reisfield 21:21
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 21:21
41. But yet she was still, I guess, working trying to get something's done. Was there anything that was ever filmed afterwards that may be like lost files or something. 

Scott Reisfield 21:35
Just a screen test. 

Rich Bennett 21:37
Really? 

Scott Reisfield 21:37
Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, some of the projects, like the one I really wish was made is both Catherine Hepburn and George Cooker, the director, recount a meeting they had with Garbo and Louis B. Mayor to pitch "Morning Becomes Electra" and the idea of Hepburn and Garbo and "Morning Becomes Electra" to me is like, well, that has potential. But may turn them down. And partly, I understand Mayor because I don't know that the audience was there for that. At that time, you know, in 1942-43. 

Rich Bennett 22:15
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 22:17
So, you know, partly it's, you know, the industry was changing. It was changing in terms of the audience with the war and the kind of film they wanted. You know, the society was becoming more conservative and that's one of the things I talked about. Garbo doesn't become more conservative. She's very socially liberal. 

Rich Bennett 22:36
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 22:37
And he is sticking, you know, to, I want to play interesting women, but there isn't a market for that until the 70s, really, you know. 

Rich Bennett 22:47
Yeah. Wow. 

Scott Reisfield 22:49
And I think the other thing is the studio system starts to fall apart. So, there isn't this- I think Garbo really benefited from the fact that especially under Thalberg and MGM. But even after Thalberg, everything just happened for her. You know, she picked the project either they brought it to her or she brought it to them. And once they agreed on signing the contract, it all just kind of happened. You know, she would approve the co-stars and the directors. And she had to look at stuff and look at costumes and things. But she was costeted in- MGM in a good way 

Rich Bennett 23:31
her. 

Scott Reisfield 23:31
for 

Rich Bennett 23:31
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 23:32
Because she had power in the system, you know, unlike some poor Starlett who's, you know, trying to make it and has no power and is just being abused. She sort of skated right past that because her career had already taken off when she got to MGM. But once that starts to fall apart and you're looking for funding different places, you know, after the war she's working with these independent producers or even during the 

Rich Bennett 23:58
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 23:59
war for women of B. You know, they're patching together the financing and, you know, where do we find the props and the filming locations and all this, that used to just happen for her. And she's not an Orson Welles or a Charlie Chaplin who has understood all the elements of the film. She was willing to go there because I have a letter where she, you know, writes to her sister and my grandmother will move back to Sweden, will buy a farm, and all make movies. You know, so it's not that it wasn't something she didn't contemplate even though she didn't do it. But she would have had to learn a lot. It would been a different exercise. 

Rich Bennett 24:43
Right. 

She, 

Scott Reisfield 24:46
I 

Rich Bennett 24:47
mean, 

that era and she was started, what, 20, was it 22? Film 

Scott Reisfield 25:00
first. 

Rich Bennett 25:02
I can't 

Scott Reisfield 25:03
The first theatrical film is technically 22. 

Rich Bennett 25:08
Okay, 

Scott Reisfield 25:09
but it's really, it's like a Max Bennett knockoff comedy. Her first, real film. And she did industrial films 

Rich Bennett 25:17
right, 

Scott Reisfield 25:17
before that. So, you know, she's on film in 1920, but her first theatrical film is Yostoburling in 1924. 

Rich Bennett 25:28
24, 

Scott Reisfield 25:28
think the start of her career, you know, now she's gone through Drem hunt and she's picked up all this training that she didn't have. And you know, she's becoming a fully formed actor. 

Rich Bennett 25:41
Right. Well, I'm sorry, go ahead. 

Scott Reisfield 25:45
No, and by 1925. She is. I mean, she, you know, by 1925, she's one of the best actors in the world. And by 1927, she's the best actor in the 

Rich Bennett 25:58
world. Well, and that's what I wanted to bring up because every, every generation they seemed to have that one celebrity who is just larger than life. And she was definitely it. She was larger than life. But what do you think made her that person do her an air? 

Scott Reisfield 26:20
Oh, it's her acting. 

Rich Bennett 26:22
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 26:23
So she's trained as a naturalistic actor. What we think of today in a, well, I'll call a serious film. Right? You're inhabiting the character. You are the character on screen. Well, that's not what acting was in the early 20s. It was much more theatrical, sort of, Vod Williams over the top. If even if you just watch somebody kiss in these early films, it's these sort of faking kisses. 

Rich Bennett 26:50
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 26:51
Oh, kisses somebody. And it's a kiss. You know, and that's what her audience thought that it was real that they were in the room with her and that they understood the thoughts her character was thinking. 

Rich Bennett 27:08
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 27:09
And it was their thoughts. What they would have thought. So. 

Rich Bennett 27:14
And the thing is to because she was so damn good, even people today, if you go back and watch them, it still feels that way. 

Scott Reisfield 27:27
Well, and there's a gen, yeah, there's a genuineness of her resonating with her age. 

Rich Bennett 27:34
Yeah. And 

Scott Reisfield 27:35
her well today is Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift just resonates with audience because she is that. 

Rich Bennett 27:45
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Alright, so. With with Greta Garbo. I know a lot of people call her Garbo. I just always like saying Greta Garbo, but with Greta Garbo, there were a lot of myths out there. So were there any that you were especially surprised to discover that weren't actually true? 

Scott Reisfield 28:17
Well, you know, I think a lot of the myths about Garbo are sort of caricatures of her actual personality. She was a private person. She really 

preferred to be thought of as an actor, not as celebrity. So all celebrity stuff. She didn't care about it and actually found it interfered. You know, all the you know, following around and asking about her private life and stuff. She just thought it was not what she was offering. And you know, literally, that's just not the way the world works. So, you know, it's interesting. I just read a great biography of Joan Crawford. And in Hollywood, Joan Crawford went to whatever the popular hangout was, where the press looked for stars to be. That was part of her, you know, self promotion of her image. Garbo never did that. You know, she didn't well, first off, she didn't have to because she already had more publicity than anyone else in the world. Right. So what was she going to do? Add one percent to that? 

Rich Bennett 29:37
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 29:39
And 

it also didn't. Fit with her conception of what she was. She was an actor, playing roles. Right. So she would talk about them. And she did give interviews early in her career to the film magazines. Later in her career, when she would come back from Sweden to make a movie, she'd give an interview in New York in the, you know, salon of the ship. That was her interview. 

Rich Bennett 30:12
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 30:12
It just appeared in the New York Times instead of photo-playing. Um, so you know she was aware of the, here's actually one of the things I realized about her that it's, it's there and you just don't notice it. So after her last film, she sat for a number of photographers and she wasn't working on films. I mean she was trying to work on films, but she didn't have a project that was being actively filmed. 

Rich Bennett 30:43
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 30:43
So. She would sit with Cecil Beaton innumerable times and he would always release the photos. She sat with George Honington Hune, Horse, Horse, and Anthony Bosham and she wasn't, she was curating her image, right? 

Rich Bennett 31:02
Uh-huh. 

Scott Reisfield 31:03
Until the mid 60s she just wasn't talking about. 

Rich Bennett 31:11
The thing is with her is powerful as she was and it just be interesting to see how she would handle everything today especially with social media and everything and paparazzi everywhere. Yeah, I have a funny feeling she would end up just telling a lot of people off so you can have my face or whatever. 

Scott Reisfield 31:39
You know there are actors today who aren't that different. It's 

Rich Bennett 31:42
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 31:43
just that doesn't get turned into this recluse meme that she was turned into, which was just a marketing thing. So, my example is Jodi Foster. Jodi, what life is probably private. You don't know what she's doing day to day. She shows up to talk about the project. She's just about to release. So she does the marketing, but then she disappears. And I think Garbo would have been kind of the same way. 

Rich Bennett 32:11
Yeah. That is true. You really don't hear anything about her as Jodi Foster as much as she used to. 

And she is very and there are a lot of them out there that are very private, which and I love that. You know a lot of people think they have to be on social media and and they don't. A lot of your best actors and actresses are you're still doing work, but they're not on social media at all. With, with, with credit carbo and I mentioned two faced woman before. 

And that would that be in her last film. Why was it that she didn't do anything afterwards or was that she was actually looking, but just. 

Scott Reisfield 33:03
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 33:03
Was that film like the dagger. You know what I mean? 

Scott Reisfield 33:06
No, it really wasn't because she immediately signed to do another film with MJM. She's going to make a phone called The Girl from Leningrad, which was a remake of a Russian film that had just come out. With 

Rich Bennett 33:20
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 33:22
about a nurse on the, on the Russian side of the Finnish war, right. So it's a leader, a woman in a leadership position and a romance kind of combined. And the guy who was the producer for that Bernie Hyman had a heart attack in late 1942. They were just about to go into production. She had already been paid her advance. She had a contract and when Hyman died, Louis B. Mayor killed the project and offered to pay her the rest of the salary. And she turned them down because she wasn't doing the work. 

Rich Bennett 34:00
Oh wow. 

Scott Reisfield 34:01
She was actually she should have been paid, but I think there is another issue where events were changing, right. You know, maybe the Russians weren't the best Hollywood story at that time. 

Rich Bennett 34:18
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 34:19
it was kind of a war story, but you know, with an independent woman. And also that's not Louis B. Mayor's personal kind of thing. 

Rich Bennett 34:28
Okay, 

Scott Reisfield 34:28
And I don't know how or why he made the decision, but you know, so she was that committed to a film. She was ready to film it. You know for something like women of the sea. Which was a story kind of lifted from history of the reaching freighter captain by a woman with a female crew dealing with the Germans at the start of World War Two. And what happened there is it was a elite with female leadership film that sort of morphed into more of a romance as the writing got done. And Garbo walked away from it because she had script approval. Now she she was. Castigated by friends for that, because her good friend, Salka Vertel, had been the screenwriter, and some people said you should have just gone through with it, because you've hurt Salka's career by walking with which is actually kind of true. 

Rich Bennett 35:33
it. Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 35:33
But the other side of it is that, sort of that moment for, uh, the Germans are attacking kind of movie, was being replaced by the Allied Victory movies. You know, because the war was turning. 

Rich Bennett 35:48
Hmm, 

Scott Reisfield 35:49
And it sort of missed the window for that story. And that-- and a number of people told her that directly. I mean, that's written down. And when Lester Kahn, who was the producer, went to try to get financing for it without Garbo, that's the reason people turned him down, is, you know, you missed the window for this story. So, but originally she was gonna bet she signed the contract. And, you know, she writes in letters to my grandmother, I'm gonna be going to Canada, you know, for a month to make this film. Do you wanna stay at my house? You know, 'cause she's always trying to get the rest of the family to move back to L. A., and uh, So, you know, that's, that's pretty concrete. 

Rich Bennett 36:38
yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 36:39
She was going to make a-- she signed to make a film on George Sand. And again, Salka wrote the script. George Sand was a bisexual cross-dressing French author. So, when the lavender scare starts, right, and people are being fired from jobs in America for being homosexual, Garbo's response is to make a film about George Sand, right, which is her idea of a political stance, I 

Rich Bennett 37:10
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 37:10
think. but the movie gets transformed into a film titled Duchess Delanquet in the same contract, just a different film, right, they just changed the project, and she actually did screen tests for Duchess, right, they were trying to figure out which of the great cameramen they were gonna use for the project. And those screen tests exist 

Rich Bennett 37:34
Oh, 

Scott Reisfield 37:34
right there, from 1948, and you can see them online. They're on YouTube. And there are three, three different fantastic cinematographers. And, you know, so, she's gonna make a film, and this is one of the films they were going to Italy for financing from Ritzoli, and literally a week before that meeting. 

Rich Bennett 38:02
You're listening to the conversations with Rich Bennett. We'll be right back. 

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Scott Reisfield 39:11
Walter Wanger, who's the producer, gets a letter from the production code administration telling him, "There's no way in hell we're approving." you know, and here's 13 pages of Y. 

Rich Bennett 39:24
Wow, 

Scott Reisfield 39:26
So he goes into this financing meeting, knowing he doesn't have a script and I wasn't in the room, but my guess is he killed it. He didn't tell anybody what his problem was, but he just took a hard line in negotiations so they fell apart 

Rich Bennett 39:44
Wow. 

Scott Reisfield 39:44
and blamed on Garbo. It was all supposed to be her fault, but she had nothing to do with the script. 

And the project would eventually die, and there's later correspondence. He has a fascinating letter from Eugene Frankie, who was the other producing guy back to Walter Wanger. When they're looking at two different financing options in the fall of 1949, saying, "I prefer this one because he'll fund the project without a script, and as you know, that's been our problem all along." So, and to, she had signed an extension, like if you can make all the money happen, by December 31st, they'll do the project. They couldn't, so she walked away. So, but there are a number of, and then there are things that, I mean, she had a very good sense of what was appropriate for 

Rich Bennett 40:41
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 40:41
her. Tennessee Williams talks about pitching her on a project called the pajama game, which is a story of lust, not love. 

Rich Bennett 40:53
Mm-hmm. 

Scott Reisfield 40:54
burbles responses, it's great, but it's not for me, give it to Joan Crawford, and it's a Joan Crawford story. She would have been a good fit. It never got turned into a film. I don't believe. At least not at that time. 

Rich Bennett 41:09
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 41:11
But she had a sense of, well, that's not my kind of project. You know, I remember mama was not her kind of project. So she, she would look at these and just turn them down. They're not interesting women of the kind she wants to play. 

Rich Bennett 41:27
But the amazing thing with that is too. It's as if she knew who to recommend for that. You know, like her recommended Joan Crawford for the pajama game. And I have a funny feeling they were other actors that she knew would feel a role better than say herself. 

Scott Reisfield 41:49
Yeah, I mean, she was a student of her 

Rich Bennett 41:51
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 41:51
craft and she knew an amazing number of people, Who were, you know, the important people in that industry, socially, 

Rich Bennett 42:02
yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 42:03
you know, and, you know, even at MGM, I found this fascinating story someone told of, and it's not a garbo film. It's somebody else's film and they're sitting around waiting to go to a preview. Right. Because Stalberg always run the preview to see how the audience reacted and then edit. So she's sitting there with Mayor Falberg, John Gilbert, who she's not dating anymore and the director. And they're just talking. It's sort of interesting. It's not even her film. But she's she's comfortable with management. 

Rich Bennett 42:46
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 42:47
Mint is comfortable with 

Rich Bennett 42:50
her. She I have a funny feeling she probably could have been either a hell of a producer or even a director with some films. It's just my guess. 

Scott Reisfield 43:04
Yeah. That's one of those regulations. 

Rich Bennett 43:06
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 43:07
All 

Rich Bennett 43:08
right. So with the title of the book, you know, when, when people hear the rise of the modern woman, what do you hope they understand by that phrase? 

Scott Reisfield 43:20
Well, the position of women in in the world keeps evolving. You know, and when you go back to the pre-industrial age, you know, women ran in the home because it was a full-time job. 

Rich Bennett 43:34
there 

Scott Reisfield 43:35
Right. There was laundry day, right. It took a whole day to do laundry. You know, now you toss it in the machine and it cycles, why don't you do something else? 

Rich Bennett 43:45
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 43:46
So women were freed up and entered the mainstream. There used to be literally two separate spheres. The female sphere at home and the male sphere. And they didn't interact much. To the point somebody pointed out that if you look at photos from like the 1900 early 1900 night before 1910, photos of the city. There are very few women. Right. Women didn't go. Right. So it all starts to change. Women are getting educated. So they're going to school and Garbo went to primary school and stopped because there was no school. 

Rich Bennett 44:26
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 44:27
For women beyond that, you know, you're 15 out of here. And so women are getting educated. They're entering the workforce. And Their lives are transitioning. So even though in the 30s, once women were married, they didn't have, you know, illegally separate life from their husband. So there's a lot that had not changed. Everything up to marriage had been totally transformed. Right. The women went out and worked. Not all women. I mean, 

Rich Bennett 45:02
right. 

Scott Reisfield 45:02
some women. You know, got married because their husband introduced them to a, or you know, their parents introduced them to their future husband. And proof it was done. But there was a much greater percentage of women who were dating dating didn't exist in the 19th century. You know, dating is a 20th century creation, maybe late 19th century. You know, now there are amusement parks, there are movie theaters, there's cafes, there's more money, so you have the money to do these things that's not. 

All of these things transform how women view themselves, how they fit into their relationship with their spouse, and their view of what they should be able to get in the world. And their view of, well, you know, you had this Victorian sexual purity thing, right, one guy ever, and that just goes away. And, uhm, 

so you have women looking at the process of getting to marriage in a totally different way, even though you can look at marriage in the 1930s and say, "Well, what 

Rich Bennett 46:28
," 

Scott Reisfield 46:28
change? 

Rich Bennett 46:28
yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 46:29
Right, so it's kind of true, but kind of not true. You know, you don't get real, and again, it becomes more socially conservative, because with the depression, one of the driving things was, women are taking men's jobs, right, 'cause there's only so many jobs, and, you know, the idea that two people in this family work, but nobody in this other family works, did seem unfair to some people, you know, because, uh, there wasn't enough work to go around. And then, you know, the men go off to war and women work, but when the men come back, it's sort of like, "Well, they've sacrificed, so we give them stuff." And also with the nuclear era, I think there was a lot of fear that, you know, the world could end any day, and so it came down to, you know, the family castle, and it's not, again, until the 70s. So you start to see a reemergence of this idea that, women, she had a different deal 

Rich Bennett 47:33
"Yeah, 

Scott Reisfield 47:33
than they currently." But the deal wasn't the same deal all along, and so what Garbo changed was that first part of the deal, that before marriage part. And women looked to her, and other, I mean, the rumor shares doing kind of the same thing, once she sees what Garbo's doing, and Joe Crawford's doing, and lots of women, 

Rich Bennett 47:57
right. 

Scott Reisfield 47:58
And before Garbo, these stories were being told in magazines, you know, the farm girls goes to the city, you know, is pursued by one guy, but he's a creep, and she finds her true love. You know, they're telling these stories in the 1880s, but they're not having the same impact Garbo has, because, they're, they don't, they don't seem as real as 

Rich Bennett 48:19
right, 

Scott Reisfield 48:20
what Garbo is. So it's not that the stories aren't being told before her, or by other people, it's just that she's better at 

Rich Bennett 48:29
it. With all of the research, everything that you found, and especially stuff that you didn't know before, if she was around and you could actually sit down with her, let's say you're still writing the book, but you have all the research done you got everything done. It's getting ready to go to press, but, but the publisher's like, alright, Scott, we want you to sit down with Greta Garbo, and interview her. Is there one particular question you would love to ask her? 

Scott Reisfield 49:02
Yeah, and it's not what I think anybody would think. Tell me about Charlie Chaplin. 

Rich Bennett 49:06
Oh 

Scott Reisfield 49:07
She's 

Rich Bennett 49:07
my 

Scott Reisfield 49:07
been 

Rich Bennett 49:08
God! 

Scott Reisfield 49:08
with her friends for ages and so, I start my book with this quote from Louis B. Mayer, which is totally unfair to Chaplin, who he hated. He says, "The cinema has delivered precisely one great artist to the world, Greta Garbo, unless you count that damn mouse." So Disney is an incredible talent, and Garbo is an incredible talent, well, Charlie Chaplin, to me that's the tremper of that era. 

Rich Bennett 49:42
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 49:45
And she and Chaplin knew each other over decades, and I have found other people tell stories of the two of them playing charades at a party, and I just would like to know what she thought of what I would say as her pure. 

Rich Bennett 50:04
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 50:05
What was Chaplin like? What was your relationship with Chaplin like? You know, what did you learn from him? I think that would be fascinating. 

Rich Bennett 50:14
I, oh my God, I would love to sit down with dinner with them too, along with Buster Keaton, and, oh my God, I'm going to forgive his name, Fats. Oh, 

Fatty Garbo? Was it? 

Scott Reisfield 50:33
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 50:33
Yeah. I would just love to sit down with them and just, just talk. Just talk and, uh, I think it would be amazing. Simply amazing. Alright. So, you wrote this during COVID. How long did it actually take you to write? I've 

Scott Reisfield 50:53
Well, 

Rich Bennett 50:53
recent, once you put pen to paper and you start it, how long did it take? 

Scott Reisfield 51:00
3 years. 

Rich Bennett 51:01
Wow. 

Scott Reisfield 51:02
Because I actually, so the first part of writing was just laying all the facts into a document. So, I wrote it as paragraphs, but a lot of it was, uh, get the information. And I used the program called "Scrivener", where you can move things around incredibly easily, 

Rich Bennett 51:21
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 51:22
right? It's a writing program that's, um, that it's, it's main attribute. Is you can change things in order 

Rich Bennett 51:31
Mm-hmm. 

Scott Reisfield 51:31
and it's really like, if I write something in "Scrivener" and I erase it, I can send it to sort of like a closet. So, it still lives there. It's not, like, when you delete something, it's gone. 

Rich Bennett 51:47
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 51:48
So, in "Scrivener", when you, when you delete something, it's just exiled. Um, and sometimes that was useful. And I did change the order of my book, and there are things that I dropped out like the photography section, and because it's a long book. 

Rich Bennett 52:06
Oh, yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 52:07
And the photography's cool, but it's not on the main thread I ended up on. And I didn't write as much about her later life because, well, I know it interests a lot of people, it just wasn't on the main thread. 

Rich Bennett 52:21
And so it's another book. 

Scott Reisfield 52:23
can't be another book. Or 

Rich Bennett 52:24
It 

Scott Reisfield 52:25
at least, But, um, so once I had everything, I realized I had too much in a business sense, and I also realized this is where it's sort of like, well, I really missed this. 

Rich Bennett 52:41
right. 

Scott Reisfield 52:41
Or, what happened during this time period? Is there any information? Or, hey, look, A, B, and C. I never thought of that as A, B, and C before, you know, how do I flesh this out? For instance, I learned she had "Primicious Enemia", which is a life-long condition. And she never talked about it. And it's barely written But I could find it in early articles from when it came on and literally made her stop making her project. She had to, she had to stop working for a month to get healthy in the project she was working on. They just scrapped all the film and started over when she was healthy. So, you know, but it's sort of like, oh, oh, this is, this is because of this, right? Like, do the project have been scrapped, but it was somewhat unclear as to why, right? Because they used to do that sometimes. And it's like, oh, we have a better idea or whatever. It's like, no, she was sick. And then what I realized is you can see the effect of "Primicious Enemia", which really saps a person's energy, as I guess the best 

Rich Bennett 53:55
it. 

Scott Reisfield 53:55
way I put 

Rich Bennett 53:55
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 53:56
This woman I spoke to about the condition from the "Primicious Enemia" from the society had this great descriptor. She said, if your body is like a battery, and you exert energy into your everyday life, and also sometimes exert work as you're working on something hard. "Primicious Enemia", you just don't have as much battery, and you just don't have as much surge capacity, right? 

Rich Bennett 54:20
So, 

Scott Reisfield 54:20
So it's just very draining. And so, you see with Garb of these very deliberate gaps in her work. And people would say, well, she couldn't film this day. Right? So it's like, well, she sick all the time. I was like, yeah, she sick all the time. So she misses days of filming in projects. So they'll say, you know, she missed a "Making These Up" because I can't remember each film. But she misses six days of filming on the conquest. And for three days, they found other things to shoot. And for three days, they just had to cancel for the day. So she's managing this condition and I never knew that until I could 

Rich Bennett 55:02
together. 

Scott Reisfield 55:02
piece it 

Rich Bennett 55:03
Right? 

Scott Reisfield 55:04
By first seeing, okay, people are saying she has "Primicious Enemia" in these press articles for literally six months and it never gets mentioned again. 

Rich Bennett 55:17
And how old was she when she was diagnosed with that? 

Scott Reisfield 55:21
Twenty 

Rich Bennett 55:21
one. 

Scott Reisfield 55:22
Twenty one. Yeah. uh, so, but that's how, you know, my editing process, I could then sort of frame in. Oh, okay. So now these things make sense to me and I understand what's going on. 

And, and when someone says, well, she's a hyper-contra act, it's like, well, no, you just don't know 

Rich Bennett 55:43
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 55:43
what you. 

Rich Bennett 55:45
And correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm wondering if this, if, if, if this is an actual fact, if this is what caused it, then she have tics. 

Scott Reisfield 55:57
No. 

Rich Bennett 55:57
She did it. Okay, for some reason, I thought I saw something where she was on the set and, and she had tics. And they, they, they had to slow it down a slow motion. 

Scott Reisfield 56:09
I think that's a misremembered. 

Rich Bennett 56:11
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 56:12
I think someone said years after. So when they made Joyless Street, they, they used, stocks of film for two different characters. 

Rich Bennett 56:23
Hmm. 

Scott Reisfield 56:23
Right. To take the time for the difference of their stories. It's sort of like an altman film of interlocking stories. 

Rich Bennett 56:31
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 56:31
And, uh, two of the actresses, uh, Garbo and Austin Yelson, who is this spectacular Danish actress, uh, they never meet in the film, but it's about them, right? It's about the differences of how, uh, the inflation destroys their lives. Um, though Garbo's doesn't get asked to stray because she finds, 

Rich Bennett 56:56
right. 

Scott Reisfield 56:57
Uh, but Yelson's life is destroyed, but it's. So. They used two different film stocks, and the, the guy who made that comment about the tics says, well, she had this tick and they had to slow down the film 

Rich Bennett 57:11
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 57:12
to cap. And he didn't realize that no, they're just using a totally different film stock to get a different book from 

Rich Bennett 57:19
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 57:19
her as Nielson on scene because she's already made movies. 

Rich Bennett 57:25
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 57:26
She's been working in films since 1920, but they don't understand that. You know, this guy doesn't understand how much time she spent on film. So he's sort of going, well, we change something, know, he's saying this like in 1950, whatever. And he settles on what we slowed it down because she had a, a tick in her eye. But I don't see, you know, she never had a tick in her eye anywhere else on 

Rich Bennett 57:51
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 57:51
film. It 

Rich Bennett 57:52
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 57:52
seems very strange. That's one of the stories that could it be true? 

Rich Bennett 57:56
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 57:57
Yes, it could be. I mean, I can't say definitively, right? Because I wasn't there, but nobody corroborates it. It never occurs in the rest of her professional life. So, you know, maybe, but I don't think so. 

Rich Bennett 58:11
With the, I forgot, I can, I'm not going to even try to pronounce it. The, the, the, the, the Z she had. What was it? Put, 

Scott Reisfield 58:20
Permission. And Namia. So, Namia is just like iron deficient 

Rich Bennett 58:25
right? 

Scott Reisfield 58:26
blood. And you've got it for a variety of reasons. But pernicious Namia, your body doesn't process what's called the intrinsic factor 

Rich Bennett 58:35
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 58:36
that sort of creates the iron-laden blood, right? The, the, the, the the. The tool that your body uses to make the iron be in your blood to go around to all the cells. It just doesn't happen. So, your blood just doesn't carry enough iron out to where it goes. 

Rich Bennett 58:55
Now, is it still pretty rare? 

Scott Reisfield 58:57
It's rare. It's about a one in a thousand thing. And there are, it's manageable, 

Rich Bennett 59:03
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 59:03
right? Arbo was fortunate because the, the way to manage the disease, there wasn't a way to manage it until 1925. 

Rich Bennett 59:12
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 59:13
She was diagnosed in 27 so, so she could at least get treatments, which were not pretty to start. I mean, 

Rich Bennett 59:21
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 59:21
the initial treatment was a pound of raw liver a day, which people used to eat in shakes, you know, like you drink it. 

Rich Bennett 59:29
Uh, 

Scott Reisfield 59:29
but quickly evolved to shots. And then, you know, better shots. So basically today, the treatment is B 12 shots. And B 12 wasn't even identified until the forties. So, they were just kind of, Yeah. I mean, they figured out liver work. They didn't know why, 

Rich Bennett 59:51
yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 59:51
right? But it works. So, yeah. So she had to manage this on a, on a daily basis. And also like for projects, it's one of the reasons she took breaks between projects is because she needed to recover. And to me, that also speaks to how important telling these stories 

Rich Bennett 1:00:10
was. Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:00:11
I mean, she really paid a price for gearing up to do the work. Uh, and she was happy to do so because that's what she felt driven. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:22
Yeah. So what do you Breaters take away after they've finished reading the book. 

Scott Reisfield 1:00:28
You know, there are a lot of women who, when you read women's history, you can, you can, stories of women who, you know, back a century ago, took steps, did things, said things, to further the independence and sort of modern status of women. And I think when you look back to the first half of the 20th century, Garbo is one of the five, maybe 10 women who are most important in making those changes. She's really central to how this evolved. You know, with the Nellinor Roosevelt and the Emilio Earhart and, you know, other people. But if you're interested in that, and how women got to today, and how, quite frankly, you know, history rhymes. Women are facing a lot of the same issues today, if it's a century ago, just in different clothing. So it's just that's the thing that's interesting is that she's one of these women. And then on top of that, especially her early life, you know, getting her to MGM, it's just a fascinating. 

Rich Bennett 1:01:39
Right. With this book, who do you think will be surprised most by either the classic movie fans, historians or people who've never seen a Greta Garbo film? 

Scott Reisfield 1:01:57
I think people who read women's history. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:01
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:02:02
You know, I understand why if you're reading women's history, you know, the whole suffragette movement is important, because it is. And you know, they take these physical actions, you know, they get thrown in prison sometimes and go on hunger strikes. It's an amazing life and story. But, you know, here is someone taking an art form, film, and using it to an end, rather effectively, and it's transforming the lives of women. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:36
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:02:37
And, and in a global sense. I mean, I always found it interesting in Japan during World War The Garbo fans had to hide their collections of Garbo photographs because she was hangla, right? Not Asian. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:55
they, 

Scott Reisfield 1:02:56
But 

Rich Bennett 1:02:56
ah, 

Scott Reisfield 1:02:57
and kept them, right? She because she was the modern woman. And, and, you know, so, you know, in a place like, you know, Brazil, I'll say, you know, for women who were clerks, it was a smaller percentage of the population than in Europe or the United States or Canada or Australia. But it still existed. And so, even though these markets were as developed in terms of women's rights, there was still an element of that. In China, there was an element of that. It was small compared to the Chinese countryside who didn't even know what a movie was. But it has this worldwide impact among among the people that mattered, 

Rich Bennett 1:03:47
right? 

Scott Reisfield 1:03:48
In terms of the evolution of our culture. And, and that's what's interesting. And, and again, it's not, it's not that she is the only person alone, but she is an exemplar for women and, and ah, and it changed things. 

Rich Bennett 1:04:07
All right, so for somebody that's never seen a Greta Garbo film. I'm going to put you on the spot here, Scott. What film do you suggest that they watch first and why? 

Scott Reisfield 1:04:20
I would say, Ninochka. 

Rich Bennett 1:04:22
Ooh, 

Scott Reisfield 1:04:23
it, it, it, um, it ages well. Some of the costume dramas, I mean, the acting and Camille is impeccable. But it does feel a little dated in terms of, you know, women's, you have to, you have to buy into the repression of women in the late 19th century and what, and uh, or what, um, Camille's life would have been like. Um, so in some ways it's not as accessible, though it's a great film. But, Ninochka is very, the joke still land in Ninochka. 

Rich Bennett 1:05:04
Man, I'm, I'm going to have to go watch that now. I have a funny film. I'm going to be sitting tonight, sitting down tonight watching a couple of her films. I, it just, it's funny because I are, are local cable, community cable network here, which is Harvard TV. I'm the one that supplies them with a movie or two movies every month that are in the public domain. Thank God I love her movies are in the public domain that people could watch them. 

Scott Reisfield 1:05:40
Well then, in the public domain, you have to go back to Anna Kristi. 

Rich Bennett 1:05:44
Oh yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:05:44
There's her hockey film, which is now in the public domain. And, you know, this is an interesting film because she plays a sex worker who's reforming her life. And she's gotten busted in St. Paul and she's decided to go strong. So she goes to her dad in New York and it's very forward. I mean, there's no, it's, it's, it's very clear in the film 

Rich Bennett 1:06:15
that 

Scott Reisfield 1:06:15
she was working as a sex worker. And, um, and, and the question is, so can she fall in love with a guy? Is that going to be okay? And, you know, that's a pretty modern topic even today, I think. And, you know, they're doing this in 1930. They're doing, you know, um, Eugene O'Neil plays for film, you know, pretty high-brow stuff. And they're just filming the play. It's not a very, you know, there are no costumes. There's no elaborate sets. It's pretty playlike. And, and it's great. It's great acting. And not just Garbo. So Marie Dressler is her foil as a female in this film, you know, playing an older former sex worker as well. 

Rich Bennett 1:07:03
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 1:07:04
They're, they're having this 12-minute conversation towards the start of the film that sets everything up. And it's just two fantastic actors at work. Dressler does this thing. That's a, so Garbo orders drinks for them. And she's got, if Dressler's got a beer. And she keeps reaching for the beer, but she knows that since Garbo bought the drinks, Garbo should drink first. So, so she keeps like, reaching for her beer and then pulling her hand back and reaching for her beer, but she does it so well. It's just this incredibly wonderful little sub-routine in the overall conversation. But that's, that's a really good film. It's a little heavy, 

Rich Bennett 1:07:46
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:07:47
but it's good. And, uh, and in the public domain. 

Rich Bennett 1:07:52
I'll have the pool at one and, and send it. All right. So where can people purchase the book and follow you? 

Scott Reisfield 1:08:01
Sure. I'm online, uh, at my, under my name, Scott Ricefield.com. And the book is an, I'm on Facebook and Instagram, but I'm not. I'm present on social media, but I'm not a social media, uh, heavy user. 

Rich Bennett 1:08:16
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 1:08:17
But I appreciate it. And it's a great way to keep in, in touch and show people what's going on. My is available. All the places you normally can buy a book. You can order it through your bookstore, uh, if you want to support your local bookstore and, um, you know, the normal online selling sites, all of that because, uh, it, I wanted to make it as broadly 

Rich Bennett 1:08:42
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:08:42
available. Paul. 

Rich Bennett 1:08:44
And all of you listening, you know what I'm going to tell you already. Once you purchase credit, garb of the rise of the modern woman, make sure, make sure you leave a full review after you read it everywhere. You can leave a review, take a photo of yourself with the book, post it on social media, thank Scott and tag myself, tell everybody about this book and don't get rid of it, don't pass it on. Cause I think you're going to go back and read it again and again, just like you're going to go back and watch the Greta Garbo movies. So you can go back and read the book purchase the book for some other people as well. And you know, I, God, you're gonna, you're going to love it. Just something about her is like I said before she's very captivating. She's amazing. And everything that she did was just at this world. So Scott, before you pick the last question, is there anything you would like to add? 

Scott Reisfield 1:09:47
Um, 

I would like to add, you know, we've covered a lot of ground. I think we, we, I'm sure I could find something to talk about, but I'm happy with where we've gone. 

Rich Bennett 1:09:59
I was going to say with, there's a, there's a lot we could talk about with just her in general. Um, and I'm sure even about yourself, because actually, I would love for you to come back on because when you said you had your own business, we never said what kind of business it was. And I've, I'm always fascinated by people that start their own businesses, whether they have to shut them down or not. It's just, it's that entrepreneur. Now you're an author. So 

Scott Reisfield 1:10:27
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 1:10:27
you didn't, 

Scott Reisfield 1:10:28
Prenored. 

Rich Bennett 1:10:29
you did a Prenored 

Scott Reisfield 1:10:30
Yeah. The Prenored part is authors never 

Rich Bennett 1:10:33
are. Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:10:33
Um, you know, actually, I was thinking, you know, we had talked about photography. There's a, Garbo came to New York and in July of 1925. And Portrait photography was very static. the coming from the painted portrait heritage. And in fact, that early in portrait photography, they used to include, you know, elements of a person's life sort of in the background. So, you knew who they were. 

Rich Bennett 1:11:00
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:11:02
And Garbo comes to New York in 1925 and acts for the camera, and it's actually three different portrait sessions, and you can see the evolution of they're doing, with this photographer Arnold Genta, who is one of the world's great photographers. And these photos are stunning, and you can see them. And you can see all of Genta's photography, because he donated his entire archive to the Library of Congress, which is one of the reasons I was there. But he takes these photos and it's just people sitting, sometimes they're in costume if they're actor. But he also has dance photography. He photographs modern dance, and he's trying to capture the emotion that dancer is expressing. Well, with Garbo, he melds those together. He has the portraits of Garbo are very emotional, right? She's expressing an emotion, sometimes incredibly 

Rich Bennett 1:12:03
like. 

Scott Reisfield 1:12:03
dramatic, 

Rich Bennett 1:12:04
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:12:05
And it's almost like the photographers being removed that it's the subject, Garbo, communicating with the viewer. And they're very powerful and fantastic photos. And then he goes back to just doing regular portraits for the most part. But it's that photography session that leads to all the Richard Avidon, these advertising photos where they're trying to capture emotion, 

Rich Bennett 1:12:32
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 1:12:32
and that starts with Garbo. And the line you can go to the Library of Congress and Google Garbo and Genta and you can see these photos. 

Rich Bennett 1:12:45
Interesting. And actually your first book was a collection of her photos, right? 

Scott Reisfield 1:12:51
Yes, she kept her MGM photos, not all of them, because I think somebody, well, I know somebody stole some, but also when she's one time, I think she left a box or two behind because they sold at a department store 

Rich Bennett 1:13:07
Now can people 

Scott Reisfield 1:13:08
in LA. 

Rich Bennett 1:13:08
still get that book? 

Scott Reisfield 1:13:10
Yeah, it's, well, it's it's available as an e-book, 

Rich Bennett 1:13:14
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 1:13:14
because I put it up as an e-book. The photos don't render quite as well as the paper book, but the paper book you have to buy used. 

Rich Bennett 1:13:24
Oh. 

Scott Reisfield 1:13:25
I think it's like 25 bucks 30 bucks these days. 

Rich Bennett 1:13:28
And what was the name of the book? 

Scott Reisfield 1:13:32
Grady Garbo portraits from her private collection. 

Rich Bennett 1:13:35
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 1:13:36
It was a museum exhibit at about five or six different museums. 

Rich Bennett 1:13:40
Oh wow. Man. All right. So Scott, I need you to pick a number between one and five, 

Scott Reisfield 1:13:48
four, 

Rich Bennett 1:13:49
four. All right. Now once I find block four, I need you to pick a number between 61 and 80, 

Scott Reisfield 1:13:58
four, 

72, 

Rich Bennett 1:14:05
72. All right. So just to let you know, the listeners know this, but I have a hundred different questions here, and I always have the guest pick these two numbers. I never know what the question is going to be. And a lot of times it aligns with what we've been talking about in a way, and I think this does. You said 72, right? 

Scott Reisfield 1:14:27
Yes. 

Rich Bennett 1:14:27
If you could witness any historical event first hand, which one would it be? 

Scott Reisfield 1:14:39
I would go with the first battle of Bull Run. 

Rich Bennett 1:14:44
Wow. 

Wow. I was not expecting that. Wow. 

Scott Reisfield 1:14:50
I'm a bit of a historian. Well, because it was fascinating, they thought it was going to be so easy, 

Rich Bennett 1:14:56
Yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:14:56
right? And they didn't understand how deadly war had become. So I just think it would be fascinating, You know, if I could be like the hidden camera 

Rich Bennett 1:15:07
right? 

Scott Reisfield 1:15:07
of the bird, nobody shoot me, you know, and then you have the you the people who would come down from Washington. So I lived in the DC area in northern Virginia for a couple years and did my battlefield tours. 

Rich Bennett 1:15:21
Okay. 

Scott Reisfield 1:15:22
So, but I just think of all the battles, you know, this was sort of this transition to modern war. And, you know, none of the participants or observers quite knew how different it had become. 

Rich Bennett 1:15:38
Right. 

Scott Reisfield 1:15:38
So to me, that would have been really kind of amazing to see everybody reacting to the seriousness of, I mean, war was always deadly, but the scaling scope of the damage that could now be in. 

Rich Bennett 1:15:56
Wow. 

Wow. Yeah. That would 

that would be interesting. Because 

Scott Reisfield 1:16:06
Yeah, I mean, but I've got the Gettysburg. Everybody knows what the game is. 

Rich Bennett 1:16:10
Well, yeah. 

Scott Reisfield 1:16:11
Yeah. How the surprise is just how's it going to go? 

Rich Bennett 1:16:36
Thanks for the other podcasts, uh, probably some time today and and how that works, 'cause I would love to get joined that one as well. 

Scott Reisfield 1:16:44
Sure, Rich, this has been a lot of fun. I love the questions and uh, uh, stay cool. They're in DC. 

Rich Bennett 1:16:51
Oh, I will be. Thanks a lot.