Jun 11 2008
Garbo talks!
That was the campaign launched in 1930 to publicize Garbo’s first talkie. It is of public knowledge that the advent of sound in movies could either boost a career or destroy it. Sunset Boulevard, starring Gloria Swanson and William Holden, is a fictional example of the latter. However, in Garbo’s case, her glory was even enhanced by the dark, husky and deep manly voice that filled the theaters worldwide…including the one in Buenos Aires where a young Borges nervously awaited until the first magical words “Give me a viskey” were pronounced. He sighed with relief. The diva he admired the most had made it.
When I learned this anecdote, retold in a documentary I recently translated, I could not help but thinking that, had I lived in those days, I would have shared Borges’s stress over Garbo’s voice. I would have been seduced by the glacial woman as I have been since I first saw her. The difference would have been in our timing. It would have taken place as her career progressed, not after it no longer existed. For me, today, to think of another voice but the one I have always heard is impossible. Borges, on the contrary, was able to imagine what she would sound like. A possibility for him was just a belated impossibility for me.
If we think that an actor’s voice could mean the end of a career back in Garbo’s time, today the situation is totally different. Jennifer (or is it Meg) Tilly’s high-pitched nasal tone would have been received thumbs down — Woody Allen did some justice in that sense with one of the sisters in Bullets over Broadway, but still voices do not matter as much today. The world changes, it is true. However, some magical creatures remain as enchanting, vibrant, and avant-garde as they have always been. Garbo is an example of this. She defies time and conventions — and would have Mercedes De Acosta pay for it. Her (wo)manly essence made both men and women fall under her feet, and set the foundations for Mylène Farmer’s career (another member of the family? I wonder). Today, the magic lives on.
Djupa andetag…Garbo talks!
