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| Greta Garbo in The Single Standard (1929) |
Greta Garbo the iconic actor was the most famous personality with female autism. Karen Swenson’s (1997) biography of Greta Garbo is a master work of biography.
Background
She grew up in poverty and was always obsessed with money to the end of her life. As a child she was a shy, daydreamer and preferred to play alone. She had good enough parents. Greta was a hypersensitive child, easily upset but imaginative, (Swenson, 1997). She had social relationship issues and was a loner. Even at an early age, there was evidence of sexual identity diffusion. She preferred, ´tin soldiers to dolls´, (Swenson, 1997). Children with ASD often crawl under tables for a long time and she did this. She was an eccentric child. She engaged in repetitive questioning. Greta described herself as an ´awful´ child, (Swenson, 1997). She painted a lot as a child. She was controlling and dominating at school and was also very oppositional. She had difficulty separating fact from fiction as persons on the ASD spectrum often have. She was intelligent and had a strong sense of right and wrong but was always enigmatic. She could sing and used to beg for money from passers-by as a child. She was somewhat of a risk taker and Swenson, (1997) noted her attempts at ´tight rope walking´. She also had narrow interests; the stage and acting. She began acting using friends early in life. There was also a kind of adult/child about her. In adolescence she was ´jealous, possessive, controlling, distrustful, opinionated, hypercritical and self-analytical´, (Swenson, 1997). She worked in a barber shop initially and then in a department store, her supervisor describing her as ´ambitious, quiet´ with a major capacity for ´self-restraint´, (Swenson, 1997). She was very self-contained. She began modelling at the age of fifteen years. It was noted that she had eyes which said ´go away and leave me alone´ (Swenson, 1997). She went on to acting school and was unpredictable and tended to arrive late. For classes in Hollywood, her head felt ´confused and over-crowded´, (Swenson, 1997).
Acting
The actor, Rex O’Malley said ´she doesn’t act, she lives the roles´, (Swenson, 1997). This is what actors with autism are able to do. Because of her identity diffusion, it was probably easier for her to immerse herself completely in her roles. She was an instinctive actor. She could see the world through the eyes of a child, which is very important for an actor and for autism. Somehow, her autism allowed her to express her ´smouldering sexuality´, (Swenson, 1997). Her bisexuality allowed her to appeal to men and women. She had an extraordinary charisma, as actors with autism sometimes have; for example, Orson Welles (Fitzgerald, 2015). In the movies she had an ´air of removal from the context in which she was presented´, (Schickel, 1990). This was due to her autism, and she was also described by the critic Young, (Schickel, 1990), as the ´remote entity of her spirit´. The film, ´The Single Spaniard´ had a title card ´I am walking alone because I want to be alone´, (Gronowicz, 1990).
Narrow interests
She was always obsessed with money and ended up with over $50 million due to her work and good investments. She loved to ride horses and swim alone. She liked to mix privately with the jet-set and was a reclusive socialite in later life. She was totally fixated on movies and early on had been interested in trolls occult issues and the visual arts. She became later, an art collector.
Personality
She was extremely egocentric and narcissistic. Schickel (1990) noted her singularity and her quest for immortality as well as being a ´silent and withdrawn person´.
Depression
She was very moody and could change her mood very rapidly but was largely on the depressive side. She had a kind of low-grade depressive ´personality´. She saw psychotherapists and also diet specialists as well as ´an astrologer and a psychic´, (Swenson, 1997). She also had suicidal ideas.
Sexual identity diffusion
She was androgynous. She liked to be associated with persons with homosexuality. It was suggested that she got one man with male homosexuality to have physical relations with her, (Schickel, 1990). She was psychologically bisexual. She said at the end of her life, ´I’m a finished man´, (Swenson, 1997). She told Tennessee Williams, (Swenson, 1997), that she wanted to make a film ´if the part was not male or female´ and Williams described her as ´hermaphroditic´ and that she had this ´cold quality of a mermaid´. Indeed, she said herself ´I am a misfit in life´ (Swenson, 1997) and also Swenson noted that she was ´a part man, woman´. She tended to use ´masculine terms´. Some people regarded her as ´asexual´, (Swenson, 1997). Greta said ´I have a great longing for trousers´, (Swenson, 1997). She was certainly very attracted to gay men, possibly because of her androgyny and sexual identity diffusion. She had a long relationship with Mercedes de Acosta. Mercedes stated that Greta wasn’t ´so far, a lesbian but might easily be one´, (Swenson, 1997). Indeed, Greta said ´I’m a good man´, (Swenson, 1997). Swenson, (1997) noted that Garbo’s over-powering eroticism reflected the duality of a profane masculine side and a spiritual feminine one´. She was largely ´a self-directed actress´, (Swenson, 1997). ´Sailor´ was a favoured term for her male, usually bisexual friends. She did go to a gala event dressed as Hamlet and was very interested in Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. In active love scenes she would take ´the dominant, masculine position´, (Swenson, 1997). She said herself she was ´sexually indifferent´, (Swenson, 1997). Greta said that she was not ´all that womanly´, (Swenson, 1997). She liked to wear male clothes. She was a contradictory figure and her friend, Mercedes described her as having, ´a sort of despotic attitude (with) high handedness … with a certain tenderness´, (Swenson, 1997).
Sensory and motor issues
She was hypersensitive to noise. She had a ´near existential acceptance of pain´, (Gronowicz, 1990). She also had an ´odd gait, rather mannish, rather predatory´.
Non-verbal behaviour
She had an autistic penetrating stare. Brown (Gronowicz, 1990), her director, said that ´there was something behind them that could reach out and tell the audience what she was thinking´. She had a rather autistic, mysterious face. In early photos, she showed ´a nearly expressionless Greta … with her eyes downcast …´ (which added) ´mystery and allure´, (Swenson, 1997). She also had ´haunting eyes´ and according to Louise Brooke, a gaze ´so intense and so eloquent´, (Swenson, 1997). Greta said that she liked the German people because ´they do not touch you´, (Swenson, 1997). She was a massive observer and would simply observe the sea and nature. She had a tendency to pace back and forth. Fellini, (Swenson, 1997), said that she had ´the austere looks of a cloistered empress. She was always an unreachable living myth´. She was obsessed about growing old and her face growing old, and she quoted George Bernard Shaw, who said ´only a fool celebrates getting older´, (Swenson, 1997). The actor John Gielgood, (Swenson, 1997) described her as having a ´child-like expression´ but ´empty, aimless´. Ingmar Bergman, (1988) stated that when he met her after her retirement ´her mouth was ugly, a pale slit surrounded by transverse wrinkles. It was strange and disturbing´. She was also somewhat of a refusenik and she ´smiled – a secretive, ironic inwardly directed smile´, (Gronowicz, 1990). She had preservation of sameness and worked with the same people repeatedly and was controlling and dominating.
Language and Greta Garbo
She was noted often to talk in film script dialogue, which is characteristic of persons on the spectrum. John Gielgood said that she had ´no idea of conventional courtesies´ and tended to talk ´bluntly´, (Swenson, 1997). Richard Cortez, an actor only slightly exaggerated when he said ´she never talks at all, so to speak´, (Swenson, 1997). She often used to speak in the third person, for example, ´we must go´. She rarely used ´I, me, mine´. She tended to speak in short sentences. People in Hollywood noted that there was ´a stillness about her´ and she had ´no desire to make small talk´, (Swenson, 1997). The photographer Cecil Beaton noted her talking ´without any of the polite, preliminary (talk) of strangers´, (Swenson, 1997). Another person with autism who used to do this was Ludwig Wittgenstein who had autism, (Fitzgerald, 2004). A neighbour, Jeanette McDonald said that she was ´anti-social´, (Swenson, 1997). She was hard to communicate with and would often abruptly leave social gatherings. She engaged in a lot of self-talk as persons with autism often do.
Personality
A journalist described Garbo was ´an incomparable, indescribable, inscrutable enchantress´, (Swenson, 1997). She was also described as being ´scatter-brained´, ´a witch´, ´a Scandinavian Sphinx´ and a ´Hollywood hermit´, (Swenson, 1997). Swenson, (1997) also noted her ´apparent indifference´ and ´maverick reputation´, as well as being ´naïve and impressionable´. Gronowicz (1990) noted Daniel Boorstin’s formulation of her as ´someone known for her unknown-ness´. She was aware that she was not ´normal, like other people´, (Swenson, 1997). Many people felt she was just posing, but she was not. This was her true autistic personality. She was a contradictory personality and one director stated that ´I never saw anyone so sensitive to emotional impulses as Garbo´, (Swenson, 1997). There is a myth that people with autism lack empathy, but this is simply a myth. She was perverse and callous in the way she interacted with other women’s husbands. There was an obsessive-compulsive element to her, and she was a compulsive walker. She could be perverse in her comments when she said to one dress designer who worked with her for a long time, ´you know, I never really liked most of the clothes you made for me´, (Swenson, 1997). She was also referred to as ´the divine one´, (Swenson, 1997). The magazine, Variety, (Swenson, 1997), stated that ´Garbo is the strangest personality of all … (in) this extensive screen colony´. Variety also went on to state that ´there is no chink in her magnificent armour of aloofness´. A society hostess noted that ´she just sat in a corner and seemed to be lost´, (Swenson, 1997). For most, she was the mystery woman.
Social relationships and Garbo
Lew Ayres, a colleague, (Swenson, 1997), described her as a ´removed woman´. She was very anxious socially and found it hard to manage, even a Sunday lunch in the garden. When things got stressed, she would say to one of her partners Gilbert ´I think I’ll go home´, (Swenson, 1997). She often went off alone swimming, walking and was a naturally solitary person. She was regarded as having a ´mystic barrier´, (Swenson, 1997). She became a kind of autistic wanderer later in life, a reclusive wanderer and indeed, once described herself as a ´wandering Jew´ and was ´restless everywhere´, (Swenson, 1997). She was highly contradictory in her attitudes to relationships and stated ´it’s hard and sad to be alone, but sometimes its even more difficult to be with someone´, (Thorpe, 2019). In later life, she said that she regretted ´not getting married´ and she said that this was the ´greatest (regret) of them all. A clear second was her failure to conquer her shyness´, (Swenson, 1997).
Post-retirement
She spent long years post-retirement, ´killing time´ and passing time with the idle rich and famous – a lost autistic soul. Billy Wilder, the director, (Swenson, 1997), stated that in her retirement she was, ´frightened of pictures … of social appearances and contact with people´. Physical aging particularly of her face became a huge issue for her and she was constantly putting a handbag or whatever up in front of her face when she was photographed later in life. She remained ´the eternal stranger´.
Conclusion
Greta was one of the most famous actors in the world. She was an unusual person, an enigmatic person and neither she nor the people around her realised that she had autism, which would have explained her behaviour.
- Michael Fitzgerald, Former Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
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