GARBO, Greta (1905-1990). Document signed ("Greta Garbo"), Berlin 30 January 1925.

Two pages, 284 x 218mm on Loew-Metro-Goldwyn G.M.B.H. stationery (losses at upper right corners).

Greta Garbo's first American film contract. Greta Gustafsson was working in a Stockholm department store where she had done some modeling in display advertisements when she was discovered by Swedish director Erick Arthur Petschler who cast her in a short comedy, Peter the Tramp. More roles followed, and in 1923 she changed her surname to Garbo. Her work brought her to Berlin in 1925 where she stared in the film Die freudlose Glasse directed by G. W. Pabst. It was at this time that Garbo came to the attention of Louis B. Mayer who travelled to Berlin to meet her. While there are several versions of the story of how Mayer came to sign Garbo, both versions note how struck the Hollywood mogul was with the twenty-year old actress and signed her to a one year contract with MGM. Garbo agreed to work exclusively for Mayer for one year at $400 per week with options for four additional years with a pay scale ultimately rising to $1,250 per week as well as in "consideration of your providing me with first class steamer and railroad passage from Berlin to Culver City U.S.A…. " Additionally, she agreed that she would "leave for American no later than April 15th 1925, unless you request me to leave at an earlier date, whereupon I shall try to do so." Upon her arrival in California, Mayer was to draft a contract to "be drawn upon the form of employment agreement usually entered into between you and artists and shall contain the provisions ordinarily found therein," and to be "entered into with ina reasonable time after my arrival in Culver City." Additionally, Garbo demanded that Mayer "furnish gratis the clothes required for the films I am to play in." In July 1925, she boarded a steamer for New York, but upon arrival, she waited for six months awaiting further word from MGM. Finally, she travelled to Los Angeles where she waited another five weeks with no word from the studio. Finally a Swedish friend of Garbo's contacted Irving Thalberg at MGM who agreed to give her a screen test. The result, according to biographer Frederick Sands, "was electrifying." (See The Divine Garbo, (1979) pp. 69–73). Her first American film appearance was in Torrent (1926), followed by The Temptress (1926) the film that catapulted Garbo to stardom.