- She was born in Stockholm, Sweden. Her real name was Greta Lovisa Gustafsson.
- The family were poor, living in the slum district of Stockholm. Like most girls of her time and class, she left school at 13. Her father died of Spanish flu when she was 14. She went to work, first in a barber's shop and later in a department store, which led to some modelling work for the store catalogue.
- Her first appearance on film was in 1920, in a commercial advertising women's clothes. Her first acting role was in 1922 in a short film called Peter the Tramp.
- In 1925, she was spotted by Metro-Golwyn-Meyer and brought to New York. She couldn't speak English. Months passed without any contact from the studio. Greta was homesick and nearly went home to Sweden. If a Swedish friend in the US hadn't helped things along by arranging a screen test for her, she might well have done so.
- She became a star in silent films, but MGM were reluctant to cast her in talkies because of her strong Swedish accent. When they eventually did, in the 1930 film Anna Christie, and she spoke her first words on screen: "Gimme a whisky, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy baby." it became the highest grossing film that year.
- She retired from acting at the age of 36. She never spoke about her reasons. Some say it was because her last film, Two-Faced Woman, got negative reviews. While that probably didn't help, a more likely reason was that she was simply fed up of acting and didn't enjoy it any more. She was offered many roles but either turned them down or dropped out.
- She was intensely private. Even as a child she hated crowds and preferred to play alone. She refused to go to Hollywood functions, not even the Oscars and not even when she'd been nominated for one. She rarely gave interviews, never signed autographs or answered fan mail. This annoyed her bosses at first, but later they capitalised on it, as it made her seem like a mysterious and enigmatic woman. Her most famous line is "I want to be alone". She lived alone and never married - but she did have friends with whom she would go for walks (sometimes in disguise) around Manhattan.
- As well as walking, she became an art collector after retirement. She owned three Renoir paintings and some Louis XV furniture, worth millions of dollars.
- According to rumour, as well as playing spies on screen, she might have been a spy in real life. There are reports that she collected information about Nazi sympathisers in Sweden to pass on to British Intelligence and passed messages from British agents to the king of Sweden. She's said to have received a fan letter from Hitler, and told her friends that she considered breaking the habit of a lifetime and going to meet him - but with a gun in her handbag so she could kill him.
- She owned one of Rin Tin Tin's puppies.
NEW!
Obsidian's Ark
Trish wonders how to get science whizz Tom to notice her; how to persuade him that the best way to stand up to the school bully is to fight back. She doesn't want her friends, especially not Tom, to know she is a genetic variant with superpowers. Little does she know that Tom has secrets of his own.
Suki struggles to make friends at school when she cannot understand everyday cultural references, and they all suspect her of being a terrorist. She, too, has a secret, but is it what her classmates assume?
When Daniel stumbles upon a plot by an alliance of supervillains to plunge the world into war, he tries to alert the established superheroes, but none of them believe him. When the Prime Minister's only daughter, Yasmin Miller, is abducted, Daniel knows the villains' plan is underway. It seems humanity's only hope may be Daniel and the ragtag bunch of teenage superheroes he recruits. Can he pull together, not only his own team, but the older heroes as well, in a bid to save the Earth from a devastating war?
Themes:
Superheroes; Coming of age; Leadership; Kidnap and rescue; Aliens; Friendship and rivalry; Terrorism; Secrets.
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