Garbo out of Oscar honours

Press, 9 May 1980, Page 7

Garbo out of Oscar honours

In retrospect, we are left with the impression that MGM won more Oscars than it deserved. In the acting awards Mayer and Thalberg convinced the world that the most talented performers worked for Leo the Lion. But as we watch the awards pile up year after year the power of Metro begins to wane.

The studio seemed to betray the legendary Greta Garbo’s Oscar opportunities.

Garbo was nominated on three occasions, for “Anna Christie” and “Romance” (1929-1930), for the ageless classic, “Camille” in 1937, and for her lilting, subtle comedy style in “Ninotchka,” (1939). She lost to the boss’s wife, Norma Shearer (“The Divorcee”) the firt time around, then to Luise Rainer (“The Good Earth”) on the second shot, and finally to the truly luminous Scarlett O’Hara of Vivien Leigh.

Garbo had worked under the aegis of Metro longer than any of hem. Like Chaplin, Disney, Astair, and others she was too much of an original to fit comfortably in a competitive context. Vivien

Leigh enjoyed the added advantage of a tearful historical drama as her vehicle.

“Camille” and “The Good Earth” would seem to have been a stand-off by Oscar standards. Both heroines die in the end, both suffer extensively. Garbo’s does laugh considerably more, and she is in some ways less “moral” and self-sacrificing. But. the decisive edge for Rainer may have been provided by the illusion of a change of pace in her career. After winning the Oscar the previous year for chattering on the telphone, the European actress impressed the film industry simply by remaining relatively silent as a Chinese peasant woman in "The Good Earth.”

The Academy has always gone for stunts and changes-of-type in its selections. The moral? We must never expect too much from the Oscars. They are not designed for the long haul of film history. But they do provide valuable clues to the industry’s self-definition as the purveyors of entertainment, however reluctantly edifying.