Greta Garbo Los Angeles on their own, but another five weeks passed with no contact from the studio. On the verge of returning to Sweden, she wrote to her boyfriend back home: "You're quite right when you think I don't feel at home here… Oh you lovely little Sweden, I promise that when I return to you my sad face will smile as never before." A Swedish friend in Los Angeles helped out by contacting MGM producer Irving Thalberg, who agreed to give Garbo a screen test. According to author Frederick Sands, "the result of the test was electrifying. Thalberg was impressed
Greta Garbo my face will do things I cannot do with it otherwise." Despite her popularity as a silent star, the studio feared that her Swedish accent might impair her work in sound and delayed the shift for as long as possible. MGM itself was the last Hollywood studio to convert to sound and her last silent film, "The Kiss" (1929), was also the studio's. Garbo would go on to become one of the biggest box office draws of the next decade. In late 1929, MGM cast Garbo in "Anna Christie" (1930), a film adaptation of the 1922 play by Eugene O'Neill,