Greta Garbo what we really ought to look at is the girl… The girl, look at the girl!" After the screening, his daughter reported, he was unwavering: "I'll take her without him. I'll take her "with" him. Number one is the girl." In 1925, Garbo, then 20 and unable to speak English, was brought over from Sweden at the request of Mayer. Both Garbo and Stiller arrived in New York in July 1925 after a 10-day trip on the SS "Drottningholm". But they remained in New York for more than six months without any word from MGM. They decided to travel to
Greta Garbo Wagner at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, quoted in a 2000 press release: "[Garbo] always spoke of it as a magical evening." Italian motion picture director Luchino Visconti allegedly attempted to bring Garbo back to the screen in 1969 with a small part, Maria Sophia, Queen of Naples, in his adaptation of Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past". He exclaimed: "I am very pleased at the idea that this woman, with her severe and authoritarian presence, should figure in the decadent and rarefied climate of the world described by Proust." Claims that Garbo was interested in the part