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 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