Greta Garbo was born in Södermalm, Stockholm, Sweden. She was the third and youngest child of Anna Lovisa (née Karlsson, 1872–1944), a housewife who later worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson (1871–1920), a laborer. Garbo had an older brother, Sven Alfred (1898–1967), and an older sister, Alva Maria (1903–1926). Her parents met in Stockholm, where her father had been visiting from Frinnaryd. He moved to Stockholm to become independent and worked in various odd jobs—street cleaner, grocer, factory worker and butcher's assistant. He married Anna, who had recently moved from Högsby. The Gustafssons were impoverished and lived in a
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,