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 and began grooming the young actress the following day, arranging to fix her teeth, making sure she lost weight, and giving her English lessons." During her rise to stardom, film historian Mark Vieira notes, "Thalberg decreed that henceforth Garbo would play a young but worldly wise woman… " However, according to Thalberg's actress wife, Norma Shearer, Garbo did not necessarily agree with his ideas: Although she expected to work with Stiller on her first film, she was cast in "Torrent" (1926), an adaptation of a novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, with director Monta Bell. She replaced Aileen Pringle, 10 years