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 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