“It is for me,” I said.
He sighed. “I was boasting a bit. I guess for me, too.”
The following winter in New York I saw Mary at a Broadway opening. “Where’s your ever-loving?” I asked.
“Out with Marlene Dietrich. He preferred dining with her to coming to see this play.”
“Can’t blame him. But how come I never get that much attention from your husband?”
“Because you don’t do as much for him as Marlene,” said Mary.
* * * * *
Where Marlene was a challenge and an inspiration to Travis Banton, Garbo was a challenge, exclamation point, to Gilbert Adrian at Metro. Marlene loves seductive glamour in clothes, and she finished up knowing as much as her master. The Swede hated dressing up, enjoyed wearing only her drab woolen skirt, turtle-neck sweater, flat-heeled shoes, and men’s socks on her big feet.
Travis delighted in high fashion. Adrian came up with more fantastic designs, though when femininity was in order, his clothes dripped with it for Greer Garson, Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald. He sized up Garbo like a bone surgeon, with his keen, kind, hazel eyes. She moved like a man, and she had a man’s square shoulders. Her arms were muscular; her bosom—let’s just say meager. Yet on the screen there was a commanding presence and luminous beauty.
She had an acting secret that only a few of us who watched her closely caught on to. In every clinch, a split second before the leading man put his arms around her, she would reach out and embrace him. It was one of the subconscious things that marked the difference between a European and an American woman—and Americans were always awed by Garbo. Her pictures are still earning lots more praise and money overseas than at home.