The colder your bones, the hotter your name. Everything old is back — TV series, Broadway shows, former vice presidents. Now it’s Hollywood’s Greta Garbo. In the ’30s, Swedish-born Garbo, bigger than smorgasbord, starred in “Ninotchka,” “Anna Karenina,” “Anna Christie,” “Grand Hotel,” “Mata Hari.”
Her off-camera attitude was: “I vant to be alone.” Her unknown love life? She did not vant to be alone.
On Thursday, Swann Auction Galleries is hustling 65 letters to her most intimate female friend and — back when nobody talked about that — her longtime bosom buddy. This lady, Austria’s Salka Viertel, wrote many Garbo screenplays.
These are more than 100 GG pages, handwritten, original envelopes, from 1932 to 1973. Good condition. Four are in bad pidgin German.
We’re talking heavy-duty personal. Extraordinary in that Garbo never opened her off-camera life. She built a wall, a myth regarding her persona. The correspondence signed “Tuscha” playfully disregards gender throughout.
Details contain a Who’s Who of upscale 20th Century lesbians.
Like: “Salka, I know I’m an impossible person … I go nowhere, see no one — just like in Brentwood … Perhaps you will come and rescue me … It is hard and sad to be alone, but sometimes it’s even more difficult to be with someone … It is not strange that I don’t remember having met Mr. [Gore] Vidal. I don’t ever hear [a] name, or anything when I am out somewhere … I remain a rather confused, tired boy … You mean frightfully much to me. I hope you know that.”
Estimate: $40,000 to $60,000.
Doc on director highlights fest
Maybe five people in the world still go to movie theaters, but everywhere — except maybe Afghanistan — there’s a film festival. Now’s the Hamptons International Film Festival. It’s showing a documentary on Alan Pakula, who directed winners like “All the President’s Men” and “Sophie’s Choice.”
His widow, Hannah: “We were married 25 years. He made 27 films and was about to do Doris Kearns’ book when he was killed on the highway.”
His cast is in this doc: Jane Fonda, Harrison Ford, Dustin Hoffman, Jeff Bridges, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Kline, Christopher Plummer, Brian Dennehy, Candice Bergen, Alan Alda, Tom Brokaw, Steven Soderbergh, Carl Bernstein, Meryl Streep.
Hannah: “When Meryl Streep did ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ he was floored that she’d perfected a Polish accent. When Robert Redford came over, our strong daughter Anna — then going through a teenage phase — wouldn’t come home to have dinner with us to meet Robert Redford.”
In defense of Rudy’s nature
Despite their Brexit, Boris and Mrs. Prince Harry’s beaut, Britain wants BS on Giuliani. Reporters, whom I rebuffed, called.
Were they swift, they’d have seen us together Saturday. Cheering the home team with Yankee Stadium’s 49,000 fans. Shove Russians, Ukrainians and Nadler. Rudy’s real enemy is ex-wife, Judith.
Be it known — and not known to anybody — is that although his divorce court fight’s in January, Giuliani still wholly and voluntarily supports his ailing ex-mother-in-law. So take that Mrs. Pelousy.
Me, I’m off tomorrow for Yom Kippur. See you again on Thursday.
The Whistleblower & Co. will next drop how America’s most closely guarded information leaked to the Russians, Ukrainians and two sheep in the Maldives. It will include CIA codes, the US Army’s secret locations, and the brand of President Trump’s mint-flavored dental floss.
Only in this election, kids, only in this election.
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