In 1926, when Greta Garbo was still a new name to movie audiences, John Gilbert was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, a king of the silent era. However, by that time, Garbo has alreadybecome bored of playing the vamp roles repeatedly and was less than thrilled at being cast as the erotic vamp in Flesh and the Devil (1926),while Gilbert was also not particularly wild about his role in the film. But when they were filmed together in the first scene of the film at a train station, an immense chemistry between the two was obvious to everybody on the set.

It became clearly evident, when the movie hit the theatres in January of 1927, as never before John Gilbert has been so intense in his portrayal of a man in love and never before has a woman with alluring beauty and seductive grace appeared on the screen. The pair turned the scenes in which virtually nothing was happening, shots in which they looked at each other or looked away from each other or meaningfully walked past each other or almost touched each other into something resembling an erotic dream.

Garbo’s next project was scheduled to be an adaptation of Anna Karenina (1927), opposite Ricardo Cortez, but MGM immediately replaced him with Gilbert and initially, the studio also changed the title to Love, so the cine mongers could read it as Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in Love.

However, the romance between Garbo and Gilbert was just as potent off-screen as it was on-screen.Garbo moved into Gilbert’s house, shortly after finishing filming on Flesh and the Devil and Gilbert spent thousands of dollars on renovations to make it more to her liking.

Gilbert is also generally credited with teaching Garbo the art of acting, developing her acting skills and helping her to become a better actress. He also taught her how to be more sociable off-set, taught her how to get what she wanted at MGM and she even started working with his agent. 

Although Gilbert had proposed her marriage multiple times and Garbo always avoided it, finally a date was fixed. But strangely, Greta did not show up on the wedding day, which made Gilbert incredibly upset. Somehow, after the incident, Gilbert’s stardom started to decline and within a short time, he became just a memory of the silent screen, while Garbo reached the peak of her career.

In his desperation Gilbert married actress Ina Claire on 9th May 1929. Strangely, just a day before the wedding, Garbo requested Harry Edington over the telephone in a tear-filled voice to put a stop to the wedding. In his reply, Harry, who was to be Gilbert’s best man, told her that she was the only one who could stop it. But she did nothing to cause a scandal.

It is said that Garbo wanted to quit movies after their marriage, while Gilbert requested to marry him, but not at the expense of her career. Apparently, Garbo took it otherwise.

She thought that Gilbert was serious only about her career and he just wanted her as a prolific acting partner. However, later in her life, Greta confided that Gilbert was the love of her life, but she could not help the idea of being married, as she always wanted to be free from any possible imposed restriction.

Amazing it may sound, but at the insistence of Garbo, Gilbert was cast opposite her in Queen Christina, despite his dwindling career and the pair reunited on the screen one last time in 1933. By that time, Gilbert was depressed and had become a very heavy drinker, but he got himself together, quit drinking, at least temporarily, and their old chemistry made the movie a hit. But the success of the film was not enough to revive Gilbert’s career. After one more movie, he died at the age of 38, in 1936. At that time Garbo was in Sweden and she did not return to attend his funeral. However, Greta Garbo never married and gradually cultivated the air of mystery which became part of her enduring allure.

However, that does not mean in any way that the enigmatic lady was a virgin and remained alone all through her life. She was bisexual and took lovers of both sexes all her life. However, according to her own confession, women pursued her more often and more persistently than did men.

As a young woman she was obsessed with her drama school sweetheart, Swedish actress Mimi Pollak and their unrequited love, which started in 1924, continued for nearly sixty years. During that period Garbo wrote regularly to her. Wrote that they are unable to help their nature, as it was created by God, but she always thinks that they belong to each other and after the birth of Pollack’s son, she wrote that she feels extremely happy and proud to be a father.

During her days in Sweden and long before she landed her a position on MGM’s payroll, she was also said to have been in a relationship with Austrian writer Salka Viertel. In addition to her part-time lover Swedish film director Mauritz Stiller, Swedish publisher Lars Saxon proposed marriage to Garbo three times and he was rejected each time.

Although it is generally accepted that Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, the German-born American actress and singer, were bitter enemies, the accounts of George Jacobs, the valet of George Jacob, presents a different picture. It was depicted by him that, while he was looking after Garbo, Dietrich and Hal Wallis’s sister Minna when they stayed at one of Sinatra’s homes, he saw Garbo and Dietrich kissing and fondling each other as they lay naked near the pool. During that time, while filming The Joyless Street (1925), Greta was only 19, while sexually voracious Marlene was 23 and already vastly experienced. It is said later, Garbo was deeply hurt by her older lover’s indifference, which had formed the basis for her ignoring the German actress.

In 1927, Greta Garbo was introduced to stage and screen actress Lilyan Tashman, best known for her supporting roles of the vindictive other women and probably had an affair with her. According to Mary Louise Brooks, an American film actress and dancer, known as a flapper sex symbol, she had a brief liaison with Garbo the following year.Bisexual American actress Louise Brooks, who had the opportunity to spend a solitary evening with Garbo, described the screen goddess as a completely masculine lesbian and a charming lover.

In 1931, Garbo befriended Mercedes de Acosta, an American poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her numerous lesbian affairs with celebrated Broadway and Hollywood personalities including the famous dancer Isadora Duncan, Russian-American actress, director and producer Alla Nazimova and German-born American actress and singer Marlene Dietrich. Their friendship resulted in a sporadic and volatile romantic physical relationship and they remained friends for nearly 30 years.

Apart from her intimate relationships with Ona Munson, the lesbian actress who played Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind (1939), numerous names have been connected with the Swedish star down the decades. Although she always wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over her face and dark glasses to hide her identity, her intimate relationship with the orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski in 1937 was highly publicized, as they travelled together throughout Europe the following year.

Her male suitors included actor Nils Asther and Douglas Fairbanks Jr, producer Sydney Guilaroff and Leland Hayward and cartoonist Charles Addams, many of whom have warmed her bed at one time or another. Polish poet Antoni Gronowicz was amused to watch her as she performed a series of aerobic exercises, after which she would chant Scandinavian verse, then dive back into the sack rearing to go for sex. The famous novelist Erich Maria Remarque also mentioned his liaison with Garbo in his diary in 1941.

In 1941,fashion designer Valentina introduced Greta Garbo to his husband, the Russian-born millionaire, George Schlee. Following a very short interval after that, Garbo bought an apartment in their building and George Schlee had to split his time between the two women and became Garbo's close companion, until he died in 1964.