Garbo Talks - Screenplay by Larry Grusin

Los Angeles: The Edward S. Feldman Company, 1983. Original 128 page revised draft script. Bradbound in printed studio wrappers. “is a 1984 American comedy-drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, and Carrie Fisher, with a cameo appearance by Betty Comden as Greta Garbo. Catherine Hicks, Steven Hill, and the first screen appearance of Mary McDonnell. It also featured the final screen appearances of veteran actors Howard Da Silva and Hermione Gingold. Bancroft was nominated for a Golden Globe.” When Greta Garbo came to Hollywood in the silent film era she became somewhat of a mysterious oddity in that she would not do interviews or sign autographs. She would work hard at her film work but otherwise was a a quiet remote private person. The script title “is a reference to the first film in which Greta Garbo's speaking voice is heard. Her husky voice and purposefully exaggerated Swedish accent debuted in Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie (1930), which was publicized with the slogan "Garbo Talks" as hearing the mysterious Garbo speak for the first time was a major event. Anne Bancroft stars as a dying woman who has a wish to meet Garbo who she has long admired. Her son, Ron Silver, starts a hunt to find Garbo. In Barry Paris’s book biography of the real life Garbo, he states that Garbo eventually saw the finished film and liked it.