Published 30th April 2026 by Vendela Publishing.
From the cover of the book:
"Reisfeld knows about Garbo what we would never know. But, fortunately, he tells us." ~ Mick LaSalle, author of Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood.
Hollywood Made Her a Star.
What she did for women made her a Legend.
Greta Garbo dominated European cinema and Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s. With discipline and fearless self-belief, she transformed screen acting into something intimate, modern, and psychologically real. She fought studio control... and won. She challenged censors, defied social expectations, and refused to compromise her independence.
More than a movie star, Garbo reshaped what it meant to be a woman on screen-self-possessed, mysterious, and unapologetically autonomous. She redefined the power a woman could hold in Hollywood.
In this intimate biography, her grandnephew Scott Reisfield reveals this disciplined artist, strategic thinker, and the fiercely private woman who helped usher a closed culture into the Modern Age.
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Born 1905 in Stockholm, Greta Gustafson went on to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, as Greta Garbo - a name she chose for herself when she embarked on her career in drama. Garbo is a figure of screen legend. Starring in her first big movie, Torrent, for MGM in 1926, she transitioned from the silent movie era to the golden age of Hollywood - a feat many of her fellow silent stars failed to do.
Garbo remains a name to conjure with, evoking Tinsel Town glamour, but I confess I knew little of the woman behind the image. So I was delighted to have the opportunity to find out a bit more about her in this impressive biography, written by her great nephew, Scott Reisfield.
This is a sizeable, and erudite book, weighing in at 600 odd pages - including a number of appendices, and an extremely comprehensive index. It is a testament to the years of research he has undertaken into Garbo's life, but more than that, it is the personal connection to the woman herself that shines through.
I have dipped in and out of this book rather than reading it cover to cover, given its size, but it contains everything you could possibly want to know about Garbo, from her childhood and earliest dramatic projects, to her romantic relationships, and all the way through her spectacular movie career and beyond. From busting the myth that Garbo was a reclusive and distant character, to detailing quite how much of an impact she had on the 'Rise of the Modern Woman' (as so succinctly expressed in the title), this book is a fascinating in-depth exploration of the life of someone was not afraid to challenge the view of women in film and the wider world - even if she did not originally intend to do so - by playing sexually independent, self-assured, powerful leading ladies.
And, Reisfield includes a wealth of supporting information that really gets into the nitty gritty of the film industry of Garbo's time, including how censorship played a part in dictating what the paying public were allowed to view on-screen.
This book has already left me with a very different impression of Greta Garbo than the one I had when I ventured into its many pages, and an intense desire to sit and watch all her movies. I am looking forward to discovering more about her as I make my way through the rest of the book.
Highly recommend if you are interested in the history of film AND the life of a woman whose influence can still be felt today.
Greta Garbo and the Rise of the Modern Woman is available to buy now.
Thank you to Ransom PR for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
Scott Reisfield is the grand-nephew of Greta Garbo and wrote the 2005 book Garbo: Portraits from her Private Collection (co-written with Robert Dance). That book was a companion to the museum exhibit of the same name. The American edition sold 12,500 copies. It was also printed in German, French and Swedish.
Scott has traveled around the world to research Garbo. He has access to family documents and collections that have not been used prior to this. He had the time to tease out fact from fiction, and there was a lot of fiction. He went back to archives multiple times to pin down answers.
Scott has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of Michigan. He has spent forty years in business, thirty of them in senior management, working in companies ranging from large corporations to start-ups. He also ran marketing for a national association. Today, Scott lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
