Wednesday with Greta Garbo

Flesh and the Devil

Twenty-one year-old Greta Garbo, Hollywood’s last star to transition to talkies (with Charlie Chaplin), was negotiating a contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) to give her script approval as well as control of every film’s director, co-stars and cameramen when she made Flesh and the Devil. This—her third film in America—made the archetypical new, libe…