The Last Professional Footage Shot Of Greta Garbo In Test Film For A Movie Entitled The Duchess Of Langeais

Joan Fontaine in This Above All (1942)

Garbo being her completely enchanting self

The last professional footage shot of Greta Garbo in test film for a movie entitled The Duchess of Langeais (which was planned as her possible screen comeback, but ultimately shelved when financing fell through), cinematography by James Wong Howe, May 25th, 1949. Garbo was 44 years old at this point and hadn’t made a film since Two-Faced Woman in 1941, but she remained as beautiful as ever. This footage was inexplicably hidden away until after her demise in 1990.

SUSPICION dir. Alfred Hitchcock

How to be a BAMF: de Havilland Edition

Elliot, tell us what you need. I love you. 

By 1926 director King Vidor and star John Gilbert were one of MGM’s most bankable duos, thanks to the massive success of their WWI drama The Big Parade (1925). They were immediately thrust into the similarly high-minded period piece La Bohème (1926), and were cast in The Glory Diggers, about the construction of the Panama Canal. But MGM had to drop the latter project, and to keep them working swiftly re-assigned both of them to Bardelys the Magnificent (1926) instead, a tongue-in-cheek romantic adventure in the Douglas Fairbanks mold. It was a departure for the duo, but they proved to have the appropriately light touch, and Gilbert flies across the screen as if sprung from a trampoline. Gilbert pokes fun at his “Great Lover” persona, here pushed into a seducer caricature of Casanovian proportions. Once thought lost, an incomplete print was discovered in France in 2006 and restored by Lobster Films. The third reel is missing, with that section filled in with inter-titles and stills. It is this version that is on DVD from Flicker Alley and is now streaming on FilmStruck.

Read More On StreamLine: The Swashbuckling Lover: BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT (’26)

JOAN FONTAINE as Lisa Berndle in LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948) dir. Max Ophüls