When Garbo Smiled

While filming “Queen Christina” director Rouben Mamoulian had difficulty making notoriously somber Greta Garbo smile in a scene which required the character to do so. Mamoulian told an interviewer that he had asked co-star John Gilbert and Akim Tamiroff [Armenian actor from Tbilisi, like Mamoulian] to ‘make faces’ The faces they made, said Mamoulian, could have made a stone laugh. When Garbo saw the actors making faces she threw her head back and “laughed like a lark.”

While filming “Queen Christina” director Rouben Mamoulian had difficulty making notoriously somber Greta Garbo smile in a scene which required the character to do so. Mamoulian told an interviewer that he had asked co-star John Gilbert and Akim Tamiroff [Armenian actor from Tbilisi, like Mamoulian] to ‘make faces’ The faces they made, said Mamoulian, could have made a stone laugh. When Garbo saw the actors making faces she threw her head back and “laughed like a lark.”