February 12, 1930: "Garbo Talks!"

February 12, 1930: A film version of Anna Christie premieres, based on the 1921 stage play by Eugene O'Neill. Since the title character was from Sweden, the greatest of all Swedish actresses was cast: Greta Garbo.

Born on September 18, 1905, in the Swedish capital of Stockholm, as Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, Garbo was not merely Sweden's greatest actress: At the time, she was the most popular film actress in the world, ahead of such other silent film stars as Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow. But, not wanting to spoil the illusion -- or, perhaps, nervous that, like many other silent stars, like Poland's Pola Negri, or the Brooklynite Bow, their accents would be an issue -- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was hesitant to put a microphone on Garbo.

In 1929, they gave in, figuring a Pulitzer Prize-winning O'Neill play, with a title character who was Swedish, was a proper vehicle for her. Anna Christie was her first sound film, and was thus considered a very big deal. It was promoted with the slogan, "GARBO TALKS!"

Her first spoken line on film? An actress walks into a bar, sits down, and places this order: "Gimme a whisky, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby!"

She went on to play many exotic European women, among them the Dutch dancer and World War I spy in Mata Hari, a Russian dancer in Grand Hotel, the licentious 17th Century Swedish monarch in Queen Christina, a fallen Russian woman in Anna Karenina, an ill-fated French courtesan in Camille, and a Napoleonic Era Polish countess in Conquest. In 1939, she played the title role, a Soviet envoy, in Ninotchka. As this was her 1st comedy, the slogan was "GARBO LAUGHS!"

In 1941, she starred in Two-Faced Woman. It was not well-received. She was only 36 years old, and should have had a few more years as a romantic lead. But she turned down every film offer afterward, and retreated to private life, rarely appearing in public. People remembered her line from Grand Hotel: "I want to be alone." Or, rather, misremembered it: In a rare interview, she reminded the world that it was "I want to be let alone."

In her later years, she became, along with former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the ultimate "get" for photographers on the streets of New York. In 1984, she was played by songwriter Betty Comden in Garbo Talks, about a man (Ron Silver) who fulfills the dying wish of his mother (Anne Bancroft): "I wanna meet Garbo!"

Garbo died in New York on April 15, 1990. She was 84. Despite several affairs, with men and women -- something she had in common with her contemporary, German actress Marlene Dietrich, and apparently Garbo and Dietrich were even together for a while -- she never married, and had no children.

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February 12, 1930 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The Boston Bruins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3. This game wasn't played in Boston or Pittsburgh, but at the Peace Bridge Arena in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, across the Niagara River from Buffalo, New York.

The hockey Pirates began play in 1925, and never caught on. For the 1930-31 season, they moved, becoming the Philadelphia Quakers, won only 4 out of 44 games, and folded.