There are meet-cutes, and then there’s whatever happened between James Stewart and Greta Garbo on the MGM lot sometime in the mid-1930s. It was an encounter so clumsy it barely counts as a meeting at all. Stewart, a rising contract player still years away from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life‘ and ‘Rear Window‘, didn’t shake his idol’s hand or trade a knowing glance across a soundstage. He knocked her flat on the ground.
By his own account, given decades later in a candid interview, Stewart said he was a devoted admirer of Garbo’s work from the moment he arrived at the studio. The trouble was that meeting her took more than admiration. It took strategy, because Garbo was, by then, maybe the most private star in Hollywood. She slipped from her dressing room to her waiting limousine without so much as a wave to the crew, and she guarded that routine fiercely.
How Greta Garbo’s Sound Engineer Helped Set Up the Encounter
Stewart happened to be filming on a soundstage next to hers, which gave him an unlikely ally, her sound engineer. The two got friendly, and the engineer let Stewart in on Garbo’s timing down to the minute, including how long it took her to walk from her dressing room to the stage door. The plan was simple enough. The engineer would tip Stewart off the moment Garbo was leaving, and Stewart would sprint from wherever he was to catch a glimpse of her before she disappeared into the car.
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The call came a few days later. The engineer told him to hang up right away and get moving, because Garbo was already on her way out. Stewart took off running through the studio, cutting around a corner toward the door he needed. That’s when it happened. He crashed hard into someone rounding the same corner, but he was so focused on reaching the door before Garbo vanished that he barely noticed the impact. He kept running.
The Collision That Knocked Greta Garbo to the Ground
It was only after he reached the door and glanced back that it really hit him. There she was, Greta Garbo, the woman he had built an entire secret plan around just to see, lying on the ground where his collision had sent her. He got his glimpse, just not the one he had wanted. Stewart later admitted, with the rueful humor of a man still a little embarrassed by his younger self, that he doubted she ever forgot him for it.
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The story has floated around Hollywood for years, told and retold in biographies and classic-film retrospectives as one of the more charming, human footnotes in the careers of two otherwise dignified stars. Garbo’s untouchable aura was practically a studio trademark by then. MGM protected her mystery as carefully as it protected her performances, which makes the image of her knocked down by a star-struck coworker even more striking. It’s not something a publicist would ever invent.
James Stewart’s Other Attempts to Get Close to Greta Garbo
For Stewart, the story fits right into the legend of an actor whose off-screen self was every bit as awkward as his on-screen self was steady. By multiple accounts from friends and coworkers, he was the kind of star who could laugh at his own mistakes instead of hiding them. Fittingly, this wasn’t even his only failed attempt to get near Garbo. He and his roommate Henry Fonda reportedly once tried digging a tunnel under the fence between their property and hers, only to give up when they hit a gas line.
Garbo never left any known account of the incident. But somewhere in Hollywood’s collective memory, there’s still that image, the reclusive icon mid-stride toward her limousine, suddenly and unceremoniously on the ground, courtesy of one of her most eager young admirers.
You might also want to read: Why James Stewart and Henry Fonda Tried Digging a Tunnel to Greta Garbo’s House
