Garbo Talks is a 1984 film directed by Sidney Lumet. The movie stars Anne Bancroft as a terminally-ill woman who asks her son, Gilbert, to help her fulfill her last wish: to meet Greta Garbo. As her son, played by Ron Silver, carries out his search for Garbo, he confronts his relationship with his wife and an interest in a struggling actress.
The movie was written by Larry Grusin and stars Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, Carrie Fisher, Catherine Hicks and Steven Hill. Bancroft was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work in the film.
Howard Da Silva, Dorothy Loudon, Harvey Fierstein and Hermione Gingold have supporting roles as, respecively, a down-on-his-luck paparazzo and his agent, a gay man that Gilbert meets on the Fire Island ferry, and a nearly-senile actress who once worked with the elusive Garbo. Broadway songwriter Betty Comden plays Garbo, and her writing partner Adolph Green has a cameo.
Estelle is a one-person protest army: she goes to jail over grocery prices, shames construction workers for catcalls to passing women, and won't cross a picket line for her son's wedding. She also loves Garbo films: when she learns she has a brain tumor and six months to live, she decides she must meet Garbo. Her dutiful son Gilbert, a Manhattan accountant named for Garbo's co-star, hires a paparazzo to show him Garbo's flat, stakes it out, gets a job delivering food there, seeks her on Fire Island, and tracks her to a Sixth Avenue flea market. As his obsession distances him from his wife, he's drawn to a struggling actress he meets at work. Can he find Garbo; if so, will she talk? Written by
