The enigmatic silver screen legend lived in the city-view home in the late 1930s.

From the time she arrived in Hollywood in 1925, Greta Garbo bounced around from one rented home to another. So the story goes, in 1937, around the time of the release of George Cukor’s costume drama “Camille,” the Swedish-born actress briefly took up residence in a brand-new Beverly Hills home with her freshly divorced friend (and rumored boyfriend) Leopold Stokowski, the snowy-haired British orchestra conductor who went on to marry designer jeans pioneering American socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, aka Anderson Cooper’s mom. By most accounts, Garbo had moved on to another rented house by the time “Ninotchka” came out in 1939.

Cleaved to a steep hillside in the coveted Crest Streets neighborhood, a low-key area with winding streets and no through traffic, Garbo’s former home has just been put back on the market with Markus Canter and Cristie St. James of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties for $10 million. The current asking price is a substantial reduction from the $12 million asked when the property first popped up for sale with another agent affiliated with another brokerage in early 2022.

The dining area overlooks the step-down living room.

Though there are hints and whispers of the home’s original Jazz Age moderne stylings, such as the camber of the front façade that echoes the sweeping curve of the street, the home bears few of its original details since an extensive transformation in the early 2000s by HGTV-featured interior designer Nicole Sassaman. The home last changed hands in 2006, for almost $7.5 million, when Sassaman sold up to its current owner, a Nevada-based corporate concern connected to Russian film producer and tech investor Arcadiy Golubovich.

There are five (and easily six) bedrooms and five bathrooms, plus a powder room, dispersed among the almost 4,700-square-foot home’s three stories. Configured to take advantage of the canyon-framed view of the downtown skyline, there are two fireplaces, one of them in one of the main-floor guest bedrooms, and a trio of balconies, one off the primary bedroom and another outside an ensuite office/bedroom tucked down a private staircase beneath the street-level two-car garage.

The top-floor primary bedroom spills out to a private terrace with epic views.

A petite, infinity-edge swimming pool and a large spa hug the back of the house with endless views over the city. In fact, it’s possible to open one of the sliding glass doors in the living room and step directly into the pool. Below the pool are a pair of grassy terraces, and below that, out of sight and shielded by great plumes of verdant foliage and retractable awnings, is an intimate alfresco lounge.

Fiercely private, Garbo retired in 1941, at 36 years old and at the peak of her fame, and after be-bopping about for a dozen years, she finally settled in New York City, where she bought a three-bedroom co-operative apartment at the Campanile building in the swanky Beekman Place neighborhood, where she lived until her death in 1990 at 84 years old. Still owned by her family, the elegant fifth-floor apartment was listed last year at $7.25 million, but with no takers, it was removed from the market later in the year.

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Robb Report - Septembwr 8, 2023
By Mark David