Greta Garbo was the most famous woman in the world — and at thirty-six, she walked away from all of it. She made her last film in 1941 and spent the next forty-nine years living in a Manhattan apartment, walking the streets in sunglasses and a headscarf, refusing every interview, every comeback offer, and every attempt to draw her back into public life. Her retirement was not a breakdown or a failure — it was a choice so absolute that it became more famous than any role she ever played.

This episode traces Garbo from her working-class Stockholm childhood through the silent films that made her a legend, the transition to talkies, and the five decades of deliberate silence that turned her absence into the most compelling performance of her career.

• Garbo's impoverished Swedish childhood and her discovery by director Mauritz Stiller ...