Return of the Duchess

Hollywood beauty experts lavished their magic last week on what many a mellowing movie fan would regard as a dedicated mission. They were preparing 43-year-old Greta Garbo for her first picture since Two-Faced Woman, eight years ago. Meanwhile her producer, Independent Walter Wanger, flew to Paris, where, if all went well, filming would start in August.

Garbo had picked not only the location but the story, one of her favorites, Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais. Set in the milieu of a decadent French nobility, it was a passion-tossed tale of a tragic love that would cast Garbo as a worldly duchess who finally takes a nun's vows and dies at 29. Scripter Sally Benson had made the adaptation; Wanger was trying to wangle British Cinemactor James Mason into the male lead as a steel-willed marquis.

In a bid for the old glory, Garbo had joined Producer Wanger in a new postwar trend: shooting U.S. films in foreign locations. Despite technical difficulties, Hollywood has found that production abroad pays off in fresh, authentic atmosphere and in melting its frozen funds in foreign countries. Producer Wanger's European junket would also lay the groundwork for a film in Italy starring his wife, Joan Bennett. Of other U.S. producers working abroad, 20th Century-Fox's Darryl Zanuck leads the field in pictures already made, and will have six going at once this summer--in Hong Kong, the Caribbean, Africa, Italy and England.

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