12 Best Old School Hollywood Feuds

Swedish-born actress Greta Garbo came to America in the mid-1920s to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and was soon established as Hollywood’s go-to ‘exotic’ (well, as exotic a white lass from Sweden can be) actress.

A few years later along came German actress Marlene Dietrich, newly signed to MGM’s then rival Paramount and dubbed ‘the new Garbo’. Understandably peeved, Garbo dismissed her apparent usurper as “another foreign importation”.

As MGM and Paramount’s own European imports, they found themselves starring in similar roles. In 1930, Dietrich took a starring role as a cabaret singer in Morocco in which she donned a top hat and tails and kissed a woman. Funnily enough, in 1933 Garbo took the titular role of the Swedish monarch in Queen Christina in which she also dressed as a dude and also kissed a female co-star. Just one year later, Dietrich would also play a member of royalty in the 1934 film The Scarlet Empress.

In addition to similar roles, they seemingly had similar taste when it came to their love lives too with conquests in common allegedly including actor John Gilbert and writer Mercedes de Acosta.

But the truth behind Dietrich and Garbo’s feud may be much different. Legend has it that the pair actually met years earlier in 1925 while Garbo was filming The Joyless Street in Dietrich’s hometown Berlin. According to some, Dietrich had a bit part in film and the two embarked upon an affair that ended bitterly when Garbo got wind of Dietrich mocking her low social class.

Seems that their ‘feud’ could’ve actually been the result of a bad break up rather than career competition and jealousy.