SHORT TAKES : Old Hollywood Remembers Garbo

Old Hollywood paid tribute to Greta Garbo today--the Hollywood of the days when stars drove along Hollywood Boulevard with cheetahs in the backs of their open cars, lunched at the Brown Derby and danced at the Cocoanut Grove.

“Greta Garbo had a certain mystique--a combination of the way she looked, her voice and a beautiful way of moving,” James Stewart said. “She had something very special about her that set her apart.”

“She was a very good actress, and she was also an extremely good technician,” Douglas Fairbanks Jr. recalled.

But when the fun started going out of Hollywood and the corporate chiefs moved in, Garbo left.

A small group of fans placed flowers today on the star bearing her name implanted on Hollywood Boulevard. She had left Hollywood before many of her fans were born.

Her career spanned only 19 years and 27 films. In 1941, at the age of 36, she made her last film, “Two-Faced Woman,” her only real failure.

George Cukor, who directed her in one of her most famous roles, “Camille,” once said of her: “She was lovely looking, attractive, gracious and humorous. She brought extraordinary concentration to acting. She also did what most actresses might like to do but couldn’t; she treasured her privacy.”