So Much More than Merely Her Chocolate Cake Recipe

It’s quite interesting that screenwriter Salka Viertel wrote 8 films – five of which were blockbusters for Greta Garbo – and only acted in 4 films but her Wikipedia page describes her as an actress first, then a screenwriter. Another example of how writers, especially female screenwriters, are often judged by their looks first and then their writing talent.

Born in 1889 in a section of Austria-Hungary that is now part of the Ukraine, Viertel came from an accomplished family. Her father had served as mayor of their town. Of her brothers, one was a highly celebrated pianist, and the other a nationally known football player. All suffered from the eventual rise in anti-Semitism which lost her father his job and one brother his life during the Holocaust.

Luckily, Salka had married fellow Austrian Berthold Viertel who worked as a stage and film director in Germany in the 1920s. She joined him there and performed on stage but soon they saw dangers imminent in the rise of Hitler. Berthold managed to obtain a contract as a director for Fox Films and the couple moved to California. Though she was adjusting to a new language and culture as an immigrant, Salka turned their home into a salon for the many other artists who had run from Hitler just in time. 

In fact, she became instrumental in raising vast amounts of monies to help more Jewish artists gain Hollywood contracts so they could leave Germany. In those salons she served the famous chocolate cake that most male artists later mentioned in their memoirs while forgetting to note that she was an accomplished screenwriter as well. Only novelist Christopher Isherwood called her a writer in his memoir, being especially grateful since she rented her guest house to him and his male partner at a time when most other places denied them.

As to her Hollywood screenwriting, she started off co-writing the screenplay for Garbo’s Queen Christina (1933) followed by adapting Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil (1934). Due to the sexual content of the original materials, both films needed to be tamed down for U.S. distribution but did strong business in Europe where both Garbo and Viertel began their careers. The women became lifelong friends and continued their streak of working together across Anna Karenina (1935), The Conquest (1937), and Two-Faced Woman (1941). Salka’s last film, which involved a man having an affair with his wife’s twin sister, caused a protest and MGM re-edited the film. It failed at the box office and for that and other unexplained reasons, Garbo retired from acting.

Though Salka continued writing films for other important female stars such as Ida Lupino in Deep Valley (1947) and Hedy Lamar in Loves of Three Queens (1954) she had been branded “Garbo’s writer”. The industry somehow felt that when Garbo retired, so did Salka. 

Also, the Writers Guild became more powerful and Salka joined picket lines just as the communist hunts began. The two things became comingled in the minds of studio middle management. Her contracts dried up and the government denied her a passport to travel back to Europe to see family – including her now ex-husband who had divorced her for a younger woman. Salka petitioned for her passport and finally won it back, moving to Switzerland in 1953 to live with a son who had become a screenwriter and married actress Deborah Kerr. 

Salka died in their home in 1978 at the age of 89. In 2021 biographer Donna Rifkind published The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler's Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Research for this column comes from the book When Women Wrote Hollywood, edited by Rosanne Welch.

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