September 18th

09-18-1905 – 04-15-1990 Greta Garbo – Born in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a Swedish film actress and an international star. Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an honorary one in 1954 for her “luminous and unforgettable screen performances.” She retired from acting at the age of 35, after being in 28 films. Although she was offered many opportunities to return to the screen, she declined all of them. Garbo had intimate relationships with women as well as men. Her most famous romance was with John Gilbert. “I was in love with him,” she said. “But I froze. I was afraid he would tell me what to do and boss me. I always wanted to be the boss.” In 1927 Garbo is thought to have had an affair with stage and screen actress Lilyan Tashman. Silent film star Louise Brooks stated that she and Garbo had a brief liaison in 1928. In 1931, Garbo befriended the writer and out lesbian, Mercedes de Acosta. According to Garbo’s and de Acosta’s biographers, they had a sporadic and volatile romance. The two remained friends for almost 30 years during which time Garbo wrote de Acosta 181 letters, cards, and telegrams, which are kept at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia. Garbo’s family, which controls her estate, has made only 87 of them public. In 2005 Swedish actress Mini Pollak, a close friend in drama school released 60 letters Garbo had written her in their long correspondence. Several letters suggest she may have had romantic feelings for Pollak for many years. After learning of Pollak’s pregnancy in 1930, Garbo wrote “We cannot help our nature, as God has created it. But I have always thought you and I belonged together.” In 1975 she wrote a poem about not being able to touch the hand of her friend with whom she might have been walking through life. Greta Garbo died at the age of 84 as a result of pneumonia and renal failure on April 15, 1990. As Ephraim Katz wrote, “ Of all the stars who have ever fired the imaginations of audiences, none has quite projected a magnetism and a mystique equal to Garbo’s.”

09-18-1966 Kathleen Maltzahn – Born in Morwell, Australia. She is an Australian politician and author, women’s rights and anti-trafficking campaigner. In 2008, Maltzahn authored Trafficked, a book opposing trafficking and sex work, published by the University of New South Wales Press. Later that year, her book was put on the list for Literature Non-Fiction Award of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2008 Human Rights Awards. She is openly lesbian. Maltzahn said, “When I was in my 20s, not long after I came out, I read a coming-out story of sorts, where a woman in her 50s talked about having come out after a life of marriage and children. In it, she talked about what she called life-long lesbians and that she envied them. She said that when she looked back on her life, she felt as though for much of it she had lived her life in black and white. In contrast, as a lesbian, with all the difficulties that involved, life was in technicolor.”

09-18-1966 Richard Grenell – Born in Michigan, city unknown. He is an American political consultant and media commentator who briefly served as national security spokesperson for Mitt Romney. In April 2012, he became the first out gay spokesman for a Republican presidential candidate. He resigned after pressure from social conservatives. In 2013 Grenell was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case. Grenell lives in California with his partner of nine years, Matthew Lashey, a media an entertainment company executive. Grenell is a registered Republican.

09-18-1978 Daniel Miagany – Place of birth unknown. American model. On Out’s 3rd Annual 100 Most Eligible Bachelors (2013).