Garbo’s kin in nasty legal dispute over only Oscar
Silver screen siren Greta Garbo, who always said she wanted to be left alone, isn’t.
The actress, who has been dead for 27 years, is at the center of a contentious lawsuit between two prominent Bay Area brothers — the great-nephews of the leading lady — over the whereabouts of her Oscar statuette.
The Academy Award and another valuable keepsake — a carved whale tooth given to the actress by President John F. Kennedy just days before he was assassinated — haven’t been seen since last year, one of the brothers maintains. The objects seem to be even more elusive than the great Garbo herself was.
In the suit, filed this month in Marin County, the great-nephews — both trust-
ees of the estate of their parents and the guardians of the Garbo artifacts — appear to be embroiled in a nasty dispute over the ownership of the items.
Grandnephew Craig Reisfield of Mill Valley alleges that his brother, Derek, of San Francisco appropriated the items and, when questioned about their whereabouts, coerced their mother, Gray Reisfield — Garbo’s niece and sole beneficiary of her estate — into signing a backdated document giving the items to Derek.
“Derek misappropriated the statuette and scrimshaw and then attempted to conceal his malfeasance by having Gray sign backdated gift letters,” the lawsuit filed March 15 in Marin County Superior Court alleges.
Derek Reisfield — a prominent venture capitalist, a founder of the MarketWatch financial news site and a member of the board of directors of the San Francisco Zoo — did not immediately return requests seeking comment. His lawyer, Marc Axelbaum, said it was “unfortunate that Craig has publicly aired the family’s personal and private business,” and added that his client “strongly disagrees with the allegations and intends to contest them vigorously in court.”
Craig Reisfield, a longtime financial adviser, told the court that his brother had concealed his actions for months and admitted taking the statuette and the tooth only after family members had reported to police that the mementos were missing from Gray Reisfield’s apartment in New York City, which formerly belonged to the actress.
Asked to describe why he brought the action against his brother, Craig Reisfield said Friday, “The action speaks for itself. It was my preference to settle this thing and not to go this (legal) route, but I decided to let the process play out. It’s absolutely incredible, and very unfortunate.”
In seeking to have his brother removed as trustee of the family trust, Craig Reisfield told the court his mother was not in a position to sign away the objects because failing mental capacity meant she “could not name the current president, could not recall her birth date (and) could not say what year it was.”
According to court documents, Derek Reisfield disputes that account and maintains his mother signed over the items to him in 2014 and that they are rightfully his.
How much the goldplated statuette may be worth on the open market is hard to know. The award was given to Garbo in 1954 to mark not a specific performance but her entire screen career. Other Oscars have sold at auction for a few thousand dollars to up to $1.5 million, depending on whose Oscar it was. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the statuettes, has a policy that Oscars may not be resold, but its ability to enforce that policy is far from clear.
“It’s a unique object of significance, both to movie history and to family history,” said Craig Reisfield’s lawyer, John J. Stein.
The value of the carved whale tooth, or scrimshaw, is harder to determine. It depicts an image of a sailing ship, and it was once on display at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston. Websites offer similar specimens for sale for prices ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars. But a whale tooth given by a legendary president to a legendary actress could be worth much more.
The Swedish-born actress, three times nominated for an Academy Award, was one of Hollywood’s greatest stars from the 1920s to the 1940s. She starred in such classics as “Mata Hari,” “Camille” and “Ninotchka.”
Playing the part of a troubled Russian ballerina in “Grand Hotel,” which won the best picture Oscar for 1932, Garbo famously uttered the plea, “I want to be alone.” Years later, the actress — known for valuing her privacy — said that the line “I want to be let alone” was more accurate when applied to her. She died in 1990 at the age of 84.
In a 2005 interview in a Swedish newspaper, Derek Reisfield recalled Garbo as “always very generous — she would joke a lot. She was extremely funny and liked practical jokes and gadgets and things like that. She loved small children.
“She was an extraordinary person, but you just did not think or worry about what she or who she was,” he said. “She was my great-aunt.”
A judge has scheduled a hearing on the brothers’ dispute for April 17 in San Rafael.