TV Programs Worth Watching:
Sun June 23 — Sat June 29

Greta Garbo said, "I want to be alone", and walked away from her career 
at her peak. Everyone knows that. And everyone is wrong.

In fact, everyone should know the true story, because it has been written 
about so often. But not often enough, apparently, since the bogus story 
still prevails.

To deal with the simple one first: Grusinskaya, a character played by Garbo 
in Grand Hotel actually said those fateful words, "I want to be 
alone". To credit the sentiment to Garbo herself is more than a trifle 
specious, wouldn't you say?

As early as 1933, Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina showed that, 
with the right director and the right material, Garbo could be playful on 
the screen. But it was not until Billy Wilder's Ninotchka in 1939 
that she got to play in a comedy.

Ninotchka was advertised with the tag line "Garbo laughs!" and so 
did the audience. (And why not? It's clever, witty and sophisticated.) It 
was a big hit.

At the end of the '30s all the big stars were appearing in comedies. MGM 
decided that Garbo, having been a hit in one comedy, would produce more 
money if she appeared in more.

Ignoring the reasons Ninotchka had been a hit, they decided that she 
should forsake the screen goddess image (unsuited to the brash 1940s, 
apparently) and instead become "the girl next door".

This embarrassing transformation went on show in 1941 in Two-Faced Woman, 
in which Garbo was called upon to play a ski instructress who poses as 
her more sexy twin sister to test her husband's fidelity.

This was run-of-the-mill fare, way below the standard of Garbo's usual 
films. It dismayed her fans. Time's critic encapsulated their reaction when 
he wrote that watching Garbo in it was "like seeing your mother drunk".

MGM dropped her like a hot brick. The other studios took note that Garbo 
was "washed up".

But she did not "walk away". For some years she continued to try to get 
roles. The director Garson Kanin recalls in Garson Kanin's Hollywood having 
to direct a screen test for Garbo for some role in the later 1940s. (The 
great Garbo having to do a screen test like any novice; how humiliating 
would that have been?)

She didn't get the role, however, so she stopped trying and instead swam 
naked in her friends' Hollywood swimming pools and avoided the papperazi, 
as she had always done.

Garbo didn't walk away from the movies. The movie moguls figured they 
couldn't make any more money from her so they walked away from her.

The bogus version is once more on display, however, in Famous Faces: Greta 
Garbo: A Lone Star (ABC 7:30pm Sunday).

In this week's final episode of Shackleton (ABC 8:30pm Sunday), the 
Endurance is crushed and the expedition has to take to the ice, 
beginning an ordeal that would last for many months and involve amazing 
feats of courage, determination and navigation.

Shackleton failed in all his objectives on this expedition, but he is 
remembered for bringing his entire party home alive in conditions that 
should have spelt certain disaster for all concerned.

The series, with Greenland standing in for Antarctica, makes a very good 
job of conveying the extent of the expedition's plight and the magnitude of 
Shackleton's ultimate achievement.

The release of the Australian 2001 Census figures on June 17 (still a week 
away at time of writing) are expected to confirm the continuing decline of 
traditional Christianity, and the growing diversity of belief in this 
country.

A new three-part series, Secular Soul on Compass (ABC 10:15pm 
Sundays), looks at these changing patterns of belief from a determinedly 
capitalist perspective.

In part one, significantly titled the Spiritual Market Place, we 
learn that "people now bring a consumer mentality to religion. They feel 
free to sample many different brands of faith ...

"We're now in an era of a much more open spiritual marketplace." I am not 
sure how those of us who reject the "product" altogether fit into this 
marketplace.

Located north of Guam in the Pacific, the 22 islands of the Northern 
Marianas are technically a "self-governing commonwealth in political union 
with the United States". The largest island is Saipan (all of 122 square 
kms).

Thanks to their special status as part of the US and yet not part of it, 
manufacturers on Saipan are able to legally put "Made in USA" on the 
clothing they produce while being exempt from US labour and immigration 
laws.

This handy arrangement allows them to employ Chinese and Filipina women 
under sweatshop conditions while exporting the clothing to be sold in up-
market clothing chains like The GAP. The label implies, to sweatshop-
conscious US consumers, that the clothing is produced under regular US 
labour standards.

Behind The Labels: Garment Workers On US Saipan, screening on The 
Cutting Edge (SBS 8.30pm Tuesday), shows that in fact the Saipan 
clothing manufacturers use false promises to lure thousands of Chinese and 
Filipina women to the island.

The women pay fees as high as $US3500 to work in the island's garment 
factories. They come to Saipan intending to stay only for a year or two, 
believing that they would be able to earn extra money to send back to their 
impoverished families.

However, because they are not paid the overtime wages they have been 
promised and have to pay for room and board at barracks the factories 
provide, they struggle just to pay back their fee, with interest.

In interviews, the women tell how supervisors, who restrict their breaks, 
including toilet visits, intimidate them, lock them inside the factories 
overnight and threaten them if they do not meet daily quotas.

The program also links the struggle of the Saipan women workers with the 
ongoing worldwide battle against globalisation.

The program was produced and directed by Tia Lessin for the organisations 
Witness and Oxygen. Witness was founded by rock musician Peter Gabriel and 
equips democratic rights activists with video cameras, and trains them to 
use this technology in the struggle for change.

Oxygen was founded by, amongst others, Oprah Winfrey to produce programs of 
special interest to women. Behind the Labels: Garment Workers on US Saipan 
is narrated by the progressive US actress Susan Sarandon.