only modestly successful as an actor in movies. Agreeing with Max Reinhardt, whom the Viertels ran into in New York on their way to Los Angeles, Viertel herself said she was "neither pretty nor young enough" for a career in film. One of her most successful roles was Marthy in the German version of Anna Christie, which she took over at the request of Garbo (it was originally intended for Marie Dressler). She became a mentor and friend to Greta Garbo and contributed to scripts for the famous actress for such films as Queen Christina, Anna Karenina, and Two-Faced Woman. However, the plan to write a commercial script for Hollywood together with Bertolt Brecht, who also lived in exile in the United States, failed. Social activism The Viertels, members of the intelligentsia in Europe, moved to the United States in 1928 for a planned four-year stay. The Viertels initially lived on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, before renting a house on Mabery Road in Santa Monica, California. In 1932, following Hitler's rise, they decided to stay in Santa Monica, where their sons grew up. Their home in Santa Monica Canyon was the site of salons and meetings of the Hollywood intelligentsia and the émigré community of European intellectuals, particularly at their Sunday night tea parties. Her guests included not only Sergei Eisenstein and Charlie Chaplin but also Arnold Schoenberg, Christopher Isherwood (who moved into Viertel's garage apartment with his boyfriend in 1946), Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht, Max Reinhardt, and Thomas Mann. Brecht met Charles Laughton at her house, where Ava Gardner was also a guest. Viertel not only acted as a diplomat among the politically diverse emigré community but often played a practical role as a go-between among the emigré and Hollywood communities. She actively fundraised for Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico! project. Composer Franz Waxman met director James Whale through her and wrote his first Hollywood soundtrack for Whale. Charles Boyer was among those whom she helped gain a foothold within the Hollywood film industry. In the 1930s and 1940s, while fighting against National Socialism, she came to the aid of those trapped in Europe, in part by helping to found the European Film Fund, which brokered contracts with major Hollywood studios. Through the Fund's assistance, notable artists such as Leonhard Frank, Heinrich Mann, Alfred Polgar, Walter Mehring, and Friedrich Torberg received emergency visas that enabled them to escape the