Salka Viertel (15 June 1889 – 20 October 1978) was an Austrian Jewish actress and Hollywood screenwriter. While under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1933 to 1937, Viertel co-wrote the scripts for many movies, particularly those starring her close friend Greta Garbo, including Queen Christina (1933) and Anna Karenina (1935). She also played opposite Garbo in MGM's German-language version of Anna Christie in 1930. Early life and career Viertel was born Salomea Sara Steuermann in Sambor, a city then in the province of Galicia, which was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but today is in western Ukraine. Her father, Joseph Steuermann, was a lawyer and the mayor of Sambor before antisemitism forced him to renounce his office. Her mother, Auguste Steuermann, died in 1952 at Viertel's home in Santa Monica. Her siblings were the composer and pianist Eduard Steuermann; Rosa (Ruzia; 1891–1972), married from 1922 until her death to the actor and director Josef Gielen; and the Polish national football player Zygmunt Steuermann. After debuting as Salome Steuermann at the Pressburg Stadttheater (regional theater), Viertel had engagements in typical spas of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1911 she played briefly under Max Reinhardt in Berlin, whereupon she followed an offer in 1913 to go to Vienna to work on the Neue Wiener Bühne. There she met her husband, author and director Berthold Viertel, and they married in 1918. They raised three sons—Hans, Peter, and Thomas—before divorcing in 1947. In 1920, Salka Viertel went to Hamburg to the Great Theater, later to Düsseldorf. Her husband worked from 1920 in Berlin, where he founded the collective theatre "Die Troupe" and worked for UFA, the major German film production company. The Viertels were part of “Hitler’s gift to America,” according to one biographer, since so many film artists throughout Europe and the German-speaking artistic community in particular fled his regime, including, notably, fellow Austrian writer Vicki Baum. As was the case with US universities in the 1930s, Saunders notes that Hollywood studios could be so selective "that the list of emigres reads almost as a who's who of Weimar production"; he places Berthold Viertel as "only marginally less significant" than other emigres whom he considers "without peer." In 1928, at FW Murnau's instigation, the family went to Hollywood, where Berthold Viertel received a contract with Fox Film Corporation as a director and writer. Despite her success on German and Austrian stages, Salka Viertel was