Greta Garbo was discovered by an American producer as an awkward, young Swedish. Marlene Dietrich began her acting career in her native land of Germany. Both women, in their journey to fame and glamour, were plucked from Europe and remade into American fantasies during the golden age of cinema, often facing great pressures to change their appearance. With the advent of talkies, both women proved their fluency in English in order to continue their rise to fame. As contemporaries, the two became known as sensual, mysterious dream women who competed for the role of the most glamorous femme fatale.