Greta Garbo
By:
September 18, 2009
What is it about GRETA GARBO (1905-90) that set her apart from the other great Hollywood beauties — that makes us fetishize her, if a bit uneasily? She wasn’t a better actress than Sophia Loren or Ingrid Bergman. She wasn’t as lovable as Audrey Hepburn (or Ingrid Bergman). She was no more exotically European than Hedy Lamarr or Marlene Dietrich. I’m not even sure she was more beautiful than Elizabeth Taylor or Ava Gardner. However, Garbo was singular in that she had no bad angles. She’s the rebuttal to Bacon’s assertion that there is no great beauty without some touch of asymmetry to catch and intrigue us; Garbo’s symmetrical features make her inhumanly beautiful. She was as alien as David Bowie in his prime. The private Garbo, however, was by no means inhuman. Though her photo sessions were epic in duration, she was never a diva. Louise Brooks described her as a “tender and charming lover.” Her humor was wry, dry, Swedish. And despite her reclusive reputation, Garbo spent her forties, fifties and sixties jetsetting around the world with fabulous friends — and investing early in Rodeo Drive real estate. She left a savvy businesswoman’s $20 million estate to her niece. What she left us was more valuable: her illimitable face.
Also see the following discussion about Garbo and middlebrows.
On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: | Joe Kubert |
READ MORE about members of the Partisan Generation (1904-13).