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Greta Garbo

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Greta Garbo photographed by Cecil Beaton c. 1946

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CAMILLE (1936) dir. GEORGE CUKOR

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Greta Garbo photographed by Clarence Sinclair Bull for As You Desire Me (1932)

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Greta Garbo and Mauritz Stiller c. 1920s

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Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo on a vintage postcard

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Greta Garbo in Romance (1930)

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Greta Garbo photographed by Cecil Beaton, April 1946.

Beaton also called Garbo a clown, which wasn’t pejorative. The faces of clowns had long been symbols for both comedy and tragedy, and clowns often appeared in the art of the 1920s and 1930s, representing “rebellion, protean passion, and problematic perceptions.” Clowns were androgynous tricksters, sometimes beyond gender. Beaton described Garbo as a double for Jean-Gaspard Deburau, who in the 1830s finalized the figure of Pierrot in the commedia dell’arte as sad and androgynous, connected to the moon. In 1934 Beaton wrote that, like Deburau as Pierrot, Garbo was “pale, forlorn, ethereal, and fecklessly gay.” By 1934, the word “gay” could mean homosexual. Beaton himself was a gay trickster who sometimes hid homosexual motifs in his photographs. In 1946 Garbo sat for Beaton as Deburau’s Pierrot. Garbo often called herself a clown, referring to her childish playfulness and implying that she was a trickster and a fool, both wise and easily duped.

Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo by Lois W. Banner.

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Greta Garbo in Anna Christie (1930)

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Greta Garbo by Cecil Beaton, 1946

"After dinner I told Brian Aherne that it must be thrilling to have Garbo staying in his home. “My dear boy, it’s not at all a thrill,” he said. “It can be goddamned embarrassing. When I go down to the pool in the morning to have breakfast, she’s already out there sunning herself, stark naked. I never know which way to look.”

-William Frye, Vanity Fair, April 2010

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Greta Garbo, 1965.

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Greta Garbo by Cecil Beaton at the Plaza Hotel, New York, 1946

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Camille (1936)

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Greta Garbo c. 1938

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Greta Garbo,  May 25 1949

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Greta Garbo circa 1928