Dimensions
157 x 235 x 23mm
Greta Garbo first met the society photographer Cecil Beaton in Hollywood in 1932. Both were caught in turbulent same-sex affairs: Garbo with Mercedes de Acosta, a scriptwriter, and Beaton with Peter Watson, a wealthy dilettante. Garbo flirted, and danced, with Beaton, took a rose from a vase, kissed it and gave it to him. Then at dawn she drove away, brushing aside his please to stay. He took the rose home to England, framed it in silver and hung it above his bed.
Fifteen yeas later they met again in New York and began a strange romance. For Garbo it was a teasing flirtation; for Beaton it was an obsession that fuelled his ambition to photograph her, to be like her and to marry her.
A fascinating insight into the lives of the reclusive Greta Garbo and the photographer Cecil Beaton.
