Garbo: Portraits from Her Private Collection (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Robert Dance (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Greta Garbo's film career began in Sweden in 1923 and ended in Hollywood in 1941. While she took a professional approach to doing photographs on the sets and in the portrait studio, she did little else to aid MGM's publicity department. Traveling under false names, she avoided interviews, premieres, parties and nightclubs. With no off-screen publicity materials, the public pictured her through the lens of "MGM's portrait giants," Clarence Sinclair Bull and Ruth Harriet Louise. New York art dealer Dance, who did a book on Louise three years ago, notes that these two photographers "shaped the look and persona of Garbo that was marketed to audiences in the 1920s and 1930s and endures today." Garbo saved their lush and creamy original prints, radiating glamour, and passed the photos on to her family. The work of Bull, Louise, George Hurrell, Edward Steichen and other photographers receives lavish presentation here, along with family pictures and candid shots previously seen only by Garbo's closest friends and relatives. Reisfield, Garbo's grandnephew, covers her life from Stockholm to New York, while Dance delivers an informative essay on the image makers and their rapport with Garbo. However, even readers with good eyesight may find the faded tan typeface difficult to read. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

September 18, 2005, is the centennial of the birth of Greta Garbo, who became the archetypal movie star by being personally inaccessible (her most famous line of dialogue, from Grand Hotel, is "I want to be alone") but photographically ubiquitous. Informal images are scarce in her grandnephew Reisfield's selection from her archives: two pictures of her in train cars, two full-length snaps of her in sports clothes, two travel pictures, two press photos of public appearances, and an image of her mentor, director Mauritz Stiller, reclining with a cat. The rest are exquisite studio portraits and polished production stills, most of them taken by, respectively, her favored portraitist, Clarence Sinclair Bull, and her preferred on-set photographer, Milton Brown. The work of other hands--Bull's fellow Hollywood portraitists Ruth Harriet Louise and George Hurrell (whose approach to Garbo, Dance says in the accompanying history and assessment of the pictures, is too objective), Edward Steichen, Nicholas Muray, Cecil Beaton, and Arnold Genthe--also appears. Truly, Garbo's was the face of a century. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli (August 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847827240
• ISBN-13: 978-0847827244
• Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 8.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #718,712 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Coffee Table book, September 6, 2005

By	tudortwo "twodoor2" (Hoffman Estates, IL United States) - See all my reviews

The pictures are excellent in quality, and there are even some candid pictures of not just Greta, but her little known sister Alva. Alva died in her early 20's so it was nice to see some good pictures of her. She looked much like her sister, but she had darker hair.

I also enjoyed Scott Reisfield's account of his great-aunt Garbo. I found it interesting that this woman, who he fondly referred to as "Kata" (nickname), didn't allow it to be known that she was Garbo until he was a teenager. She even kept herself a secret from her own relatives!!

However, the true value in this book are the wonderfully reproduced pictures. If you're a Garbo fan, this is a must-have.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Garbo : Portraits from her Private Collections, October 12, 2005

By	Jamie Tait (Crieff,Scotland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What a beautiful book this is, when I realised that they were releasing yet another 2 coffeee table books on Greta Garbo (GG.), I was a little apprehensive about buying them as I already own most of the published books on her and most have been rather overall a let down, full of the same quotes and background stuff, I thought that her life story before, during, and after her acting career was over had been fully explored. But I ordered them anyway, and I have to say this is a keeper.Its not too heavy on the bio side but has been published by the Reisfields ( her family) so it is the nearest to the real GG were ever going to find. And the rest of the book is simply STUNNING is full off quality photos of GG throughout her life, nearly all never released before, and some are quite breathtaking, I have been collecting GG stuff for years and have to say that this is the best book I have ever seen on her.BUY THIS BOOK YOU WONT BE DISAPPOINTED, its massive and very heavy ( God, I love super-saver as would have cost a fortune for this to be delivered from U.S.)and is now the gem of my collection.I am away to buy a spare as, no doubt this will be out of print soon, and will have to remorgage to buy it again, trust me its that good.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous must-have book, August 30, 2005

By	Schatze Page (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews

This is a truly beautiful book, the nicest I've seen on Garbo thus far. There's a nice combination of photos I've never seen before along with some old favorites exquisitely presented one to a page in beautiful sepia tones. The overall production values for this are exactly up to the standards you'd expect from Rizzoli. At a glace, the text doesn't seem to offer much insight, but that's not why you want this on your shelf, the pictures say far more than anything that can be written about the Garbo allure.