I am at heart a -Garbo-

Rita Hayworth & Marlene Dietrich

Hedy Lamarr

Marlene Dietrich performing in Las Vegas, 1959

anyone who is interested in being a portrait photographer should study beaton’s session with greta garbo in his room at the plaza hotel in 1946. it is an exchange between a goddess and a photographer. he made a drawing of her for his book of beauty in 1930 and wrote that she was the face of the century and the most glamorous figure in the world. […] beaton’s garbo portraits are the culmination of great longing. the connection between them is clear. garbo knew that he loved her. -annie leibovitz

Cary Grant and Ava Gardner at the Brown Derby, c. 1942

Carole Lombard

Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell behind the scenes of His Girl Friday (1940).

Norma Shearer

“My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.” Tallulah Bankhead

Norma Shearer, 1938

Marlene Dietrich, 1920s

Norma Shearer by George Hurrell, 1932

Though in complete opposition to her own conviction in real life in the film she claims: We did not know. “Nuremberg took a great deal out of her. But there was a scene that she had to do with Spencer Tracy the scene where she has to say: ‘You know we never knew anything.’ And she has to represent the entire German way of thinking and exoneration of Germans who were involved and yet were not involved. She really couldn’t get it. And then finally she had a talk with Spencer Tracy [..] And he looked at her and he said: ‘You know, it is needed… that you say it, because only from you will they believe it’. - Maria Riva from Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song (2001)

Ava Gardner, The Killers, 1946

Joan Crawford photographed by George Hurrell 1934 colorized

Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944)