Graceful and Elegant Photos of Greta Garbo Taken by Cecil Beaton in New York in April 1946

Cecil Beaton was one of the most important photographers of the last century. The Royal Family, famous celebrities, writers, singers, painters and statesmen were shot by Beaton. He also was a good writer and wrote about all the places he visited and the people he had known. Beaton also was a designer and a perfect English gentleman of cultivated tastes.

Some say that Beaton was obsessed with Greta Garbo. In the 1930s he went to Hollywood with the secret desire to shot Garbo. But Garbo, elusive as ever, did not want to meet him. He caught a glimpse of her just for a few hours casually in the mansion of the director Edmond Goulding where Garbo unexpected was invited and he was absolutely bewitched by “the Swedish goddess.”

The second time Garbo and Beaton met was in New York in 1946. Garbo was not working in that period and was often seen walking in Manhattan or attending cocktail parties. In 1946, they met casually and even made a series of photographs. They started a deep friendship and it is rumored that they had a love affair. Beaton later said that he even proposed marriage.

In April 1946 in New York’s Hotel Plaza, Garbo and Beaton made their first photo session together.

Cecil Beaton writes in his diary:

“Garbo arrived wearing a biscuit-colored suit and polo-collared sweater, her hair’s a lion’s mane. At first she stood stiffly to attention, facing my Rolleiflex full face as if it were a firing squad. But, by degrees, she started to assume all sorts of poses and many changes of mood. The artist in her suddenly came into flower. She was enjoying the return to an aspect of the métier that had been her life’s work. Could I believe my luck? By degrees I was emboldened enough to ask if she would take off her habitual sweater.

“Then I brought out some ‘prop’ clothes – a pierrot’s ruff and white pointed cap – that I had secreted just in case... Greta became Debureau. A man’s top hat was discarded on sight, though a Holbein tam-o’-shanter was approved once it was bashed into a Chinese mandarin’s hat.

“Every now and again Greta was saying: ‘That’s enough now – got to go.’ But by the time I took her word as gospel a vast number of pictures had been made. The result formed a prized collection.”