27 August 2009

Greta Garbo's Eyes by Cecil Beaton

July 1946 Edition of VOGUE magazine featuring the first published photo shoot of Greta Garbo by Cecil Beaton.

One day in spring 1946, Greta Garbo asked Cecil Beaton if he could make her passport photograph. Beaton agreed and in the end the shot a full session. With her permission, he sent the pictures to Alexander Liberman, the art director at Vogue. Liberman “could hardly believe his eyes,” Beaton recalled. “Here was a precious windfall of a dozen different pictures of someone who for ten years had resolutely refused to be photographed.”

Sketch of Garbo's Eyes by Cecil Beaton from his 1937 Scrapbook

Garbo & Beaton in London, 1951

...as for her eyes, there are never been such before, in expression so quizzical, compassionate and languorous, so deepset and of such unforgettable blue; they have large, dark irises, and boast lashes so long that it is impossible to believe that they are real ... -Cecil Beaton