Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo

Historian Banner (Marilyn) traces the life and legacy of “the West’s preeminent female beauty” in this enriching and immersive biography. Born in 1905 Stockholm to poor Swedish laborers, Greta Gustafsson fantasized early on about becoming a Hollywood star. By age 15, she was selling hats at a Swedish department store, modeling, and acting in films. Banner unpacks her ascent to “MGM’s greatest tragic actress” after her 1925 move to Hollywood; the many men who served as her father figures, romantic partners, or career guides, including director Mauritz Stiller, who convinced her to change her surname to the catchier Garbo; her complicated public image (she stopped granting interviews early in her career); her intractable battles with food and weight (anorexia nervosa plagued her throughout her life); and her 1941 decision to “quit” Hollywood. In the process, Banner meticulously examines Garbo’s “ideal beauty” as a canvas onto which filmmakers could project their creative vision (her luminous, “large, deep-set almond eyes” and “high cheekbones and sunken cheeks” made her especially expressive on-screen), as well as a symbol of a culturally “hegemonic,” willowy, and thin beauty that requires dieting and strenuous exercise “as dangerous and difficult to achieve today as it was in Garbo’s day.” The result is a rewarding look at an enigmatic star. (Sept.)