The young actress Greta Garbo landed her first film contract with MGM studios only because the director she had worked with in her native Sweden insisted on it as a condition of his own employment there. Hollywood's tepid response to Garbo was short-lived; even before she finished her first movie, MGM was raising her salary. Within another few years, her beauty and screen presence had won her a singular eminence among America's leading film stars. Perhaps the greatest tribute to her talents comes from the many modern critics who consider her films such as Anna Karenina and Camille as compelling today as when they were made.

Part of Garbo's magnetism was an aloofness that invested her features with a sense of mystery. The maker of her portrait, MGM still photographer Clarence Bull, recalled that other photographers tried to penetrate the mystery. But he did not. "I accepted it," he said, "for what it was-nature's work of art. . . . She was the face and I was the camera. We each tried to get the best out of our equipment."