Yestergaze

Jean Harlow

Shirley Temple meets Toto

John Barrymore

Alain Delon

One afternoon Greta started once or twice to ask a favour, then decided against it: ‘Perhaps another day I’ll mention it.’ I was most intrigued. Then she continued hesitantly: ‘If only you were not such a grand and elegant photographer…’ I finished the sentence for her: ‘Then you’d ask me to take your passport photograph?’ She looked astounded. ‘How did you know?’ Greta had told me she was planning to leave for a holiday in Sweden, and I realized it would have been impossible for her to go to any ordinary passport photographer without the results being displayed far and wide. Knowing her antipathy to publicity of all forms, resulting in her terror of cameras, I had purposely never suggested that she should pose for me. To take pictures of her has always been my greatest ambition, and this opportunity was unique. However, the sitting must be as simple and private as possible, for to have an assistant with lights would be to overload the occasion. The following afternoon a screen was placed near a window, while on the outside door of my apartment a notice was pinned: ‘Passport photographs taken here.’ The sitter arrived wearing a biscuit-coloured suit and polo-collared sweater, her hair 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 metier that had been her life’s work, and I could only click the trigger in an effort to capture yet another marvellous moment of her inspiration. 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 Dabureau. 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 my ever-growing euphoria would be interrupted by Greta’s 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 results formed a prized collection — though few of them were suitable for passports. When shown the small contacts, the sitter was pleased. She pronounced them ‘strong’ and clean-cut and of a good quality. Together we went shopping for a folding leather frame so that I could have my favourites by me wherever I travelled. She put a pencilled cross on the back of those of which she approved and would allow me to publish in Vogue magazine. When the selection was sent to my good friend, Alexander Liberman, the Art Editor, he could hardly believe his eyes. Here was a precious windfall of a dozen different pictures of someone who for ten years had resolutely refused to be photographed. From the rich hoard Alex chose a laughing head to be used across two pages. Surely this did not do justice to the full range of Greta’s beauty? I cajoled him into publishing a variety of moods and guises. Greta Garbo photographed by Cecil Beaton (1946) The Happy Years: Diaries 1944-48 by Cecil Beaton

Barbra Streisand, in the original Broadway production of Funny Girl. New York, 1964.

“I remember coming into her dressing room one time and she was wearing this diamond ring as big as a door knob that she always wore - the famous one that Richard Burton had given her. “What did you do to get that!” I asked her. And she smiled sweetly and softly said “I was loved.”

- Carrie Fisher

Ida Lupino models one of the dresses designed by Milo Anderson for her film “They Drive By Night” (Raoul Walsh, 1940)

Elizabeth Taylor reads about all the fuss she’s making on the set of Cleopatra.

1954: Frank Sinatra and his costar Donna Reed pose with their Oscars after being deemed Best Supporting Actor and Best Actress for their film 𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑯𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝑬𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒚.

Happy Birthday, Charlie Chaplin!

These lovely pictures were taken on his 80th birthday, on 16 April 1969.

Charlie certainly had fun cutting his cakes, lol.

Hayley Mills and Peter McEnery, co-stars of Walt Disney’s The Moon-Spinners, 1964

Sophia Loren by Bert Stern, 1962

Bellissima 🇮🇹