There was a reason, beyond the exertions of the Hollywood publicity machine, that a single line she uttered in one movie-“I want to be alone”-became so fused with her image. But it was also a decision made by one particular, peculiar person who had never been temperamentally suited to celebrity in the first place.

For a star who, more than any other, “invaded the subconscious of the audience,” as Robert Gottlieb writes in his new biography, “ Garbo” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), this was an abdication, a privilege of monarchical proportions. In 1941, at the age of thirty-six, Greta Garbo, one of the biggest box-office draws in the world, stopped acting and, though she lived for half a century more, never made another film. Salinger, Prince) will always be legends, no matter what else they may be. Celebrities who retreat from the public eye (Howard Hughes, J. D. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.įame is so powerful that renouncing it can seem like the supreme power move.

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