Books by Robert Dance
Garbo: Portraits from Her Private Collection
by Scott Reisfield, Robert Dance
Famously elusive, Greta Garbo only had her picture taken when a contract required it. She shunned publicity, kept her private life a secret, and rejected the spotlight. Though ambivalent about fame and her public image, Garbo saved all of her favorite portraits, carefully archiving original prints by Clarence Sinclair Bull, Arnold Genthe, Ruth Harriet Louise, Edward Steichen, and Cecil Beaton, among others.
Published here for the first time are these portraits–impeccably reproduced in tritone, one more beautiful than the next. In addition, the book features family pictures, candid photographs, and letters previously viewed only by her closest friends and relatives.
Scott Reisfield provides an intimate portrait of his great aunt, spanning well beyond her career in the public eye–from the earliest days in Sweden when she would sneak through the back door of the theater to see actors rehearse, to her later years in New York when she traveled exclusively through back entrances, side doors, and secret elevators.
Co-author Robert Dance’s essay traces the evolution of the image of Garbo–from the ingénue of her first publicity shots to the icon that she became–while an illustrated film production history documents all the still photography and portraiture of her entire career.
Long treasured by her immediate family alone, this collection of photographs, and the essays that accompany them, form a spectacular tribute to Garbo, the woman and the myth, on the eve of her centennial.
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The Savvy Sphinx: How Garbo Conquered Hollywood
by Robert Dance
Named a 2022 Richard Wall Award Finalist by the Theatre Library Association
From the late 1920s through the thirties, Greta Garbo (1905–1990) was the biggest star in Hollywood. She stopped making films in 1941, at only thirty-six, and thereafter sought a discreet private life. Still, her fame only increased as the public and press clamored for news of the former actress. At the time of her death, forty-nine years later, photographers continued to stalk her, and her death was reported on the front pages of newspapers worldwide.
In The Savvy Sphinx: How Garbo Conquered Hollywood, Robert Dance traces the strategy a working-class Swedish teenager employed to enter motion pictures, find her way to America, and ultimately become Hollywood’s most glorious product. Brilliant tactics allowed her to reach Hollywood’s upper-most echelon and made her one of the last century’s most famous people. Garbo was discovered by director Mauritz Stiller, who saw promise in her nascent talent and insisted that she accompany him when he was lured to America by an MGM contract. By twenty she was a movie star and the epitome of glamour. Soon Garbo was among the highest-paid performers, and in many years she occupied the number one position. Unique among studio players, she quickly insisted on and was granted final authority over her scripts, costars, and directors. But Garbo never played the Hollywood game, and by the late twenties her unwillingness to grant interviews, attend premieres, or meet visiting dignitaries won her the sobriquet the Swedish Sphinx.
The Savvy Sphinx, which includes over a hundred beautiful images, charts her rise and her long self-imposed exile as the queen who abdicated her Hollywood throne. Garbo was the paramount star produced by the Hollywood studio system, and by the time of her death her legendary status was assured.
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Glamour of the Gods
A treat for fans and scholars alike, Glamour of the Gods is a massive survey of Hollywood photo-portraiture from the industry's golden age--1920-1960. All photographs are drawn from the extraordinary archive of the John Kobal Foundation in London. John Kobal was the last century's preeminent authority on Hollywood photography, as well as the first collector (and later author) to recognize photography's decisive role in creating and marketing Hollywood stars. Studio portraits and film stills contributed greatly to the glamour of the film industry in this period, especially in the heyday of the studio system (1920-1950). It was these images, as much the films they publicized, that transformed actors and actresses into international style icons. Kobal was among the first to recognize that fact, and he amassed images with such fervor that his archive, the basis of the foundation that bears his name, is now one of the world's top resources for Hollywood portraiture. Greta Garbo, Marlon Brando, Marlene Dietrich, Humphrey Bogart, Grace Kelly and Rita Hayworth are among the famous faces featured herein, styled in dramatic black-and-white by such photographers as Clarence Sinclair Bull, George Hurrell, Laszlo Willinger, Ted Allan and E.R. Richee. In many cases these are the career-defining images of their era. All of the photographs are from the archive's original vintage prints. In addition, film historian Robert Dance offers a lucid overview of the still/portrait photographer's place in the Hollywood studio system, and of John Kobal's place in Hollywood history. Critic and historian John Russell Taylor's introduction draws on his many years of friendship with Kobal.
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Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood
by Robert Dance, Simon Crocker
Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood presents long-buried, little-seen portraits of some of Hollywood's favourite movie stars by the industry's leading portrait photographers.
"This book is here to remind long-time movie fans why these important 20th-century icons will forever remain the Fabulous Faces of our time."
— The Eye of Photography
"Enigmatic, dazzling and fabulous: the faces of Hollywood’s golden age." — The Times
"A new book pulls together glamorous portraits of film stars from the 1920s to the 60s who could draw an audience with their name alone."
— The Guardian
"Intense close-ups, staged embraces and smouldering, emotive glances exude star power in this fitting tribute to a bygone age.”
“Star quality emanates from every page.”— The Lady Magazine
Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood brings together some of the greatest portraits taken by leading Hollywood portrait photographers during the motion picture industry's golden years of 1920 to 1960. Little-seen negatives, long buried in the remarkable and internationally renowned archives of the John Kobal Foundation, have been unearthed and printed to reveal some of Hollywood's favorite stars at the height of their careers. Full-page images of Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, as well as lesser lights including Anna May Wong, Lon Chaney, Lupe Velez and Ramon Novarro, will remind long-time movie fans why these important 20th-century icons will forever remain the fabulous faces of the movie world.
Selected by best-selling author Robert Dance and writer and award-winning film producer Simon Crocker, over 200 photographs are presented alongside an essay by Dance, describing what it takes to become a fabulous face and an international icon.
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