It's interesting that Bull is the man who has taken all the Garbo portraits. because M-G-M has another expert portrait cameraman, George Hurrell, who makes many of those brilliant photographic studies, for instance. But Garbo prefers Bull.
Why?
“Well–because she's used to him,” is the answer they'll give you, those who know. And when you ask them what they mean by that, they'll explain that's one of the Garbo characteristics–that she works best with people she's used to, and once used to them, doesn't want to work with others.
“If Garbo went in for a sitting with some other photographer, no matter how good, she'd probably ‘freeze up,'” the Metro press boys tell you. “She'd lose all the naturalness, all the ease, all the glamour which is Garbo, and become merely another camera-conscious person.”
You yourself have probably experienced that feeling when you sit in a photographer's studio, haven't you? It may strike you as strange to believe that Garbo, whose life is made up of facing cameras, should suffer that–yet she does. NOW Bull, if he would, could probably tell a great deal of interesting things about what does on behind the closed doors of his gallery, while Garbo is being photographed. But Bull, knowing Garbo, won't. If Garbo thought that Bull would talk about her, she'd probably never again let him “shoot” her. She's that way, you know. But even though Bull, in wise deference to la Garbo, doesn't tell, there are other ways of finding out such things–and so here's a picture of what happens when Greta has her pictures taken:
Greta has one gallery sitting for every production in which she plays. The sitting is invariably immediately at the close of shooting on the movie.
She makes no secret of the fact that she doesn't like that day in the portrait gallery. But, like everything else in movie-making, it's just another thing to be done, so Garbo does it.
Don't imagine, though, that she does it with ill grace. No; she complains, by an occasional word, or an inference, when she knows she's to have a sitting, but once she's in the gallery, she's the swellest subject a cameraman ever had. Because she throws herself into it with the utter concentration with which she throws herself into movie-making.
In fact, she makes of it just another day on the production schedule. For instance, whereas other stars make their portrait gallery appointments for, say 2 o'clock, or 11 o'clock, or some such hour–with Garbo, it's a day's work.
Just exactly as she does when in production, she shows up at the studio at 8 A.M. on the day of her portrait gallery appointment. Breakfastless. She breakfasts in her dressing room, as she does when making a picture.
She selects her costumes–always costumes from the production. Only once, in the seven years of her M-G-M term, was she photographed in clothes of her own–and that was at studio executives' insistence, and over her objections. And even then, she brought but one nondescript dress, and one “Garbo” overcoat. Other stars love to bring their own wardrobes to be pictured in. Not Garbo.
“As a matter of fact,” They tell you on the lot, “we doubt if Garbo has ever been photographed as Garbo. She's always in character or mood–but never Garbo.” Of course that doesn't apply to those Kodak-shots. More about those later, though. |
Having chosen the costume, she calls a hairdresser, has her hair done up as the character in the film wore it. Garbo herself, despite pictorial representations of “the Garbo coiffure” and all that, has really no style of hairdress of her own. When you see a portrait of her, you see her hair done as she thinks the character in the picture ought to wear it.
Hair done up, a bit of make-up. For portraits, just a light dusting of powder, that's all. Even for the set, she wears less make-up that the great majority of actresses.
And so, she's ready.
A car has been provided to take her from her dressing room on the lot to Bull's portrait gallery–oh, a distance equivalent to a couple of blocks, say. But does Garbo ride? Usually, into the car go her maid, her hairdresser, her costumes. Garbo walks. By the time the hairdresser and maid have piled the costumes and things into the car, taken them out again at the gallery, Garbo is inside, ready, waiting.
She comes in bounding–but with the air of a martyr. A sort of “oh-how-I-hate-to-do-this-but-let's-get-it-going!” air. Not surly, merely resigned.
“Good morning, Mister Bull,” she says. And Bull: “Good morning, Miss Garbo.” It's always “Mister Bull” and “Miss Garbo”; never “Clarence” or “Greta” or “Garbo.” Garbo is always formal–she “Misters” and “Misses” everybody, save her maid, Alma, and her hairdresser, whom she calls “Billie.” And sometimes, when she unbends greatly, she may address a person with whom she works much by his late name, alone, without the “Mister”. But never by a first name; never! They wonder, on The M-G-M lot, whether when she talks with herself, as people do, she doesn't call herself “Miss Garbo. …”
Sometimes, Photographer Bull, knowing how low she feels at the prospect of a day's photographing, will essay something like:
“Well, shall we do big things today, Miss Garbo?”
It doesn't perk Greta up, though. “No, I do not feel like doing this,” she may answer. That air of the martyr again. But–when the lights go on, the cameraing begins, watch Garbo work!!!
The woman becomes transformed. Her reluctance vanishes; her indifference, martyrdom disappear. She becomes a perfect photographic subject. And she's an uncanny one-uncanny in her almost abnormal consciousness of “good picture.”
It's a fact–and Bull will tell you this himself–that she can “feel” light! That is, she can actually sense when her face is properly lighted for a shot. Bull hardly has to tell her to tilt her chin this way or that to catch the light, to turn a bit to the right or the left, say–any of those customary picture gallery instructions. Instead, if you were there, you'd see Garbo, without a word of interchange between her and the cameraman, turn her head a bit this way and that, up or down, until she “feels” the light is right. And when she feels it's right, it is right! And click goes Bull's shutter–and another picture is made.
How many do they make at a sitting? Oh, it runs anywhere from one to three hundred, in a day's work!
Incidentally, in addition to that strange sense of “feeling” light, Garbo has developed to a high point the trick of watching herself reflected in the big lens of the portrait camera, to see when her pose is good. The lens makes a sort of reducing mirror in which Garbo can see herself. She gauges her poses accordingly.
Moreover, there's nothing too much trouble for Garbo–if she feels a good picture would result. If Bull thought he could get some unusual art by having her lie on the floor, down she goes.
Nor does she object, as most other stars do, to unusual shots, poses. Never does Garbo complain “That's undignified”;–if Bull should ever suddenly jump up on the rafters with his camera and point it down Garbo's neck, she'd let him do it without remonstrance, feeling that he must know what he's doing!
Garbo doesn't leave the gallery until the work is done. Not even for lunch. If she gets hungry, tired, she sends to the studio commissary for a glass of orange juice, or maybe a malted milk or an ice cream soda. Sips it between shots.
It's all work. Other stars have their gallery peculiarities–some like to clown, others must wise-crack. All Garbo wants is to get some good pictures made and get it done with.
She, too, though, has her “gallery quirk”–that is, music. The radio is turned on all the time Garbo is in the gallery–with the sole exception being that there's silence when she's being portrayed in a tragic mood.
It doesn't matter much what's coming over the radio. Garbo doesn't seem to pay much attention. Except, perhaps, when some mournful, dirgelike thing should pop out of the loudspeaker.
Then Garbo's eyes twinkle a bit.
“Oh, oh–iss that the way we feel today, Mister Bull?” And so they turn the dial to something lighter.
Too, when some radio announcer goes into one of those endless eruptions of words about anything at all, Garbo suddenly breaks out with:
“Now what on earth is that man talking about–how can anybody talk so much about anything? What can it be that means so many words?”
Garbo's self-control is a matter that's talked about, too. Once, in the studio gallery, while Bull's assistant was hoisting a spotlight to play on Garbo from above, the light toppled, crashed within a few inches of her. A few inches closer–it might have hurt her, seriously, for it was a heavy light. Well, another star might have screamed, collapsed, gone into a temperamental fit, gone home. Not Garbo–Garbo didn't pull her famous ay-tank-ay-go-home line; she merely smiled up at the terrified assistant, and murmured:
“Do I make you nervous, maybe?”
She was utterly unruffled.
You can see, by the fact that as many as 300 pictures have been taken at one sitting–six hours of work, say–that they work fast in the portrait gallery. That means about 50 pictures an hour–nearly one a minute. Nothing, no words, could more perfectly, shown what a splendid subject she is. It's because, as Bull is aware, Garbo is picturewise. And even more because there's no fussing, no taboos.
Garbo is unusual in picturedom in that she has no “good” side or “bad side.” Most other players have–cannot be photographed save from either the left or right profile. Nor does Garbo have any forbidden angles–she can be photographed from full face to full profile, all they way around the half-circle, without getting a “bad angle.”
More, she's not merely a “dumb” subject–just a passive one. She takes an alert and intelligent part in posing. Sometimes, even, she'll get up and go back of the camera and under the black cloth, with Bull, to look at the ground-glass and she how the background and lighting looks, so she'll know better how to pose against it.
Of course, Garbo herself passes on all pictures before they are released. She sees proofs of every picture taken during the sitting. So do other stars. It's not unusual for other stars to reject half the shots from a sitting–sometimes even up to 80 per cent of the proofs! But once again, not Garbo.
Why, just a few weeks ago, she sent back the proofs of her most recent sitting, with one print marked for rejection. “Please, I would like it if you do not send this out,” she said.
The press department was aghast. They checked back, to see when this had happened before. They found out that it was the first time in two years that Garbo had rejected a picture from a sitting! (This time it was not because the picture was unflattering to her; merely because the lighting was bad, the picture wasn't artistically good.)
“Garbo's interest is not in seeing that she is pictured well; it's in seeing that good pictures are obtained,” said a man who knows. “In her sittings, it is the picture and not herself that is important to her.”
And she knows good pictures. Photography is her hobby. She owns a little Kodak; carries it everywhere. On the studio lot, she'll stop a watchman, or a grip or someone, hand him the camera, ask him to take her picture as she stands against the wall, say. Just like you, or your girl friend, when you're out on a picnic. On location, she's always having her maid, Alma, snap informal Kodak shots of her–and some of them are most ungarboish pictures you can imagine. But try to get one!! They all go into and stay in that amazing private collection of hers.
She herself kodaks as she goes, too. She'll shoot away at everything. Once a studio man caught her taking a picture of a turkey. “I want to send the picture home to my mother in Sweden,” she explained simply.
But all that's getting away from Greta in Clarence Sinclair Bull's portrait gallery.
Comes the close of the day's work. Bull, limp as a rag, is exhausted. Garbo is radiant. This has been the last bit of work for her on the production she's been working on–you see, she saves the portrait sittings for the last. So, the sitting over, she is done.
Her face is alight as she wraps her coat around her to leave.
“Well, that's that!” she jubilates, invariably, as she departs. She thanks Bull–“Mister Mull”–and shakes hands with him, warmly. “I hope some of them,” she says, of the negatives that lie plied on their racks, “will be all right.” A smile. And out she whisks, to disappear into that mysterious seclusion that is Garbo's between pictures. And Clarence Sinclair Bull sinks into the nearest chair, half asleep.
Yes, Bull has taken some 2,000 pictures of her. Garbo has a print of every one.
More, every one that has ever been taken and finished up has seen publication somewhere in the world. So great is the demand for photographs of Garbo from the world press that–and this is a record!—there has never been a portrait taken of her that has not been published. M-G-M's files prove that. from: MovieMirror July 1932
© Copyright by MovieMirror
|
