Like a hunter closing in on his prey, photographer Ted Leyson stalks one of the world's rarest creatures. It's reclusive movie legend Greta Garbo. Now a fail woman of 82 who flees from her public like a terrified rabbit, Garbo is Leyson's all-consuming obsession.
     “Greta is my biggest challenge,” says the paparazzo, who has been following Garbo on her daily walks around the East Side of Manhattan for the past nine years. “I have t talk care because if Greta sees me, she covers her face. She often tries to spot me in the reflection of shop windows. She's very smart.”
     Despite all the precautions Garbo has taken, the Hawaiian-born Leyson has nevertheless managed to outwit her–and has the photos of the tall, elderly, simply dressed woman to prove it. In his eyes, she'll always be the glamorous movie queen who starred in such classic films of the ‘30s as Camille, Grand Hotel and Ninotchka.
     “She still has the magic appeal that made her a star,” insists Leyson, who has seen all her films several times. “The stories people have told about her, that she's a recluse and a mystery, fueled my imagination.”
     Indeed, the speculation about her private life since she turned her back on Hollywood some 40 years ago has been rampant. The truth is, Garbo lives alone in a half-empty apartment, whose walls are covered with a few expensive paintings by Picasso and Renoir. Her only relative in the U.S. is a niece named Grace Ricefield, a lawyer who lives in New Jersey. Garbo smokes two packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, and she occasionally buys a bottle of whiskey or vodka from the corner liquor store.
     “This woman is worthy thirty million dollars. She could have a Rolls-Royce. She could go to parties at the White House. If she dressed up, she could be a very beautiful woman. Instead, she prefers to live like a monk. That's the mystery,” he says.
     When not stalking his idol, Leyson hangs out in Central Park, waiting to surprise such other camera-shy celebrities as Henry Kissinger, Madonna and her crazed hubby, Sean Penn. The photographer has seen the feisty side of the great Garbo too.
     “once she came up and asked me directly, ‘Are you following me?' I answered, ‘Yes, Miss Garbo. I just want to take your picture. I don't want to do you any harm.' She yelled, ‘Would you lay off!'”
     Another time Garbo complained to a local fruit store owner that she was being followed by a photographer. “What can I do to help?” he asked her. “Do you want me to cripple him with an baseball bat or send the Mafia after him?” The alarmed actress reportedly answered, “Oh, no! Oh, no!” Leyson heard about the conversation and took it as a positive sign.
      “I was very flattered,” he says. “She likes me.”
     Meanwhile, Garbo does all she can to elude the persistent Leyson, who hangs around her apartment a few hours each day in the hopes she'll emerge to take a walk or do some shopping.
     “What I like is that no other photographer is following her as intensely as I,” he says with pride. “I always say this may e my last picture of Greta, because she's so old.”
     Call Leyson crazy or simply devoted. Whatever the case may be, Greta Garbo has no bigger fan.
     “Yesterday,” he says, “another photographer tried to get a shot of Greta–he got in front of her with his big lens. But she saw him and covered her face. She got very upset.” The thought of someone upsetting his goddess disturbs Leyson too. “I love her. Some celebrities ‘wither' as soon as I catch their image in my lens, but not Greta. She's all mine.”

– Lise Braestrup