BOOK DATA Lois W. Banner, Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2023. $34.95 cloth. 286 pages.

More than thirty years after her death, the sphinxlike Greta Garbo continues to elude, despite the best efforts to posthumously pin down the woman who so famously rejected public life. The mononymic Garbo, not unlike her successors Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, remains a luminary in Hollywood’s pantheon of stars. These glamorous icons of the past still inspire hero worship, creating an appetite for biographical studies that address the yearning for authenticity and intimacy among their fans. This presents a particular challenge when the subject is as famous for her desire for privacy as her performances; such is the case with Garbo. While there have been numerous biographies published on the Swedish film star over the past three decades, Lois Banner’s Ideal Beauty: The...

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