Loving Garbo (1994) Hardback (UK) 1994 Hardback (US) 1994 Paperback (UK) 1995 German Hardback 1995 Loving Garbo is the extraordinary story of Greta Garbo and two of her greatest loves - Mercedes de Acosta and Cecil Beaton. Hugo Vickers's account of their relationships - the subtle manipulations and conspiracies; the disappointments and betrayals - offers a vivid and highly revealing portrait of the enigmatic film star and her circle. Mercedes de Acosta was a notorious figure. She had been brought up as a boy, took a girlfriend on her honeymoon, and claimed 'I can get any woman from any man.' Her conquests included Isadora Duncan, Eva le Gallienne, and Marlene Dietrich. She and Garbo enjoyed a solitary idyll on Silver Lake in the Sierra Nevada before living together in Hollywood. Cecil Beaton first met his heroine at a party in 1932. But it was to be more than a decade before they became lovers. Despite Garbo's possessive friends, the Russian dress-designer Valentina and her husband, Georges Schlee, and the presence of an increasingly sinister Mercedes, dressed in highwayman's cape and silver-buckled shoes, Garbo and Beaton spent many passionate months together in New York and California. Long after their affair was over, Beaton was still trying to persuade Garbo to marry him and to return to making films. But Garbo's aloofness and the determined protection of her retinue, most notably the devious Schlee - a 'sort of Kafkaesque guard, employed to escort her to the next inscrutable rendez-vous' according to Kenneth Tynan - frustrated his every effort. Yet, like de Acosta, Beaton was obsessed with Garbo. Though their futures were dramatically different - Mercedes descended into illness and poverty while Cecil went on to become an Oscar-winning designer of sets and costumes, world arbiter of taste, and Wiltshire squire - they remained enthralled by a star who gave little in return. Through his careful reading of the papers of Mercedes de Acosta, and his unrivalled access to the estate of Cecil Beaton, Hugo Vickers produced a rich and fascinating account which throws light for the first time on many of the mysteries surrounding Garbo and her admirers - de Acosta's past and her expedient friendship with Beaton, the disturbing influence of 'The Little Man' - Schlee, among others. Vickers's picture of Garbo's last years, as a New York art-collector and 'recluse about town', is masterful. Copies of the American edition are available via this site, which can be signed by the author. Apply: booksales@wyeford.co.uk