Includes bibliographical references and index.

Garbo glorified and demonized -- Childhood -- PUB, Dramaten, and Mimi Pollak -- Beauty and the Beast : Garbo and Stiller -- Hollywood -- The agony and the ecstasy : Garbo and John Gilbert -- Friends and lovers -- Changing fashions : from flapper to glamour, plus Adrian -- The Pre-Code Era -- Breaking free : Queen Christina -- Denouement -- Success and failure -- New York -- Summing Up.

"Based on ten years of in depth archival research in the United States, Sweden, Germany, and France, Ideal Beauty is the definitive biography of Greta Garbo as well as a major study of Euro-American concepts of ideal female beauty in the years between World War One and World War Two, encompassing the flapper era and the lost generation of the 1920s and 1930s. Ideal Beauty begins with Garbo's devastating childhood in Stockholm as the child of poor working-class parents. It charts her years as a student at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Academy, her interactions with the director Mauritz Stiller, and her struggle with MGM's Louis B. Mayer. Investigating her early feminist films and culminating in the brilliant Queen Christina of 1934, Ideal Beauty documents her illnesses and her breakdowns, finding her heroic in her ability to withstand pain. The last three chapters explore her life after retiring from MGM at the age of 36 in 1942, when she moved to New York and was "converted" to Catholicism. Author Lois W. Banner translated personal letters found in archives, bringing readers key details from Garbo's life that have never before been available in English making it the most comprehensive biography of Greta Garbo to date"-- Provided by publisher.