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Swedish born Greta Garbo (1905-1990), like her German counterpart Marlene Dietrich, became a prisoner of fame. At least Garbo emerged from her art filled apartment to walk the streets of New York while Dietrich rarely left her bed in Berlin.

Garbo fans became so besotted with her that they wouldn't even cash checks she had signed.

Greta first garnered attention with "The Saga of Gosta Berling," 1924. She arrived in Hollywood at the tail end of the silent era, with the film's director Mauritz Stiller (1883-1928), knowing not a word of English.

He couldn't adapt and died a few years later, while she became the number 1 enigmatic, super star in MGM's stable of performers.

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...