Word: garbo
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...Bettie Page was the Garbo of bondage movies. Granted, Greta Garbo played Camille and Anna Karenina, while Bettie played Bettie - or, as it was usually spelled then, Betty - in five-minute, 8 mm epics with titles like Betty's Clown Dance and Dominant Betty Dances With Whip. Garbo, in Hollywood, had Irving Thalberg, the prince of MGM, as her boss and protector. Bettie had Irving Klaw. Calling himself the "King of the Pinups," Irving and his sister Paula ran a seedy Manhattan emporium called Movie Star News, which peddled celebrity glamour shots to the public and specialized photos and loops...
...what Garbo and Bettie Page both had was It - a radiance, a mystery of personality, that transcends technique and passeth understanding. Bettie had a message that defined her medium, and a magic that defied it. The dance films she did may have been cheesy documents of bump-and-grind; the bondage films, creepy if dainty invocations of sadomasochism. But what everyone remembers about Bettie, aside from her trademark bangs, is her smile. Guileless and guiltless, it conveyed an Edenic sensuality. To her fans and her official detractors, who might have agreed that sex was dirty, Bettie's giddy energy said...
...last detail shared by Garbo and Bettie. Each retired in her mid-30s, preserving the movie image of her youthful allure. But unlike Garbo, who was often cornered by paparazzi in her Manhattan neighborhood, Bettie seemingly did disappear. She left New York for Miami, where she modeled for a few more years, then vanished, reemerging in Southern California...
...also afforded him access to the glamorous people he'd revered watching them on a Blackpool movie screen. (In the 1950s Cooke's traveling companions were his second wife Jane and their friends, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.) The famous somehow fell into his lap. Cooke was Greta Garbo's unofficial cigarette lighter, though he once said the most beautiful woman he'd ever met was Ava Gardner. They were charmed; he was blessed...
...None of those films won the top Oscar, and half weren't even nominated for Best Picture. But what about the acting categories? Surely Hollywood has recognized its most potent performers. Not always. If this year's nominated actors want to join the exalted ranks of Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Cary Grant, Peter O'Toole and Barbara Stanwyck, they'd better hope they lose, since none of these luminaries received a competitive Oscar...