A Photograph in a Shop Window Changes Everything
At eighteen, Gardner traveled to New York to visit relatives, and her brother in law, who worked as a professional photographer, took her portrait almost as an afterthought. He hung the print in his studio window, and passersby kept stopping to ask who the young woman was. Among the curious was a man calling himself an MGM talent scout, though he was in fact a law clerk who used the line to meet pretty girls around town. The studio’s own receptionist saw through his story immediately, but she also saw something genuine in the photograph itself. She suggested the family simply mail it to MGM directly, cutting the fraudulent scout out of the picture entirely, and that small piece of advice set the whole chain of events in motion.