Posing for Alfred Eisenstaedt | George Bernard Shaw (1932)

“In 1932 I traveled to London hoping to photograph George Bernard Shaw. People told me he was very difficult and inaccessible, but I was also told that he was a vegetarian. So I bought a bunch of bananas and sent these, together with a portfolio of my photographs, to his home at Whitehall Court. Two days later I was asked to visit him. He looked through my photographs and said, “You don’t have to make me pose, I am a photographer myself.” Shaw was very friendly and did everything I wanted. I wish all people were so cooperative. He had a wonderful old Smith Premier typewriter. I remember it like yesterday. I even remember the house number—it was No. 4.”