I know I’ve featured Anita Ekberg on these pages many times before, as well as giving her a little solo outing; but can one ever have too much Ekberg, I ask? I think not. So here are a few I haven’t posted before:
Stunning? I report, you decide.
Actor David Niven once described the Young sisters (Polly Ann, Elizabeth and Loretta) thus: “Each one was prettier than the others”, and who am I to argue with his judgment? So as we looked at Loretta last week, let’s look at the oldest of the three (the fourth, Georgiana, was a half-sister, but we’ll get to her later).
Say hello to Polly Ann Young:
I think Niven was right… and we’ll look at Elizabeth next week.
I think I first fell in love with Loretta Young in The Bishop’s Wife — one of the better Christmas movies of all time — and mostly, it should be said, because of that sexy contralto voice.
Not that the rest was too horrible.
And she didn’t look too bad as an older woman, either:
Classy and lovely, always.
Part of a showbiz family (see below), Lisa Gaye was lovely (and a devout Christian). Certainly, the movie studios thought so, as she was signed to a four-year contract when she was only 17. But judge for yourselves:
And not just a pretty — okay, gorgeous — face, either.
In Technicolor:
Never as well known as her sister (Debra Paget), you can certainly say hers was a handsome showbiz family. Seen here with Debra and brother Frank :
Lovely formal clothing, not a tattoo in sight… how I miss those days.
She was named after Audrey Hepburn, and her parents must have had some extraordinary foreknowledge, because Audrey Tatou is probably the closest thing we have to the classy, gamine and always-elegant Hepburn. Let’s start with her face:
…then zoom out a little:
…just a bit more:
…and into the tout ensemble:
I know, she’s slender to the point of skinny, quite unlike my usual preference.
But then again, Audrey Hepburn was just as skinny, and it’s to her that we’re comparing her namesake, and not to the pumped-up, pneumatically-enhanced and overblown actresses of the modern era.
Exquisite. Absolutely wonderful.
By the way, I happen to think that the Tatou Audrey is a far better actress than the Hepburn Audrey. On her own (in Amélie) she was brilliant, and in The Da Vinci Code she more than stood up to the towering talent that surrounded her: Alfred Molina, Ian McKellern, the incomparable Jean Reno and of course, leading man Tom Hanks.
Not just a pretty face, she.
Let’s confine ourselves to just one horny royal today, this being France’s Louis XV, who was a very busy lad.
Madame de Pompadour
…who wasn’t just his mistress, but pretty much the equivalent of his chief of staff (yeah, that staff as well).
Marie-Anne de La Tournelle
…who joined each of her four sisters as mistress of Louis XV. Ran through the family, he did.
Marie-Louise O’Murphy 
One of the few of all the royal mistresses who gave us a peek at her whole body, thanks to having been a model for artist François Boucher.
Madame du Barry
Now this was an interesting one. Not only did Madame du Barry go through the French court and nobility like a cleaver through a lamb — she must have had considerable bedroom skills — but she was also the longtime mistress of the grandson of Louis V, Louis XVI.
A multi-generational floozy! Sadly, though, the French Revolution’s guillotine was the last thing she gave head to.