Category: Classic Beauty

“Who she?” you may well ask.  Consider this pic first, of someone we all know and love:

…and then know that Scilla Gabel was Sophia Loren’s stand-in and body double for many years on movie sets, when the production crew would be setting up the lighting, position marks and what-have-you before the cameras started to roll with the actual Sophia in the lens.

Later on, Scilla established her own movie career.

So all that having been said, here she is:

And I hate to say it, but Mary Poppins never looked this good:

And finally:

I do believe I can see the resemblance.  Certainly, she’s Sophia’s double in terms of height, coloring and skin tone.

Which makes her stunningly gorgeous and alluring.

I know that Hazel Brooks was born in South Africa, but like me she got Over Here as soon as she could.  Unlike me, she was beautiful and became a movie actress.

Stunning.

Silent / talkies star Colleen Moore, I think, typifies both the look and the ethos of that most interesting era.

And when she moved away from the “flapper” look:  still more beautiful.

One last note about Colleen Moore:  unlike so many actors and actresses of her (or any) era, she actually learned how to keep and grow her income through careful investment.  She even wrote a book about it.  Gorgeous and intelligent, by golly.

It’s just a tragedy that most of her movies, like so many of the early stars, have been lost so we can’t appreciate them fully.

As much a pinup as an actress, Elaine Stewart (originally a little Jewish girl from New Jersey) was definitely out of the ordinary:

See:  some fine things can come out of Joizee.

Louise Brooks was quite probably the sexiest of all the silent screen actresses.  Her life ended up being… interesting, not to say tragic.  But I’m endlessly fascinated by her… and Pandora’s Box  (excerpt) is easily the greatest silent movie ever made, because of her.  (If you want the movie, be warned that it’s only available in PAL format.)

Astonishing.  Diary of a lost girl, indeed.

I’ve never seen any of her silent- or talkie movies, but I have to admit that I am fascinated by this willowy Brit actress (born in Germany to a Russian mother:  why not British?).

She even appeared in a commercial — some time, I suspect, before it became popular.

Classically beautiful.