So much has been written about Princess Grace of Monaco a.k.a. Grace Kelly that I’m not going to bother with any kind of commentary. Let’s just feast our eyes, shall we?
And in glorious Technicolor:
Still the best example of classy beauty, after all these years.
Probably one of the better examples of the femme fatale in the movies, Charlotte Rampling evoked the Swinging Sixties — the last few years thereof at any rate — as much as anyone.
It helped that she was, and still is, a brilliant actress — equally fluent in French and English — and so has never had to get by just by showing off her body.
Although she was never shy about that, either:
And in color:
Add to that a glorious, sexy contralto like Lauren Bacall’s…
…which means (like Bacall) pure sex appeal at any age.
And then there’s that “showing off the body” thing:
Was there ever a sexier woman than Lauren Bacall? I mean, that immortal scene in To Have And Have Not with Bogart — he never stood a chance, did he? — is all the more incredible when you realize that she played that sex-drenched role at age nineteen, and was yet totally believable.
(In real life, at age 17, she’d already been bonking a classmate at acting school, one Issur Danielovitch.)
You can read the back story of her sexy, sultry voice and “The Look” over here.
But right here:
And for those of you who just have to see things in color:
And when she wasn’t being all sexy ‘n sultry ‘n stuff, she was still gorgeous:
Good grief, Betty.
Probably the greatest actress never to win an Academy Award (despite five nominations!), Irene Dunne was that rarity: a beautiful, dignified and regal person both in real life and in movies, despite being most famous as a comedic actress.
I’ve seen three or four of her movies, and the best of them (The White Cliffs Of Dover, which I have on DVD) probably half a dozen times. (Also recommended: Love Affair with Charles Boyer, which I’ve only seen twice, but that’s going to be remedied soon, and White Cliffs… errrrr maybe tonight?) Also, The Awful Truth is one of the funniest comedy movies ever made. (You may thank me later.)
Anyway, here she is:
Oh, and did I mention that she also had an exquisite soprano singing voice? She wuz robbed (x5).
The worst thing about the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever is that Jill St. John puts in an appearance only about halfway through the damn thing.
That said, once she does she makes the rest of the silly movie worth watching.
…and then there’s Jill outside the Bond thing:
She may well be one of my favorite movie redheads of all time (along with Greer Garson, of course).
What can you say about an actress who was independently famous in three countries? Well, Pola Negri first became a household name in her native Poland as a stage actress, then in Germany as a movie star, and then became the first foreign actress to be hired in Hollywood — before Dietrich, Banky and all the other, perhaps more famous names.
Today, she seems to have been largely forgotten, but in her time she was not only famous, but infamous — not the least because she was the lover of (among many) Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino.
She also popularized the fashion of painted toenails, which no one had ever done before (except maybe prostitutes, which may have been why she was regarded as scandalous).
She also became fabulously wealthy — in 1922, her personal fortune was estimated (in today’s dollars) at just under $100 million. Her house in Hollywood looked like the White House.
I don’t think the photos of the time did her justice, largely because of the clothing fashions of the 1920s were terrible. And her acting style would today be called “histrionic” or “over-dramatic”, but that was the style back then in the silent movie era — and in any event, she was very definitely a product of her Polish upbringing, being passionate and over-the-top.
So what did she look like?
Here she is, snogging Chaplin:
…and giving ol’ Rudi Valentino the glad eye:
And here’s what she looked like in the 1940s, when clothing styles were better and the makeup less stagey:
Exquisite.