She drove me crazy in Gone With The Wind as the goody-goody Melanie Wilkes, but Olivia De Havilland could do sexy with the best of them, too.
In that last pic, she could be Ingrid Bergman, or Patricia Neal — yes, she’s that beautiful.
And that soft, velvet voice… have mercy.
Among all the other reasons we should like Gene Tierney, not the least is that she was a lifelong Republican. And then there are these:
Best of all, she was a noted party girl, who had flings with men all over the place. Nowadays, of course, that would be unremarkable. In those days… scandalous.
My kinda gal.
Never a great beauty, Barbara Stanwyck made up for it in spades by having the smart, no-nonsense sexuality that was capable of driving men insane — and not just on the screen. (Gary Cooper is reputed to have described acting with her as like acting with a tiger: you were never quite sure what she was going to do next, but if you were lucky, you wouldn’t end up being eaten alive.) And here she is (often, alas, a victim of the Bad Hairstyle Syndrome of the era):
And yes, back in her youth…
Wow.
Gloria Grahame never thought she was as beautiful as everyone else thought of her, which was a shame. She was also more talented than studio people thought she was — her only Academy Award came from a nine-minute screen appearance in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). However, when she married the son of her second husband (i.e. stepson), the resulting uproar pretty much ended her career, which was a shame.
She died at age 57, of cancer.
Forever remembered as Elly May Clampett, and therefore unable really to ever get past the typecast, Donna Douglas was just a good ol’ Christian gal from Louisiana.
Uh huh.
She’s sensational — and I’ve never seen a single episode of Beverly Hillbillies.
By today’s standards, Theda Bara wasn’t especially beautiful, nor was she a good actress — all overblown, cheesy gestures and expressions — but never forget that for a while, she was the biggest sex symbol of them all.
I just wish that most of her movies hadn’t been lost in a fire.