Tag: Classic Women

One of not many actresses to make the transition from silent movies to the talkies, Brit-born Dorothy Mackaill got her start as a dancer in Paris, then graduated to be a Ziegfeld Girl.

Then she moved to Hollywood, and the woman-hating hairdressers got hold of her:

…but they never managed to submerge her beauty completely.

At the ripe old age of 52, Dorothy quit the movies, moved to Hawaii, and lived out the rest of her life in the luxury Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki beach, swimming in the sea every day until she died.

And who can argue with that?

When the exquisite Carole Lombard died in a plane crash at age 33, the world definitely became a far uglier place.

Her husband Clark Gable certainly thought so.  He was buried next to her, many years and several other wives later.

Her hairstylist should have been executed for Crimes Against Beauty, but Ruth Hussey still managed to get past all that:

Unfailingly elegant, too:

Ruth was not only beautiful, but loyal:  she was married to the same man for 60 years.

And what she looked like in real life, i.e. in color:

Oooooh, a nursie.  Be still, my beating heart.

What more can I say about Ingrid Bergman that hasn’t been said already?  Nothing, is what.  So just enjoy the view, but be aware there will be a quiz at the end.

Okay, here’s the quiz.

Imagine that you’re Rick Blaine, and Ingrid Bergman is looking at you like this:

Do you:

1. shoot her Commie husband dead, get on the plane with her and go live in Portugal and make babies together;
2. force her Commie husband onto the plane at gunpoint, then take her back to Rick’s Café and live out the war getting rich and making babies;
3. choose some other scenario that I haven’t thought of, but still includes making babies with Ingrid Bergman;  or
4. do anything else except what Rick actually did.

When your mother is the exquisite Ingrid Bergman, the odds are that the genetic result is going to be spectacular — and so it has been, with daughter Isabella:

But unlike her mother, who was trapped in a black-and-white world, Isabella has flourished in color:

And when your mother is Isabella Rossellini, you’re not going to be too far off that standard, i.e. daughter Elettra:

And yes, tomorrow’s Classic Beauty post will be about Elettra’s Gammy.