Category: Classic Beauty

In a world of Nazis, rapacious movie directors and lascivious producers (and it was worse here than in her native Germany), Marlene Dietrich gave the world that famous look, said: “Is dat the best vat you can do to me?  Hah” and proceeded to take the world of show business by storm.

Being a bona fide product of Weimar Germany and Isherwood’s Cabaret Berlin, her sexuality swung both ways and her legs every way you could imagine;  but even with all that, people still adored her.  And so do I.

The problem for most American men, though, is that all they know of Marlene comes from Madeline Kahn’s exquisite parody of her in Blazing Saddles.  But watch any two of her own movies, and you’ll see why this goddess was worshiped.

I recommend Morocco, and of course Blue Angel.

I don’t know if there was ever a more beautiful woman in the world than Gina Lollobrigida.  This was her, at age 50:

Granted, it’s a studio shot, but still…

So here are some more “natural” shots of her:

And then there are the more well-known pics:

I have so MANY more pics of Gina, but I’d better stop or else we’ll still be here in a week’s time.

Si bella.

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.