Category: Classic Beauty

Rosalind Russell was one of those impossibly-beautiful and classy women of Hollywood’s Golden Era.  When I first started putting this piece together, though, I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen her in a movie.  But as I looked at her pics, it all came back to me:  His Girl Friday with Cary Grant, Mourning Becomes Electra with Michael Redgrave, and of course The Women — where she more than held her own against such divas as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Ruth Hussey and Joan Fontaine.  (All three movies come highly recommended, if you haven’t seen any of them before.)

And then there was that beauty and class:

I think I’m going to look for some of her other movies to watch, and marvel.

Okay, she was first and foremost a ballet dancer (Sadlers Wells Company at age 14!), and only moved to movies later.  Don’t care.  Flame-haired Moira Shearer (Lady Moira to you peasants) was extraordinary.

All class, all the time.

She is quite possibly one of the most sensual women of all time, and I for one am not going to argue with that description of Anouk Aimée.

And she could do classy as well as slatternly:

She was the sexiest of the Sexy 60s era.  Just watch her in the 1966 movie A Man And A Woman, and you’ll see what I see.

Silent movies, Billie Dove:  they go together like a horse and carriage, as the song goes.  And it’s easy to see why.  But first, she started out as a Ziegfeld Girl:

…at age 15, despite not being able to dance.

Then Hollywood came a-calling, and she was signed to a movie contract.  Apparently, someone complained to the studio head that she couldn’t act, either.  Whereupon the studio head said:  “Who cares?  Just look at her!”

You can kinda see his point, I think.

Started off in Italian TV, but her original career goal was to be a sexual psychologist.  At this point, the lines pretty much write themselves…

…if you know what I mean.

A couple years ago, we took a look at Mrs. Clark Gable.  But someone that beautiful and sexy deserves a second look, methinks.

Exquisite.  And not a nude role or explicit love scene, ever.  Didn’t need to.