Louise Brooks was quite probably the sexiest of all the silent screen actresses. Her life ended up being… interesting, not to say tragic. But I’m endlessly fascinated by her… and Pandora’s Box (excerpt) is easily the greatest silent movie ever made, because of her. (If you want the movie, be warned that it’s only available in PAL format.)
Astonishing. Diary of a lost girl, indeed.
Somewhat more modern, Stella Stevens is still a classic beauty:
Didn’t look too bad in color either:
Of course, there was the Playboy thing:
…and still sexy at 60-ish:
Let’s hear it for the girl from Yazoo City, Mississippi…
Wanna meet Giada Di Laurentiis’s Nana? Here she is, Silvana Mangano:
More Silvana? Why, certainly:
Stunning. Absolutely worthy of being alongside Sophia and Gina.
Baby-faced (literally: she appeared in her first movie at age 13) Irish actress Peggy Cummins was often turned down for movie roles because she was too young. (Nowadays, of course, she’d be Polanski-bait.) But enough of that; here’s a sample:
Gun Crazy (she wasn’t — that was just the name of her most famous movie).
Pretty much everything about Carole Landis was tragic: her early life, her love life, and her death by suicide at age 31. But there was nothing tragic about her looks:
Exquisite.
One hundred and nine movies, forty-five years in show business: that would be Mary Astor, who started in silent movies, almost never made it to talkies (because of her deep, “masculine” voice), and was an accomplished classical pianist. She also loved men, and her private (and very explicit) diary nearly caused an explosion in Hollywood when it came to light.
But none of that’s important. This is:
And then later with the ugly hairstyles of the era, but still exquisitely beautiful:
No wonder they all fell for her.