Category: Beauty

Doomed by her contract to stand forever in the shadow of Ava Gardner and Lana Turner (the studio’s favorites at the time), Jane Greer was once called “the greatest actress never to win an Oscar”.  And it’s quite true:  as the femme fatale  in so much of the 1940s-era noir  genre, she showed a sinister stillness about her roles that set her apart from the overacting of most of her female peers.  I think I only ever saw her in Out Of The Past, in which she was every bit the equal of the brooding, brilliant Robert Mitchum.

So let’s have a look, shall we?

And out of costume:

Of course, no look at a noir  actress would be complete without a gun:

Deadly.

So much has been written about Princess Grace of Monaco a.k.a. Grace Kelly that I’m not going to bother with any kind of commentary.  Let’s just feast our eyes, shall we?

And in glorious Technicolor:

Still the best example of classy beauty, after all these years.

Probably one of the better examples of the femme fatale in the movies, Charlotte Rampling evoked the Swinging Sixties — the last few years thereof at any rate — as much as anyone.

It helped that she was, and still is, a brilliant actress — equally fluent in French and English — and so has never had to get by just by showing off her body.

Although she was never shy about that, either:

And in color:

Add to that a glorious, sexy contralto like Lauren Bacall’s…

…which means (like Bacall) pure sex appeal at any age.

And then there’s that “showing off the body” thing:

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