Tag: Classic Women

Random Totty

Gratuitous Chick Pics

Last weekend I watched Hitchcock’s brilliant movie To Catch A Thief, and it’s always a pleasure to gaze upon the mid-1950s Grace Kelly and her Sunbeam Alpine sports car:

…not to mention the glorious scenery of the Midi:

However, in all this ogling, a random brain cell fastened on the other cutie in the movie, the teenager Danielle, who has a crush on the (much-older) Cary Grant.

In real life, her name was Brigitte Auber, and in the movie, she’s given the tomboy treatment — no doubt to reinforce the illusion of her age (she was actually nearly 30 when the movie was made), as much as to make her less alluring than the leading lady.

Of course, outside that look, she was a lot more interesting:

But Brigitte’s real claim to fame is that she helped turn her then-boyfriend, one Alain Delon, into a movie star.

By the way, Brigitte Auber will be turning 100 in a month’s time.

Classic Beauty: Lauren Bacall

Classic Beauty

Was there ever a sexier woman than Lauren Bacall?  I mean, that immortal scene in To Have And Have Not  with Bogart — he never stood a chance, did he? — is all the more incredible when you realize that she played that sex-drenched role at age nineteen, and was yet totally believable.

(In real life, at age 17, she’d already been bonking a classmate at acting school, one Issur Danielovitch.)

You can read the back story of her sexy, sultry voice and “The Look” over here.

But right here:

Lauren Bacall, 1957 by Yousuf Karsh

And for those of you who just have to see things in color:

And when she wasn’t being all sexy ‘n sultry ‘n stuff, she was still gorgeous:

Good grief, Betty.

Classic Beauty: Irene Dunne

Classic Beauty

Probably the greatest actress never to win an Academy Award (despite five nominations!), Irene Dunne was that rarity:  a beautiful, dignified and regal person both in real life and in movies, despite being most famous as a comedic actress.

I’ve seen three or four of her movies, and the best of them (The White Cliffs Of Dover, which I have on DVD) probably half a dozen times.  (Also recommended:  Love Affair  with Charles Boyer, which I’ve only seen twice, but that’s going to be remedied soon, and White Cliffs… errrrr maybe tonight?)  Also, The Awful Truth is one of the funniest comedy movies ever made.  (You may thank me later.)

Anyway, here she is:

 

Oh, and did I mention that she also had an exquisite soprano singing voice?  She wuz robbed (x5).

Modern Classic Beauty: Jill St. John

Classic Beauty

The worst thing about the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever  is that Jill St. John puts in an appearance only about halfway through the damn thing.

That said, once she does she makes the rest of the silly movie worth watching.

…and then there’s Jill outside the Bond thing:

She may well be one of my favorite movie redheads of all time (along with Greer Garson, of course).

Champion Totty

Gratuitous Chick Pics, Sports

European football’s “Champions League” competition is an annual event — a mini-World Cup, so to speak — which attempts to answer the burning question:  “Ignoring national boundaries, which is the best football club in Europe?”

I know that in these parts, football (“soccer”) is about as popular as Underwater Australian Wrist Wrestling (Friday nights @ 3am on ESPN), but bear with me because I’m not going to talk about the game anyway.

The ECL’s main TV host is an Albanian named Eva Amati, and she makes all our U.S. female sports presenters look like male drag artists.

And her Valentine’s Day pic:

I want to lie on a bed and listen to her murmur sweet Italian* nothings in my ear.

*She speaks Italian and English fluently, as well as her native Albanian.

Classic Beauty: Pola Negri

Classic Beauty

What can you say about an actress who was independently famous in three countries?  Well, Pola Negri first became a household name in her native Poland as a stage actress, then in Germany as a movie star, and then became the first foreign actress to be hired in Hollywood — before Dietrich, Banky and all the other, perhaps more famous names.

Today, she seems to have been largely forgotten, but in her time she was not only famous, but infamous — not the least because she was the lover of (among many) Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino.

She also popularized the fashion of painted toenails, which no one had ever done before (except maybe prostitutes, which may have been why she was regarded as scandalous).

She also became fabulously wealthy — in 1922, her personal fortune was estimated (in today’s dollars) at just under $100 million.  Her house in Hollywood looked like the White House.

I don’t think the photos of the time did her justice, largely because of the clothing fashions of the 1920s were terrible.  And her acting style would today be called “histrionic” or “over-dramatic”, but that was the style back then in the silent movie era — and in any event, she was very definitely a product of her Polish upbringing, being passionate and over-the-top.

So what did she look like?

Here she is, snogging Chaplin:

…and giving ol’ Rudi Valentino the glad eye:

And here’s what she looked like in the 1940s, when clothing styles were better and the makeup less stagey:

Exquisite.