I was watching a tribute to Rita Hayworth on TCM while I cleared the dishwasher the other day and various men were talking about how much they loved Rita in her heyday.
It occurred to me that few actresses seem to earn that devotion now. How about it? Is there any current actress that evokes that?
Phil says its because cosmetic surgery has make all actresses in their twenties and thirties look the same--and all older actresses look the same, too, due to surgery too.
What do you think? Is there any actress today as desirable and unique as Rita, Veronica and those others forties/fifties icons?
27 comments:
It also seems that, like bad pop songs, actors (both genders and all ages) are manufactured and aimed with laser precision at a perceived demographic. More than they once were. Or maybe that's just my perception.
Um...Sela Ward has inspired similar response, as you yourself have noted.
I'd suggest also that there are so many more outlets for us to see actors of both (or all) genders that it's difficult for anyone to be as thoroughly built up as the most-focused-upon women of "Monroe" and Gardner's day...but there are still efforts, for folks ranging from Beyonce Knowles (barely an actress) to Megan Fox to Scarlett Johansson, along with the sustained efforts to get more than a certain demographic to see Barbra Streisand as utterly gorgeous...when none of them is as striking as, say, Angela Bassett or Famke Janssen or Michelle Yeoh...or Sissy Spacek, among the others who have aged gracefully and without much if any platic work, as far as I've noted, anyway.
I'm with commenter Richard Prosch on this one, patti. Thanks.
I'll go see anything that Cate Blanchett is in. But the plight of women actors today revolves around the types of movies they're forced to perform in: mindless action movies, silly romantic comedies, etc. Hollywood doesn't do drama any more (except for Nicholas Sparks movies). What would Rita Hayworth be starring in today: SHREK? SEX & THE CITY2?
Nothing stops the Sarita Choudhurys and Mira Sorvinos from doing the more interesting television or the Radha Mitchells and Selma Blairs--and Cate Blanchetts--from flitting from the better big-budget films to the better indies. Never any shortage of crap back in the day, either.
And, as the Tony Awards rather suggested, there's no shortage of stage work in the US for actors of a certain level of fame in other media...
Let's not forget Meryl Streep who has had a long run. I guess she'd never be a pinup but I don't think she's had any plastic work done either.
Bill Crider has convinced me that there is only one actress for our time and for all time: Paris Hilton!
There are a few older actresses that look completely natural. They may not look as good at fifty--but they look better at sixty, I think.
Cat looks like herself--not the rest of them.
I agree with Sandra, Meryl Streep comes immediately to mind, from (even before) THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN to JULIE AND JULIA and no doubt beyond. If you are talking about "glamor" actresses, that's more difficult. I'll probably watch anything Helen Bonham Carter is in, but I'm not sure she would be called a glamor actress. How about Penelope Cruz?
Just saw a tribute to John Cazale and I had forgotten how absolutely lovely she was in Deerhunter. She still looks great but she was just ethereal.
I have never understood the appeal of Paris Hilton. But I am not the one she's trying to appeal to.
Annette Benning-another actress who seems to be untouched by the knife.
Julianna Moore has that same quality as the old stars.
If there are, I don't know where they are....
I think Charlize Theron is one of those icons.
Can't wait to see Julianna and Annette in THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT.
Charlize is magnificent, isn't she?
To answer your question, none at all. There is something empty about the current crop. They will never equal, say, Greer Garson, or Ingrid Bergman.
Richard Wheeler
Ingrid Bergman was truly in a class by herself because she put so much into each roles. She created unforgettable characters. Mrs. Miniver was outstanding with Garson.
Paris Hilton isn't worried about appealing to anyone, which I believe is the source of the fascination in her for some folks. I can understand it, but can't begin to share it.
I've never seen a Garson performance where she didn't seem a bit smug. But I haven't seen MRS. MINIVER.
Maria Bamford's friend Zach G, interviewing Charlize Theron in a pertinent episode of BETWEEN TWO FERNS:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/d14fdef4f2/between-two-ferns-with-zach-galifianakis
Richard Prosch nailed it. Our "stars" are manufactured, like the soulless music "hits" that assault us from corporate radio.
Creative and charismatic stars used to make their way from the fringes to the center of the culture by sheer force of personality and talent. Now real creativity isn't allowed to stray from its fringe-y, indie ghettos.
Can you imagine Bob Dylan on American Idol? Or Rita Hayworth? Or Billie Holliday?(Don't you miss cool, laid back singers who weren't desperate, needy weepers?)
Broadway hits are mostly revivals (and even the new ones use old songs,) and films are mostly retreads of old TV shows or comic books from our childhood.
It's a culture cannibalizing itself, because the soulless corporations that control the planet can produce nothing new.
My goodness. I didn't mean that to be such a downer. That's just me reacting to the Tony Awards.
To expect anything but pap from AMERICAN IDOL, or from, say, the Lawrence Welk Orchestra, is to misunderstand their purpose. Billie Holiday wasn't on the 1930s equivalents of AMERICAN IDOL, either.
Don't forget the seismic shift in how our culture views the relationship between men and women. Part of the appeal of Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, Veronica Lake, Jane Greer, Lizbeth Scott, etc., was the aura of mystery that surrounded them. There's no mystery anymore--not that that's necessarily a bad thing on the basic man-woman level, but it leaves our view of "celebrities" somewhat tarnished.
Personally, I love Rita's most famous line: "Every man I've slept with wanted to go to bed with Gilda. Then he woke up in the morning and realized he was just in bed with Rita Hayworth."
I think our stars have always been manufactured by Hollywood. Just not cosmetically. If anything the studios were more likely to create myths. But as Swanson said of an even earlier era, "We had faces then." Not masks.
American Idol seems only interested in the "belt it out" variety of singer. Also the problem with GLEE from what I have seen.
Well, silents did encourage mugging.
I think I'd rather've been sleeping with Hayworth, but call me funny that way.
I suspect that, for me, that wouldn't be the Only problem with GLEE, even if it has improved. I was amused that Amazont tried to sell me the GLEE and SEX AND THE CITY 2 sounttracks as "comedy" albums this morning.
Yes, not the only trouble with Glee. It seems forced, fake and winking.
You're the first person I've seen diss Glee, Patti. Maybe I move in the wrong circles. But I agree that it has dissolved quickly into self-parody. And that ubiquitous "belting" singing style is what I'm talking about. Doris Day was mainstream pop (yes, Lady Day wasn't a good example) but her style wasn't screamy or needy. We were allowed variety.
Anne--What I saw of the pilot for GLEE was pretty damned dire, if not quite as dire as the FAME series (both of them) it rather reminded me of. Inane and cheap was what that was...and I gather that it's improved, but not enough to make me want to actually sit through it. However, Doris Day was a full pro, while the melismatic amateur bores (and even the non-melismatic amateur bores) of AMERICAN IDOL are more like a cross between MAJOR BOWES' AMATEUR HOUR and CANDID CAMERA, with a bit of QUEEN FOR A DAY mixed in from time to time.
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