02. ask me anything: old hollywood starlets

lusimelesprompted: your thoughts/feelings about old hollywood leading ladies and their super glam lives

And I decided to do a list of my faves! So, here it is (gifs stolen from tumblr of course):



One of my favorite lil facts about Barbara Stanwyck is that her real name is Ruby Stevens, but they changed it because it was a showgirl name and she was trying to be a serious actress. But doesn't she look so much like a Ruby Stevens?? Double Indemnity is obviously amazing, as is Baby Face, and Christmas in Connecticut is a holiday staple around my house. I don't know much about her real life aside from the name thing, but in movies she is always incredible. 1940s starlets are always like... They have such a way of coming off smart and brassy and stylish. See also: Kate, Myrna Loy, and Bette Davis (how did I not put Myrna and Bette on this list, FOR SHAME).



I haven't actually seen many of Ginger's movies with Fred, in part because the age difference creeps me to be totally honest. But in general Ginger is just undeniably adorable, one of the cutest ever. Vivacious Lady is my favorite movie of hers (lol, I was looking on my tumblr Ginger tag for gifs and it was 99.9% Vivacious Lady) but Stage Door is great for Kate/Ginger being so gay, so beautifully gay.



Doing the Kate-as-Traci high pitched giggle is one of my favorite things to do IRL that no one really gets, so it probably just seems like I am building a reputation for having a weird laugh. KATE. Kate is just another level of amazing, like, does a Kate movie exist in which she is anything less than perfection? No. No, it doesn't. Comedy? She's got it. Drama? Done. Pulling off literally any look on the fashion gamut? Not a question. Terrible taste in men? Double done (Kate, Spencer Tracy and Howard Hughes? Girl.).



The first movie I saw her in was also my first Monty movie, and remains my personal favorite for both of them: The Heiress. Olivia is adorable and poignant and also convincingly Hollywood Frumpy despite looking like an actual baby deer in human form. When I watched Gone with the Wind I accidentally only cared about Melanie (admittedly, not a Vivien fan). And did you know Olivia was partially responsible for the disintegration of the studio system? When Warner Bros. added months to her contract after it was supposedly done she took them to court and won! It gave actors a huge amount of power, and decreased the power of the studios. The law that was enacted afterwards (which, if my reading comprehension is comprehending, prevents studio contracts from extending past seven years) is called the De Havilland Law. Also she was born in Japan which is a fun fact. And bitch is still kicking it to this day! Outlived Joan Fontaine just out of spite, probably.



NATASHA. I love Natalie, even her terrible silly 60s movies, I even suffer through Gypsy semi-regularly, though Splendor in the Grass and Sex and the Single Girl are probably my favorites. And we can't forget Miracle on 34th Street because it's coming up on Christmastime! Inside Daisy Clover isn't very good, but it's worth a watch for the sheer bizarreness of it, and she turns in a good performance regardless. I just love her. She's so cute. She is another one with a sad personal life that sometimes feels so at odds with how effervescent she was on screen.



Carmen Jones is just one of those blows-you-away performances. It's the only Dorothy movie I've seen and it's usually cited as her best, in part because Hollywood racism prevented her from getting a lot of roles and she didn't want to take the offensive, stereotypical ones she was offered. She had a really hard, really sad life and it's unfortunate that she never got to shine at the same level as her white contemporaries when she was just as good, if not better.



I don't even know what to say about Audrey! Most girls have Audrey phases. It is hard not to, considering she is like a perfect Disney princess of a human who is not only a great actress and a great beauty but also an amazingly kind person. Like, leave some for the rest of us, sis! I think it's easy to brush her off as kind of twee and cutesy but, well...people who think that probably just haven't seen the right Audrey movie yet.Much like Audrey, every girl has a Marilyn phase, right? I'm a huge fan, probably more of the woman than the actress; I love documentaries and reading her personal writing, because she was just so different and quiet and smart. But it can be iffy with big icons, like, people like to get cool points by saying they're underrated or overrated or whatever. A lot of Marilyn fans like to overplay her dramatic roles (Don't Bother to Knock and Bus Stop, both of which I hated, and Misfits, which I have yet to see because I know it will make me sad), but I think she was honestly the best at playing Marilyn Monroe. That's what her talent was, playing this kind of innocent but sexy bubbly blonde. There's nothing wrong with that; I don't think it's easier or harder to do than any other kind of acting. I mean, watch The Seven Year Itch and tell me it's easy to be that vivacious and charming and magnetic. It's not. But that doesn't mean she was incredibly talented at everything, you know?



I didn't used to be much of a Liz fan because her particular brand of overacting used to grate on me but once I learned what a badass & charming as hell bitch she was IRL I was a total convert. (I also do a mean Maggie the Cat impression.) I would recommend YTing some of her interviews because she was ALWAYS hilarious, like she just seemed to give z e r o fucks. She was rich as hell, she'd been working since she was like a fetus, she had twenty husbands like a lady Bluebeard, what could she possibly have had to give a fuck about? And the work she did for AIDS research (in addition to fundraising, she would acquire then-illegal medication for people who needed it; this article is a great read) is nothing short of incredible. Plus her acting grows on you! Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is my personal favorite of hers.