The concept of beauty, as applied to the human visage -- especially when the visage belongs to a movie star -- is fluid, and surely far from immutable. I found in 35 years as a makeup artist that the average woman, asked how she would like to look, almost always said pretty as opposed to beautiful. To me the difference, though not always clear, certainly exists. Pretty is soft, accessible, achievable, if you will, and has as much to do with colour as with line -- milk and roses skin, violet eyes, titian hair. Prettiness can mature into beauty, as it did with, for example, Grace Kelly, or can fade, as it did with Shelley Winters as the years passed. And of course there are those who are beautiful without being exactly pretty -- a Cate Blanchett, a Dietrich, a Tilda Swinton, a Katharine Hepburn. These faces have beauty of bone, of structure -- facial shapes designed by nature to withstand the ravages of time such as wrinkles or age spots, which they transcend. To me one of the Hollywood faces that overlapped prettiness and beauty was that of Ann Sothern, the versatile actress/singer whose excellence in comic roles can be seen (1909-2001) in the Maisie series, which, along with the Andy Hardy movies, kept MGM in the black with consistent high profits. Sothern was also effective as a desperate murderess in the underrated noir thriller Shadow On The Wall and also as cynical tough broad Pat in WWII drama Cry Havoc. (What a cast! Sothern, Margaret Sullavan, Marsha Hunt, ans Joan Blondell!) And when, at 78, Sothern joined two legends, Bette Davis and Lillian Gish, in Lindsay Andersons The Whales Of August she was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress -- surely a sweet way to wind up a career. I would like to post a few of the hundred-odd photos I have accumulated of this lovely, and lovable actress. Photographers loved her range of expression and her versatility -- Hurrell, Willinger, and Bachrach are among the many who sought her out with their cameras.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 02:40:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015