TCM was showing The Great Race this morning. It only took me 56 years to appreciate it. I just read on IMDB that Natalie Wood wasn’t a fan of it or the director Blake Edwards. Which is a shame, as I have found out over that time that farce is actually quite hard to do. The two principles (Curtis and Lemmon) had a cringe-worthy attempt in Some Like It Hot, where they dressed up as women. That movie just didn’t age well, this one did.
What really helped me appreciate this one, was seeing really bad farce. A guy who made movies locally loved to produce what he thought was great farce, when in reality it was just irritating. Much like the feeling I had when director Billy Wilder attempted it in the previously mentioned Some Like It Hot. Blake Edwards of Pink Panther fame, obviously had more of a knack for it.
You’d think farce was simply getting out there and acting silly, but its obviously much more than that. Just watch any high school play that attempts it, you’ll see what I mean. Its takes a talented director, a good script, and great actors. You’re not going to get over the bar without all 3.
Jack Lemmon has two roles in it, but the one that makes the movie is his rendition of Crown Prince Frederick Hoepnick. “Over the top” does not begin to do it justice. Another unrelated curiosity is Natalie Wood. One of her best performances I would have to say, after those train wrecks Splendor in the Grass and Rebel Without a Cause. But what’s funny about her success, which to a large degree was based on her beauty, it that it was her sister Lana that was the knockout.
The other day I was watching some movie and I started to wonder, “Yeah she’s good looking, but what would she look like without makeup?” It made me start to wonder, what did they look like when they rolled out of bed? Walked out of the shower? This afternoon TCM is playing ‘Sex and the Single Girl‘ (1964) with Natalie Wood. She is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women of all time. She lead off my post, ’10 Most Beautiful Women of the 60’s’. I did a search, “Natalie Wood without makeup”. I found a couple of when she was younger, but none I don’t think of when she was famous.
If you look on Facebook much you’ll see that women are masters of knowing what side or what angle they look best at. I’m not kidding. The photo they’ll use for their account photo often bears no resemblance to their other photos. They know how to use a soft focus or other slightly altered photo that takes 15 or 20 years off them. I really saw it 12 or so years ago with Jennifer Love Hewitt. I watched her in The Ghost Whisperer and thought she was the cats meow. Then the Enquirer and others started printing photos of her without makeup and took a lot of the bloom off the rose. I guess the question I’m trying to answer is what makes a woman beautiful? And why to one person and not another?
In Natalie’s case I have to think she had a good amount of natural beauty, or else any woman could look topnotch by simply having a good makeup artist and a cute hairstyle. And that’s clearly not the case. So there must be something there. Some fundamental quality about her bone structure that makes her stand out. I suppose it reminds me of photographing a young woman years ago. The first time was in the winter when she wore a good deal of makeup. As she explained for a summer shoot, it was too warm so of course she wouldn’t be wearing the makeup. It was a completely different look. Less the ravishing beauty without the makeup, but just as attractive nonetheless.
Stage and Screen, Personalities, pic: circa 1960’s, American actress Natalie Wood,(1938-198), star of such films as “Rebel Without A Cause” 1955, “West Side Story” 1961, and “Splendor In The Grass” 1961 (Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)
[Using another example from Hanne Nabintu Herland on how women know how to use the best photo, you wouldn’t even know the 2 photos below were the same person!]
That was fun! The “10” most beautiful women of the sixties. Its funny but you learn a lot doing this. Looking through thousands of photos clues you into a couple of things. The ‘models’, the Cheryl Tiegs, Candace Bergen, Cybill Shepherd, the Ali MacGraw, they were models for a reason. If they could be photographed bad I didn’t see it. Whereas I wasn’t happy at all with the choices for Julie Christie, Stella Stevens, Connie Stevens, Dawn Wells or Angela Cartwright. Another irritant was how Getty Images invariably grabbed the really good ones. [Looking back on my lists, I believe the 60’s had the strongest decade 1-10. The 40’s, 50’s, 90’s, 00’s and 10’s I couldn’t even come upwith 10 women.]
Another interesting finding was that I wasn’t able to get into the icons, Raquel Welch, Ann-Margaret, Joey Heatherton and the like. And although I personally loved the big hair and the bold colors of the 60’s, I toned it down for the faint of heart. I also could have gone with a 100% black and white gallery, nobody likes B&W more than I do. But then, no one lends herself to color like Cybill Shepherd. It would be a crime not to photograph her in color. I had assumed one of my youthful sex symbols would have been my favorite. Nope. Cybill Shepherd. In her modeling days where I nabbed her photos, she usually had such a delightfully smartass expression. Now that I’ve done the 60’s, 70’s & 80’s, I can’t wait to do the other decades!
Natalie Wood
Charmian Carr
Hayley Mills (I almost forgot Hayley, I tend to think American. She’s also not what one thinks of with the phrase ‘stunning beauty’. Yet she is. I’m going to go into this further with a separate post on her. I’ll just say she has a following.)
Ali MacGraw – whatever “it” is, she had it in spades
Jacqueline Bisset
Candice Bergen
Angela Cartwright (Interesting that 2 of the picks should be from Sound of Music) She was really coming into her own when she left Lost In Space. Absolutely stunning from my perspective. Why the TV career petered out is beyond me. She was on the show with a very beautiful woman named Marta Kristi, yet for me Angela had no equal. Sort of like Eve Plumb being the standout on Brady Bunch compared to Maureen McCormick.
Dawn Wells (there’s no debate by the way) Passed away December 30, 2020 at the age of 82. I can’t imagine a more smoldering picture of her.
Cheryl Tiegs – I took out Cheryl’s photo. The more I listened to her in YouTube videos the less I liked her. I could overlook the enormous ego, she was a Big Deal back then. What I couldn’t over look was when the pilot of her 4-seater bush plane suffered a seizure while taxiing. She didn’t turn off the engine and aid the pilot, she bailed out of the plane.
Julie Christie – “All women are aware of that moment when suddenly the boys don’t look at you. It’s a fairly common thing, when suddenly you no longer attract that instant male attention because of the way you look. I never really knew how to enjoy beauty, but it took the form of a subconscious arrogance, expecting things, all muddled up with celebrity. Then you begin to deal with it. In the 1970s, I was amazed to be talked about as a 60s sex symbol. I wasn’t that person, as if I were a doll from the past. I had to learn to come to terms with that.” (just watched Shampoo, she was 35. I didn’t really know of her until about 10 years ago when I first saw Dr Zhivago. I thought sure I would think of her as sexy, but no, just beautiful.)
Michelle Phillips (the Girl Scout earning her ‘Cigarette Badge’)
Marlo Thomas (totally missed it back then, what a woman) She was the quintessential “sexy” woman, because she never tried to be sexy.
Tuesday Weld – I had Tuesday in the wrong decade, the 50s. She was more of a 60s gal. Great line in her IMDB quotes page. When asked what drove her into seclusion she responded, “I think it was a Buick.”
Cybill Shepherd
Cybill Shepherd
Cybill Shepherd
Cybill Shepherd
That’s got to be tough though, going from about the most beautiful woman in the world 50 years ago… to being 68. TCM recently played The Last Picture Show starring Cybill. In it the fan got a see at least a topless scene with Cybill. Unless they were ‘stunt’ boobies. They did that back then.
Iowa life 