SassMouthDames

Born Elda Furry, she toiled from dawn to bedtime because her father believed women were beasts of burden. She ran away and joined a chorus line, and fell for a middle-aged Broadway star, DeWolf Hopper. He was a notorious skirt chaser with no body hair and blue skin. She made her film debut in 1916, and changed her name to Hedda Hopper in 1918, Hedda advanced her career by using glamorous style to...

Louella Parsons overcame a bad marriage, raised her daughter on her own, and became one of the most powerful writers in a modern celebrity culture. She started as the first scenario editor in Essanay studio, and extended her career as a daily film columnist in Chicago and New York. She was an influential voice in film journalism by the time she met William Randolph Hearst. Part One closes with Lou...

No More Ladies (1935) is a highbrow take on how to turn the tables on a cheating husband. It has style for days--in the dialogue, performances, fashion. Even better, the picture boasts a collection of sass mouth dames such as Edna May Oliver, Gail Patrick, and Joan Fontaine, in her screen debut. After Joan's through with Bob Montgomery, he's more submissive than the giant sheepdog on a leash.

Elizabeth Taylor won her first Oscar by playing a brave woman who declared sexual independence. What makes her performance a stand out is the rage that anchors her libido. When Taylor appears in a fury, stomping around in a slip, high heels, and a stolen mink, with a bottle of hooch under her arm, she gives you the strength to fight another day. After 18 years in MGM, four marriages, three childre...

I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955) was one of MGM's biggest box office hits. Susan Hayward earned rave reviews and her fourth Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Based on the life story of Lillian Roth, the production brought Susan Hayward her share of sorrow. The strain on set, a bitter divorce, and a custody battle drove her to a breakdown. Susan overdosed on sleeping pills and nearly died. She made headli...

Paris Model (1953) isn't the best of Eva Gabor's pictures, but it has a delightful spoof of her older sister, Zsa Zsa, and is a true gem. Eva Gabor stars in the best of four stories about the fortunes of one dress in the lives of different women. Eva had years of studio system training before she developed serious acting ambition for the stage. She should be better known if not for her family name...

Dancing was often used as a stand-in for sex on the big screen, as it was for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, but when Carole Lombard and George Raft move to Ravel, it *is* sex on the dance floor. Their ecstasy makes Bolero (1934) the filthiest pre-Code on record. Sally Rand performs her famous fan dance to add to the lusty flavour of the picture. Ray Milland appears in his first film with Paramou...

An executive in Universal studio turned down Yvonne De Carlo's request for the part of the waitress in A Double Life. He explained the way the system worked--Yvonne was rock candy, not dipped chocolates. They wanted to keep her in the stuff that sold and sold. Robert Siodmak felt otherwise and fought to keep her in the role for Criss Cross that producer Mark Hellinger had promised her before his t...

Zsa Zsa Gabor belongs to a legacy of modern wit from sass mouth dames such as Anita Loos, Dorothy Parker, Mae West, and Tallulah Bankhead. She argued for a career--that there was more to life than just being a wife--three years before Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. By her third picture, Moulin Rouge, Zsa Zsa became a star. She is uncorked champagne, bubbly and vivacious. And she st...

Dolores del Rio choreographs a plot for revenge against Pat O'Brien with as much style as she exhibits in a Busby Berkeley dance number. In Caliente (1935) has a steady 'soak the rich' theme, along with a woman's thirst for revenge. Add in a superb cast and amazing white gowns from Orry-Kelly, the picture is as soothing as a day by the pool.

Carole Landis referred to her role in Turnabout (1940) as the only time she had 'more than an even chance to demonstrate ability rather than matter'. In a screwball picture where husband and wife swap bodies, Carole moves differently and takes up space. Carole's performance makes a farce of the decorous feminine ideal. Joseph Breen and the Legion of Decency gave Hal Roach so much grief over the pr...

Film historians often point out that 1946 was a record year at the box office. Producer Joan Harrison offered to remind the moguls and audiences that Hollywood was still a woman's town after the men returned from the war. Nocturne is jammed with women who make the dream factory run. In one scene after another, George Raft talks to a collection of sass mouth dames who put him on notice during his m...

Although many critics dismiss A Woman's Secret (1949) as a misfire in the Ray canon, it gives viewers something we don't see often enough on the big screen--an intense relationship between two women that men find inscrutable. The coded affair between Maureen O'Hara and Gloria Grahame sours and ends up with a shot fired. Unfortunately, production was distracted by the drama of Howard Hughes's takeo...

My guest for this episode is Matt Harris, archivist and fellow Joan Crawford obsessive. Matt raises questions about camp, stardom, and how fans engage with a star's legacy. My biggest preoccupation in the film is with the Erik Guide Haupt portrait of Joan from 1931 that appears throughout the picture. Joan Crawford stands in front of it to remind the audience that she's the real work of art.

Before she became the first woman television mogul, Lucille Ball was queen of the 'B' pictures in RKO studio. Beauty for the Asking might have a low budget, but it carries a far more subversive message than many prestigious 'A' pictures. Loosely based on the life of Helena Rubenstein, it shows how Lucy moves from beauty operator to a business magnate once she invents a cold cream. Just imagine wha...

As part of the 'unholy trio' of gossip columnists, including Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, Sheilah Graham wrote juicy articles about the stars during the golden age of Hollywood. In 1937, she began a passionate affair with F Scott Fitzgerald that lasted until the author's death in 1940. The film version, based on Sheilah's bestselling memoir, gives us a glossy romance, rather than the reality...

Whether in a rubbish heap or grey industrial horizon of the Panama Canal, love blooms wherever Carole Lombard shines her blonde halo. Carole plays Maggie King, a nightclub singer who poses as a beauty operator for free passage to California. When she meets a soldier on his last day in the Army, she falls for him like a ship's anchor. Swing High, Swing Low balances screwball and melodrama better th...

After Gypsy Rose Lee finished the biggest show of her career for the 1940 World's Fair, she decided to finally write that novel she had in mind--a murder mystery set in a Burly-Q theatre. Gypsy's book, The G-String Murders, became a massive bestseller. It was adapted to the screen with Barbara Stanwyck playing Gypsy's role, renamed 'Dixie' to appease the scolds in the production code office. The r...

Not since Joan Blondell vowed that she knew all the answers and the only thing worthwhile was dough have we seen a more vital queen of the rackets than June Havoc in The Story of Molly X (1949). Molly takes over a crime syndicate. She plans the heists, hires the muscle, and even joins them for the safe cracking. June Havoc was a performer from the age of two and grew up as a headliner in the vaude...

In her best picture from the 1930s, Joan Crawford absorbs slings and arrows from men. Men call her cheap, a chiseller, a tramp. She's abandoned on her wedding day. Punched in the face by a drunk husband. But with the help of Jean Dixon, who plays a hardboiled dame, Joan's Sadie fortifies herself with courage and exquisite style. I live inside the scene set in the Automat, where Joan conceals her d...

The subtext of Virginia Van Upp’s script asks what kind of a society forbids ex-cons to fall in love and marry? Sylvia Sidney paid her debt to society, then risks her freedom for marriage with George Raft. Both are employed at a busy department store owned by a man who thinks good works mean more than a donation to the community chest. Once Raft learns that his wife was a jailbird, his double stan...

Instead of going for an obvious three-hanky approach for a story about a single mother out of work at Christmas, screenwriter Norman Krasna gift wraps a screwball delight. Ginger Rogers was riding high at the box office in a series of hits for RKO. Bachelor Mother proved that Ginger’s comic timing was as steady and accomplished as her foxtrot or carioca. As a shop girl with a sass mouth, she shows...

Among the stars of woman's pictures, Irene Dunne was arguably the most scandal-proof, even when she lived apart from her husband during the first six years of her career in Hollywood. But Irene often played women who were carried away by passion. During a transatlantic voyage, her character meets Charles Boyer, a man whose romantic conquests dominate international news. Irene shakes up the great l...

Mary Astor plays an American living alone in Italy. She embodies the fantasy Bette Davis had in Now, Voyager to 'live alone in single blessedness'. A chance encounter with an American businessman (Walter Huston) leads to a surprise romance. The hardship her character endured onscreen paled in comparison with the real drama in Mary Astor's life. After filming all day, she spent the evenings in a co...

If stories about glamorous women who destroy men make your heart gladsome, Ruby Gentry will be your queen. Sure, she's sexually obsessed with Charlton Heston, but she's also willing to ruin him for being a grubby developer who pumps chemicals into the land, She's the hero we need these days. Ruby survives the men who wanted to control her, just like Jennifer Jones survived the controlling men in H...