My top 20 favorite actresses

It seems like some of my readers wanted more after my Top 20 Favorite Actors post - and what can I do but obey? As usual I had to leave out some favorites after all (why can't they all fit in??), like Grace Kelly and Mae West. Well well. Here they are: My top 20 favorite actresses (in alphabetical order, of course):

1. Lauren Bacall

Favorite role: Slim Browning in To Have and Have Not (1944)

2. Ingrid Bergman

Favorite role: Alicia Huberman in Notorious (1946)

3. Joan Blondell

Favorite role: B. Maloney in Night Nurse (1931)

4. Clara Bow

Favorite role: Betty Lou Spence in It (1927)

5. Louise Brooks

Favorite role: Lulu in Pandora's Box (1929)

6. Olivia de Havilland

Favorite role: Catherine Sloper in The Heiress (1949)

7. Marlene Dietrich

Favorite role: Shanghai Lily in Shanghai Express (1932)

8. Greta Garbo

Favorite role: Anna Christie in Anna Christie (1930)

9. Lillian Gish

Favorite role: Rachel Cooper in The Night of the Hunter (1955)

10. Audrey Hepburn

Favorite role: Nicole in How to Steal a Million (1966)

11. Katharine Hepburn

Favorite role: Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story (1940)

12. Vivien Leigh

Favorite role: Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Names Desire (1951)

13. Carole Lombard

Favorite role: Maria Tura in To Be or Not to Be (1942)

14. Myrna Loy

Favorite role: Milly Stephenson in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

15. Marilyn Monroe

Favorite role: Sugar Kane Kowalczyk in Some Like It Hot (1959)

16. Jeanne Moreau

Favorite role: Catherine in Jules and Jim (1962)

17. Mary Pickford

Favorite role: Mary Carlton / Mary Marlow in Secrets (1933)

18. Barbara Stanwyck

Favorite role: Lily Powers in Baby Face (1933)

19. Gloria Swanson

Favorite role: Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. (1950)

20. Natalie Wood

Favorite role: Angie Rossini in Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)

Joan Blondell - 103 years

Today it's the 103rd birthday of one of my favorite pre-code actresses - the cynical, gum chewing, night club girl Joan Blondell. Happy Birthday!



We have other birthday children today, that I could honor with some photos too.
Fredric March reaches the honorable age of 112. He's very happy about it.



Tough Fred MacMurray turn 101 years, and amuses himself with a Claudette Colbert melting in his arms.



And the oldest birthday kid is Raymond Massey at 113 years of age. He celebrates with a quiet evening at home, dressed up as Abraham Lincoln. (You can't blame him for becoming a little senile at this age, can you?)
According to the real Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926), Massey's speaking voice had a strong resemblance to his father's. That might be the reason for Massay getting the part of dear old Abraham in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940).

Illicit (1931)

Illicit
Director: Archie Mayo
USA 1931
79 min

See the film on YouTube here. (There seems to be a little gap between the first and the second clip, but nothing disturbing.)


In this pre-code production Anne Vincent (Barbara Stanwyck), a modern woman, and Richard "Dick" Ives II (James Rennie), a member of a rich and respected family, is a happy young couple with only one problem: Dick wants to get married, but Anne doesn't. Her view of the holy sacrament is that people always seem to either unhappily married or unhappily divorced.
Anne is strong in her opinions and even challenges Dick's father Richard Ives I (Claude Gillingwater), but is after much ado about it convinced to become Mrs. Anne Ives.

Before the marriage Anne receives a telegram from an ex-lover, now friend, Price Baines (Ricardo Cortez), that he wants to see her. Dick tries to forbid Anne to receive him (an early sign of the destructive results of becoming a man's possession?), but being an independent woman she does exactly as she pleases. Price, of course, tries to convince her to stick to her principles.

See the brilliant acting and the perfected dialogue in the following clip. Do you feel the tension between the soon-to-be husband and the ex-lover? Gives me the creeps.

What you see in the clip above is also the beginning of another marriage problem - a woman friend, Margie (Natalie Moorhead), who keeps her eyes (and arms) open for Dick. Is she a threat? Is she more of a threat to a married couple who starts to get too casual with each other, than to a pre-marriage couple consisting of two independent people?
In other words, this drama between two people develops into a triangle drama, shifting into a different triangle drama - but in the most modern and untheatrical way.

The characters in this film are very well cast (see the wonderfully modern Joan Blondell as "Duckie") into the smallest bit parts, though I personally didn't care too much about Rennie as Dick (even though there's nothing wrong with his performance, what I can see). But maybe his part isn't very well written, neither. He whines about getting married, and when he finally gets what he wants he neglects his wife - making the viewer hope that she runs away with the latino lover instead (and I guess that was not what was intended).
But about Stanwyck, to quote Addison DeWitt from All About Eve (1950), you can really see her career rise in the East like the sun.

The female characters, l-r: Margie, Anne and Duckie.

Illicit seems like it wasn't given the credit that it deserved, it's a truly brilliant film. The characters are very down to earth, especially Stanwyck's. Her way of delivering the most heart breaking feelings by simply walking through a room, and barely move a facial muscle, is astonishing. The drama is professionally dimmed, a lot of the emotions are expressed by seemingly every-day talk.
And, the best of all (a thing I was quite worried about, but fortunately didn't come true) - the moral of the story does not seem to be "marriage solves all problems". Actually, the moral of the story didn't seem to have anything about marriage at all. As Stanwyck's last line indicates:

"What have theories to do with love?"

Quotes:

Richard 'Dick' Ives II: Dad, what would you do with a girl like that?
Richard Ives Sr: I'd grab her any way she'd have me.

Anne Vincent Ives: Why Georgie, you look a little emaciated!
George Evans: Well, I was just emaciated into the Elks Saturday night.