52, .
l 'i' ,5
s 5. t
5%: An African-American,
a Mexican and a Frenohwoman. No, not
the start to a dodgy joke but three women whose ethnicity or nationality makes them a rarity in Hollywood. Yet Halle Berry, Salma Hayek and Audrey Tautou have Climbed to the top of the Hollywood tree. Or have they? Paul Dale examines the evidence.
MAJ“,
hat a time it was. A time of innocence.
a time of confidence. It was an age
when matters were easier for wannabe movie actresses. First they made the pilgrimage from their redneck backwater ol‘ origin to Hollywood. Next they waited to get signed to a major studio. ()nce under the studio‘s umbrella. these young. perl‘ectly turned out young ladies would he placed in a category that matched their talents. whether it be gamine (iolightly (Audrey Hepburn). tomboy (Margaret O'Brien). kooky buxom blonde (Marilyn Monroe). voluptuous modernity (Rosalind Russell). virgin (Doris Day) or demoness (Ava (iardner). The permutations
were as endless and inviting as the rosters ol’
talented women that every major studio in Hollywood and beyond held throughout the 1920s. 30s. 40s and 50s. By the ()(ls‘. however.
of substa
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they stopped making lilms like they Used to as economic and aesthetic lactors converged to change film history. The studio system collapsed as a result of the inroads being made by television. with fewer and fewer l'ilms being produced. while those that were made took longer and longer to see the light ol‘ day. It was no longer easy to go and see your favourite starlet l'our times a year in everything from a lilm noir to a mUsical comedy. liven the hottest actresses of that decade — Julie (‘hristie and Julie Andrews at the beginning. Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda at the end — were lucky to make a lilm a year and exposure was becoming problematic. As the great 7()s l‘eminist l'ilm writer Molly Haskell points out in her brilliant W74 book From Rope to R('l‘(’l'(’ll('(’.‘ 'l'lie 'I'reunnent of Women in the Movies. ‘The impulse to become a star and the studio machinery to create and sustain stars were dead. Now actors and actresses went on talk’ shows complete or incomplete with the personalities they‘d been born with.‘ The absence of what Haskell calls ‘an image manulacturing apparatus” initially gave actresses greater l‘reedom but no more genuine power within the industry. With the rise of a new generation of independent filmmakers came an indulgence. misogyny and brutish subjectivity which would not serve the serious lilm actress well. List any lilm in your head made between l‘)b() and 1980 (Dar/inc. Bonnie and Clyde. Women in Love) and it's difficult not to agree with Haskell when she points out that the great women‘s roles of those years were little more than: ‘Whores. quasi whores. jilted mistresses. emotional cripples.
Now and then (clockwise): Halle Berry in X-Men 3;
Dorothy Dandridge; Audrey Tautou in The Da Vinci Code; Audrey Hepburn
SCREEN GODDESSES
11-2-3- Ma; zoos me LIST 17