Only in the Eye of This Beholder
The most appealing Hollywood movie actress of all time was that Swedish one, Ingrid Bergman. Check her out in "Gaslight." Unbelievable! It was only proper that she was reputedly easy to work with, for a big star, and that she was the only actress who won an Oscar in three different decades, despite her inexplicable troubles with the American morality police.
Julia Roberts' mouth is too wide, and it is too obvious that she is the sister of that endlessly scruffy actor, Eric Roberts. Elizabeth Taylor's eyes are too green. Marilyn Monroe wasn't real. She was sent here for testing from a 24th century android factory. Dorothy Dandridge, a forerunner of Halle Berry, also looked as if she came off an assembly line, and so did Grace Kelly, who had the added drawback of being unable to escape that dreamy yet brittle, elevated tone of actresses in the 50's that constantly reminds me that they're actresses in a movie. Gene Tierney didn't appear often enough, though she was devastating in a film that I know as "Benjamin Blake," later garishly and unnecessarily retitled "Son of Fury." Sophia Loren, like Tierney, gave Bergman a serious run for her money, but I've sometimes shared Peter Sellers' dismay about her steadfast refusal to drop that doctor hubby. Lena Horne looked a lot like one of my cousins, and I thought that that was just too bizarre.
Yet -- and this is what I've been leading up to saying -- I have seen numerous women on the street who to my expert eye were as striking as any of the above -- at least in that one glorious moment before they stepped back into that oblivion from which they had, a few seconds earlier, emerged. Honest!
What does this mean? Does it mean that, contrary to popular belief, the movie camera actually subtracts from a person's appearance, especially the closer up it gets?
That must be why, like the Roberts bird, there are so many male actors who look like refugees from the Black Plague.
Julia Roberts' mouth is too wide, and it is too obvious that she is the sister of that endlessly scruffy actor, Eric Roberts. Elizabeth Taylor's eyes are too green. Marilyn Monroe wasn't real. She was sent here for testing from a 24th century android factory. Dorothy Dandridge, a forerunner of Halle Berry, also looked as if she came off an assembly line, and so did Grace Kelly, who had the added drawback of being unable to escape that dreamy yet brittle, elevated tone of actresses in the 50's that constantly reminds me that they're actresses in a movie. Gene Tierney didn't appear often enough, though she was devastating in a film that I know as "Benjamin Blake," later garishly and unnecessarily retitled "Son of Fury." Sophia Loren, like Tierney, gave Bergman a serious run for her money, but I've sometimes shared Peter Sellers' dismay about her steadfast refusal to drop that doctor hubby. Lena Horne looked a lot like one of my cousins, and I thought that that was just too bizarre.
Yet -- and this is what I've been leading up to saying -- I have seen numerous women on the street who to my expert eye were as striking as any of the above -- at least in that one glorious moment before they stepped back into that oblivion from which they had, a few seconds earlier, emerged. Honest!
What does this mean? Does it mean that, contrary to popular belief, the movie camera actually subtracts from a person's appearance, especially the closer up it gets?
That must be why, like the Roberts bird, there are so many male actors who look like refugees from the Black Plague.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:07 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home