Jean Harlow

Before the days of Madonna and Marilyn Monroe, the "Original Blonde Bombshell" made her mark on Hollywood and the world, leaving behind a new image of the Hollywood sex goddess.
Harlean Carpenter, later known as Jean Harlow, was born on March 3, 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri.
Although she would sadly only live to age 26, Jean achieved a great deal of success during her lifetime.
In an acting career that lasted 10 short years, Jean made 36 movies. Some of her other achievements included being voted No. 22 on the American Film Institute's list of the "Greatest American Screen Legends" (female), and becoming the first movie actress to appear on the cover of Life magazine.

Jean displayed talent in both her sensual and comedic performances, but she initially captivated fans with her trendsetting platinum blonde hair.
As she gained fame, peroxide sales in the United States skyrocketed. Botched attempts to look like Jean forced thousands of women to cut their hair.
Hollywood producers of the past had consistently cast dark-haired women to play the parts of vixens, but Jean emerged as the first star to incorporate the platinum blonde look into her acting.


Jean was born the daughter of a successful dentist and his wife. Jean's mother, known as Mother Jean, had dreams of becoming an actress, which led her to divorce her husband and move to Hollywood with her young daughter.
Jean's mother never allowed her to see her father, however Jean would sneak visits with him throughout her life.
Mother Jean soon remarried a man named Marino Bello and the family moved to Chicago, where Jean attended high school.

Poor health afflicted Jean throughout her childhood. At age five, she contracted meningitis and suffered from scarlet fever at age 15.
Jean left home at age 16 to marry 23-year-old Charles McGrew. Shortly after the wedding the couple left Chicago and moved to Beverly Hills.
Jean's true aspiration in life was to be a wife and mother, however she sought work as an extra in films to please Mother Jean.
Although at first Jean was not interested in making films, she received her first role in Why is a Plumber? in 1927. She and McGrew divorced after two years, but her big career break was about to occur.

Joan Fontaine

Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo, Japan, in what was known as the International Settlement.
Her father was a British patent attorney with a lucrative practice in Japan, but due to Joan and older sister Olivia de Havilland's recurring ailments the family moved to California in the hopes of improving their health.
Mrs. de Havilland and the two girls settled in Saratoga while their father went back to his practice in Japan.
Joan's parents did not get along well and divorced soon afterward. Mrs. de Havilland had a desire to be an actress but her dreams were curtailed when she married, but now she hoped to pass on her dream to Olivia and Joan.
While Olivia pursued a stage career, Joan went back to Tokyo, where she attended the American School. In 1934 she came back to California, where her sister was already making a name for herself on the stage.
Joan likewise joined a theater group in San Jose and then Los Angeles to try her luck there. After moving to L.A., Joan adopted the name of Joan Burfield because she didn't want to infringe upon Olivia, who was using the family surname.
She tested at MGM and gained a small role in No More Ladies (1935), but she was scarcely noticed and Joan was idle for a year and a half.
During this time she roomed with Olivia, who was having much more success in films. In 1937, this time calling herself Joan Fontaine, she landed a better role as Trudy Olson in You Can't Beat Love (1937) and then an uncredited part in Quality Street (1937).
Although the next two years saw her in better roles, she still yearned for something better. In 1940 she garnered her first Academy Award nomination for Rebecca (1940).
Although she thought she should have won, (she lost out to Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (1940)), she was now an established member of the Hollywood set. She would again be Oscar-nominated for her role as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth in Suspicion (1941), and this time she won.
Joan was making one film a year but choosing her roles well.
In 1942 she starred in the well-received This Above All (1942). The following year she appeared in The Constant Nymph (1943).
Once again she was nominated for the Oscar, she lost out to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette (1943).
By now it was safe to say she was more famous than her older sister and more fine films followed.
In 1948, she accepted second billing to Bing Crosby in The Emperor Waltz (1948).
Joan took the year of 1949 off before coming back in 1950 with September Affair (1950) and Born to Be Bad (1950).
In 1951 she starred in Paramount's Darling, How Could You! (1951), which turned out badly for both her and the studio and more weak productions followed.
Absent from the big screen for a while, she took parts in television and dinner theaters.
She also starred in many well-produced Broadway plays such as Forty Carats and The Lion in Winter. Her last appearance on the big screen was The Witches (1966) and her final appearance before the cameras was Good King Wenceslas (1994) (TV).
Joan, today, still appears on stage and the lecture circuit while traveling and writing in her spare time. She is, without a doubt, a lasting movie icon.

Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood, the daughter of Russian Immigrants, was born Natalia Zakharenko on July 20, 1938. Natalie got her first role at the age of 4 in a movie called Happy Land (1943).
She continued playing the roles of young girls until the age of 16, where she landed the role of Judy in the legendary film Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
This role showed Hollywood and the world that she had grown up into a beautiful and very talented young woman.
For this role, she was nominated for her first Academy Award.
As a teenager, Natalie dated many big names in the entertainment business like Elvis Presley, and Dennis Hopper.
However, on December 28th, 1957, Natalie married the love of her life Robert Wagner (R.J. as Natalie called him). They divorced in 1962, later to remarry.
Natalie once commented about their divorce saying they were both scared, insecure, and listened to others that their marriage wouldn't work.
In the 1960s, Natalie's career boomed,
and she was nominated for two more Academy Awards, (Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963).
On May 30, 1969, Natalie married producer Richard Gregson.
They had a daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner, on September 29, 1970.
She divorced Gregson in 1972 after finding out he was having an affair. R.J. and Natalie remarried on July 16, 1972.
On March 9, 1974, R.J. and Natalie had a daughter Courtney Wagner.
They lived happily as husband and wife until tragically, while sailing on their yacht Splendour, Natalie had an accident trying to board the dinghy belonging to the boat, fell into the water, and, while trying to recover, drowned.

Ingrid Bergman

Born in Stockholm, Sweden, on August 29, 1915 - Ingrid Bergman was one of the greatest actresses from Hollywood's lamented Golden Era.
Her natural and unpretentious beauty and her immense acting talent made her one of the most celebrated figures in the history of American cinema.
Bergman is also one of the most Oscar-awarded actresses, second only to Katharine Hepburn.

Before she came to Hollywood in 1939, she was already an established actress in Sweden. She had completed 11 Swedish films when producer David O. Selznick invited her to come to Hollywood to reprise her role in the American version of her biggest hit, Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939) opposite Leslie Howard.
Her performance in her American debut captured America's heart.
She later appeared in Adam Had Four Sons(1941), Rage in Heaven (1941) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941).
However, it was Casablanca (1942) that launched her to superstardom, establishing her as a romantic leading lady.
The pairing with Humphrey Bogart made them one of the best romantic cinema couples of all time and the film still vows audiences, more than 60 years after its release.
In 2002 the American Film Institute named Casablanca (1942) as the top American love story of all time, beating such favorites as Gone with the Wind (1939) and West Side Story (1961). Ironically enough, both Bogart and Bergman tried to quit the film during shooting, feeling that the story was ridiculous and unbelievable.
Bergman herself said at the time that she hoped it would never be shown again after she died.

After Casablanca (1942), she became Hollywood's top box-office draw. All of her films became smash hits; she starred opposite Gary Cooper in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), which she cited as her personal favorite film.
She also gave an Oscar-winning performance as the persecuted wife of Charles Boyer in George Cukor's Gaslight (1944) and Leo McCarey's very popular The Bells of St. Mary's (1945).
Later, she worked with the master himself, Alfred Hitchcock in Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946) with Cary Grant and the less successful Under Capricorn (1949).

Ingrid Bergman will always be remembered as Bogart's lost love Ilsa Lund in Casablanca (1942). It's sad because she also gave spectacular performances as Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Paula Alquist in Gasligt (1944), Dr. Constance Peterson in Spellbound (1945),
Alicia Huberman in Notorious (1946),
the title role in Anastasia (1956), Gladys Aylward in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) and Charlotte in Höstsonaten (1978).
She worked in films, television and on the stage in New York, London, Paris, Rome and Stockholm.
She worked right up to her death. In 1999 she was ranked #4 in the American Film Institute's list of greatest female screen legends. As Humphrey Bogart said, "Here's looking at you kid", and until this day, we are still looking at you, Ingrid!

Sophia Loren

A child of the Neapolitan slums, Sophia Loren rose from a sea of troubles to become one of the cinema's great sex symbols.
In her, the world found an enticing, quintessentially European woman, who was also warm, earthy, even maternal.
As her fellow Italians might say, she was esuberante, radiating enough enthusiasm to fill the Colosseum.
But perhaps her greatest achievement has been the sheer longevity of this allure.

Sophia Loren was born Sofia Scicolone in a Roman charity ward to Romilda Villani, a poverty-stricken woman whose lover refused to marry her - although he later allowed Sophia and her younger sister Maria to use his last name.
Branded by Italian society as illegitimate, the four-year-old Sophia moved with her mother to Pozzuoli, a rundown suburb of Naples, where Romilda played piano in seedy cafes to keep bread on the table.
Work was not plentiful; Sophia was so skinny that her Catholic school classmates nicknamed her Stuzzicadente, the toothpick.

When the war and its deprivations came to Naples - the most frequently bombed city in Italy - Sophia lived a ragged existence that left indelible marks.
There was never enough food, and when the bombs rained down, the family sought shelter in train tunnels. Death and ruin were all around.
The absence of even such a scoundrel of a father as Riccardo Scicolone also left her vulnerable to the taunts of other children.

As her adolescence progressed, Sophia's waif-like form metamorphosed into traffic-stopping curves.
Her tall, lush body and exotically beautiful face became her ticket out of penury, her escape from the nightmare.
Those huge liquid eyes, that pillowy mouth and extravagant body, wrapped in a pink dress her mother had sewn from a window curtain, earned her second place in a beauty contest. Abandoning her teacher-training studies,
the fifteen-year-old journeyed to Rome with Romilda, herself a frustrated actress, to try for a movie career.
The two found minuscule parts in the 1951 epic Quo Vadis, but the thirty-three dollars they earned did not last very long.
Denied a modeling job by the very attributes that would later make her an international star, Sophia turned to 'acting' in the fumetti photo magazines with comic-strip-style stories featuring soap-opera plots and balloon dialogue.
Her character was most often that of a gypsy vamp, and her poses on one occasion earned her the attentions of the Italian police censor.
Still attempting to break into more legitimate show business, Sophia placed as a runner-up in the 1950 Miss Italy contest.
Later that year she took second place in the Miss Rome competition, but won a much bigger prize than the official one, for film producer Carlo Ponti was one of the judges.
Instantly struck by her quirky beauty,
he remained undaunted by her disastrous screen tests.
He did suggest, however, that perhaps something might be done about her oversized nose and hips. But the supremely confident teen ignored him.
"Everything I have,” she later boasted playfully to the American press, "I owe to spaghetti."

None of this affected Loren's burgeoning career. Houseboat (1958), with the abashed but still smitten Grant was a solid hit.
Nor did she abandon Europe, making fifteen Italian onscreen romances with Marcello Mastroianni, most notably Marriage Italian Style (1964).
She reached the zenith of her career with her performance in De Sica's 1961 Italian production La Ciociara, known in the States as Two Women.
For her portrayal of a wartime rape victim, she earned an Academy Award.

After several miscarriages, the actress finally bore two sons, Edoardo and Carlo, Jr., and for some time she made only promotional appearances, for her perfume, Sophia, and her line of eyewear.
Her subsequent movies, such as The Cassandra Crossing (1977), declined in quality, but she continued to attract attention. In 1982 she was back in the press when the Italian authorities forced her to serve nineteen days in prison for tax evasion.
Upon her release, 'La Simpatica' went back to work, making more TV movies. In 1994,
she co-starred in Pret-à-Porter - her last comedy with old friend Mastroianni and the next year, in Grumpier Old Men.
Loren was as sexy in both as she had been in her first film, forty years earlier.
She had explained her secret in 1990: "I still like me, inside and out.
Not in a vain way - I just feel good in my skin."

Norma Shearer

She won a beauty contest at age fourteen. In 1920 her mother, Edith Shearer, took Norma and her sister Athole Shearer (Mrs. Howard Hawks) to New York. Ziegfeld rejected her for his "Follies" but she got work as an extra in several movies.
She spent much money on eye doctor's services trying to correct her cross-eyed stare caused by a muscle weakness. Irving Thalberg had seen her early efforts and, when he joined Louis B. Mayer in 1923, gave her a five year contract.
He thought she should retire after their marriage, but she wanted bigger parts. In 1927 she insisted on firing the director Viktor Tourjansky because he was unsure of her cross-eyed stare. Her first talkie was in The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929); four movies later she won an Oscar in The Divorcee (1930).
She intentionally cut down film exposure during the thirties, relying on major roles in Thalberg's prestige projects: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Romeo and Juliet (1936) (her fifth Oscar nomination). Thalberg died of second heart attack in September 1936, aged thirty-seven. Norma wanted to retire but MGM more-or-less forced her into a six-picture contract.
David O. Selznick offered her the part of Scarlett O'Hara, but public objection to her cross-eyed stare killed the deal. She starred in The Women (1939), turned down the starring role in Mrs. Miniver (1942), and retired in 1942.
Later that year she married Sun Valley ski instructor Martin Arrouge, twenty years younger than she (he waived community property rights). From then on she shunned the limelight; she was in very poor health the last decade of her life.

Even after retirement, Norma maintained her interest in the film industry. While staying at a ski lodge, she noticed a photo of the receptionist's daughter and recommended her to MGM - that girl, became the star known as Janet Leigh.
She also discovered a handsome young businessman beside a swimming pool - now actor/producer Robert Evans.
She is commemorated on one of a set of postage stamps (issued in 2008) honoring prominent Canadians in Hollywood. The other stamps feature Marie Dressler, Chief Dan George and Raymond Burr.

Greta Garbo

In "Anna Karenina" (1935) the train pulls into the Moscow train station, a cloud of steam envelopes the exit of a first class car and then a woman emerges from the cloud.

The figure is aristocratic, the face is a vision. But it's the eyes that enthrall the viewer and Vronsky who has expected his mother to be the first woman off the train.
Bosley Crowther, New York Times film critic from 1940 to 1967, had this to say about the Garbo eyes: "Set in the face of classic structure were large, sad, luminous eyes that expressed a limited but intense emotional range".

Crowther did not include this film in his short list of Garbo's major artistic achievements. His list: "Anna Christie" (1930) where Garbo "made the role of the cynical dockside ex- prostitute a thing of poetic beauty;" "Camille" (1936) where she played the Paris courtesan who had inspired novels, concertos and an opera with "alabaster loveliness;" "Ninotchka" (1939) where Garbo "demonstrated that she had the wit and flexibility to be a fine comedienne;" "Grand Hotel" (1932) where Garbo, then only 26, played a fading ballerina; and "Queen Christina" (1933) where Crowther was impressed by how she "deftly romped in masculine costumes".

All of Garbo's films were in black and white and black and white enhanced her mystery and romantic allure.
In real life, Garbo knew when to make her exit from Hollywood and the public eye.
Her sense of timing,
when to make her entrance and her exit -- perhaps she learned something from Tolstoy whose "Anna Karenina" must have been based on a woman just as real as Maureen O'Sullivan's Kitty in that film whom a man like Tolstoy won when Kitty lost Vronsky to a woman who could reveal so much through her eyes.

Carole Lombard

Birth:
Oct. 6, 1908
Death:
Jan. 16, 1942

Actress. Born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, one of three children, her parents separated and with her mother she moved to California. Her career spanned from the silent era to "talkies." An auto accident almost ended her life as well as acting by inflicting serious scars on her face.
Undaunted, she was able to cover the blemishes with the heavy use of cosmetics. She received her only Oscar nomination for Best Actress in "My Man Godfrey".

"No Man Of Her Own" put her opposite Clark Gable for the first and only time but their marriage was still seven years away when they became the ideal Hollywood couple known for their success in the film industry.

She did not see her final movie "To Be Or Not To Be" released.
With World War II raging in 1942,
Clark Gable journeyed to Nevada to join a search party seeking the wreckage of a TWA twin engine DC-3 airliner flying from Indianapolis to Los Angeles. Aboard were 22 passengers including Carole Lombard Gable and her mother.

She had wound up a war bond drive just before boarding.
There were no survivors.

The blonde film star of the 1930s best remembered for her "Screw Ball comedies" was gone. Clark Gable rode on the train that carried the bodies of his wife and mother-in-law back to Los Angeles. She had left specific instructions for her burial in the event of death.
Clark Gable purchased three crypts at Forest Lawn Cemetery, one for Carole, her mother and a reserve for himself.
She mandated a swift, direct interment in a mausoleum crypt at Forest Lawn with only her immediate family present. In the wake of her death at age 33,
the Army offered to conduct a military funeral to honor the first star to give her life while aiding the war effort.
They were refused and her wishes were carried out as specified.

However, a World War II Liberty Ship was christened in her honor.
She is interred next to Gable and to her mother, Elizabeth Peters, who also perished in the crash.

Lorreta Young

Gretchen Young was born on January 6, 1913 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was the daughter of Gladys Royal Young and John Earl Young. When she was three,
her parents separated and her mother moved Gretchen and her two sisters to California and into the home of Gladys' sister.
Loretta's father later moved to join them. Gladys later found him with the maid and told him to get out. His children never saw him again. The family moved to a boarding house that Gladys ran.
Around that time Loretta and her cousin went to live with actress Mae Murray, whom they called "Aunt Mazi". After a year, they both returned to their mothers.
When Loretta was 10, her mother married one of her boarders, George Belzer. They had daughter Georgianna two years later.
When Lorreta Young was three years old, her mother took her and her sisters to Hollywood, where she established a boarding house.
Gretchen was appearing on screen as a child extra by the time she was four, joining her elder sisters, Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (later better known as Sally Blane), as child players.
Gretchen then left the screen to attend convent school, but returned at age 14 with a bit appearance in the Colleen Moore vehicle Naughty But Nice (1927).
Changing her name to Loretta Young, letting her blond hair revert to its natural brown and with her blue eyes, satin complexion and exquisite face, she quickly graduated from bit player to ingénue to leading lady.
She made headlines in 1930 when she and Grant Withers, who was previously married and nine years her senior, eloped to Yuma, Arizona, with the 17-year-old Loretta. They had both appeared in Warner Bros.' The Second Floor Mystery (1930).
The marriage was annulled in 1931, the same year in which the pair would again co-star on screen in a film ironically titled Too Young to Marry (1931).
Loretta always showed an elegant sort of beauty in her films, many of which were rather pedestrian fare. Yet she could act if called upon. Examples of her acting ability are her performances in The Farmer's Daughter (1947) or in Come to the Stable (1949).
She retired from films in 1953 and began a second, equally successful career as hostess of "Letter to Loretta" (1953), a half-hour drama anthology series which ran on NBC from September 1953 to September 1961.
In addition to hosting the series, she frequently starred in episodes.
Although she is most remembered for her stunning gowns and swirling entrances, over the broadcast's eight-year run she also showed again that she could act. She won Emmy awards for best actress in a dramatic series in 1954, 1956 and 1958.

Clara Bow

Clara Gordon Bow, destined to become The flapper of the 1920's, was born and raised in poverty in Brooklyn, New York, on July 29, 1905. Her family was also beset with violence.
Her mother tried to slit Clara's throat when she attempted to enter the film industry. She won a photo beauty contest which launched her movie career that would eventually number 58 films, from 1922 to 1933.
It was the movie It (1927), which was to define her career. The film starred Clara as a shop girl who was asked out by the store's owner.
As you watch the silent film you can see the excitement as she prepared for her date with the boss, her girlfriend trying hard to assist her.
She was trying to use a pair of scissors to modify her dress in order to look more "sexy".
This movie did a lot to change society's mores as there was only a few years between World War I and Clara Bow, but this movie went a long way in how society looked at itself. Clara was flaming youth in rebellion. In the film she was presenting a worldly wisdom that some how sex meant having a good time.
But you shouldn't be misled by the film, because she was still close to Lillian Gish in that when her boss tries to kiss her goodnight, she slaps him.
Yes, she, too, was a good girl and a first cousin of Trueheart Susie. At the height of her popularity she received over 45,000 fan letters a month.
She, too, was probably the most overworked and underpaid star in the industry. With the coming of sound, which did lend itself to her thick Brooklyn accent, her popularity waned.
Clara was also involved in several court battles ranging from unpaid taxes to being in divorce court for "stealing" women's husbands.
After the court trials, she made a couple of attempts to get back in the public eye. One was Call Her Savage (1932) in 1932. It was somewhat of a failure at the box office and her last was in 1933 in a film called Hoop-La (1933).
She, then, married cowboy star, Rex Bell at the age of 26 and retired from the film world at the age of 28. She was a doting mother of her two sons and would do anything to please them.
Haunted by a weight problem, and a mental imbalance, she never entered show business again.
Clara was confined to a sanitarium from time to time and was not allowed access to her loving sons she adored very much.
She died of a heart attack in West Los Angeles, on September 26, 1965. She was 60 years old. Today she is finding a renaissance among movie buffs, who are recently discovering the virtues of silent film.
The actress who wanted so much to be like the wonderful young lady in It (1927) has the legacy of her films to confirm what a wonderful lady she really was.

Greta Garbo

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden on September 18, 1905. She was 14 when her father died, leaving the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and go to work in a department store. The store used her for her modeling abilities for newspaper ads.
She had no film aspirations until she appeared in an advertising short at that same department store while she was still a teenager. This led to another short film when Erik A. Petschler, a comedy director, saw the film. He gave her a small part in the film, _Luffarpetter (1922)_. Encouraged by her own performance she applied for and won a scholarship in a Swedish drama school.
While there she appeared in two films, Lyckoriddare, En (1921) and _Luffarpetter (1922)_ the following year. Both were small parts, but it was a start.
Finally famed Swedish director, Mauritz Stiller, pulled her from drama school for the leading role in Gösta Berlings saga (1924). At 18, Greta was on a roll. Following Die Freudlose Gasse (1925) both Greta and Stiller were offered contracts with MGM. Her first US film was Torrent (1926). It was a silent film where she didn't have to speak a word of English.
After a few more films, such as The Temptress (1926), Love (1927/I), and A Woman of Affairs (1928), Greta starred in Anna Christie (1930) (her first "talkie"), which not only gave her a powerful screen presence, but also gave her an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress.
Unfortunately she didn't win. Later that year she filmed Romance (1930) which was somewhat of a letdown, but bounced back as lead role in Susan Lenox (1931) with Clark Gable. The film was a hit and led to another exciting title role in Mata Hari (1931).
Greta continued to give intensified performances in whatever was handed her. The next year Greta was cast in another hit Grand Hotel (1932).
But it was MGM's Anna Karenina (1935) where she, perhaps, gave the performance of her life. She was absolutely breathtaking in the title role as a woman torn between two lovers and her son. Greta starred in Ninotchka (1939) which showcased her comedic side.
It wasn't until two years later she made what was to be her last film that being Two-Faced Woman (1941), another comedy. After World War II, Greta, by her own admission, felt that the world had changed perhaps forever and she retired, never again to face the camera.
Her films, she felt, had their proper place in history and would gain in value.
On April 15, 1990, Greta died of natural causes in New York and with it the "Garbo Mystique". She was 84.

Ida Lupino

Actress, screenwriter, director. Born on February 4, 1918, in London, England to a show buisness family. Ida Lupino was a popular actress of the 1930s and 1940s as well as a brave, pioneering filmmaker.
Acting ran in her family. Her father was comedian Stanley Lupino and her mother was actress Connie Emerald. A serious performer, she trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London before getting her first big break.
After her film debut in Her First Affair (1932), Ida Lupino got a contract with Paramount. One of her most notable works from this period is the musical Anything Goes (1935) with Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman. Changing over to Warner Brothers in 1939 led to more substantial dramatic fare. Lupino earned high marks from critics for her turn in The Light That Failed (1939) based on the Rudyard Kipling novel.
She also appeared in the crime thriller High Sierra (1941) opposite Humphrey Bogart and The Hard Way (1943), which earned the Best Actress award from the New York Film Critics.
Ida Lupino formed her own film company with Anson Bond called Emerald Productions in 1949, and created films that tackled controversial social themes, such as Not Wanted (1949), which she also directed and wrote.
The film explored the plight of an unwed mother. Other films addressed bigamy and rape. While her films were disregarded at the time, Lupino has come to be seen as one of Hollywood’s pioneering female directors.
After battling cancer, Ida died on August 3, 1995, in Burbank, California.

Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers (1911-1995), American motion-picture actor, singer, and dancer, best remembered for her graceful ballroom dancing as the partner of Fred Astaire in classic musical comedies of the 1930s. Born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri, she began dancing professionally at the age of 14 and toured the vaudeville circuit until 1929, when she was cast as the second lead in the popular Broadway musical Top Speed.
She began her film career while still starring on the New York City stage and in 1931 went to Hollywood, where she shot a series of minor comedies and dramas for the Pathé, Paramount, and Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) studios.
Rogers was first matched with Astaire in the 1933 film Flying Down to Rio. Although they danced together in only one scene, their elegance, agility, and obvious chemistry stole the show. Subsequently, RKO paired them in vehicles of their own, including the legendary musicals Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), and Follow The Fleet (1936). Their ten feature films together perfectly exemplified the refined and light-hearted charm of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age (from about 1920 to about 1950).
Astaire was considered the better dancer of the duo, but Rogers had far greater acting range, as she proved with an Academy Award-winning performance in Kitty Foyle (1940). She was equally effective in the bubbly romantic farce The Major and the Minor (1942).
Rogers appeared regularly on screen throughout the 1940s and 1950s and returned briefly to the Broadway stage in 1965, replacing Carol Channing in Hello Dolly! In later years she made occasional television appearances and served as a fashion consultant for the J.C. Penney stores. Her autobiography, Ginger: My Story, was published in 1991.

Swing Time~Rogers and Astair

Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly Actress and Princess of Monaco.1947 Grace enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York City,1949 She made her professional debut on Broadway.
1951 She moved to Hollywood and appeared in the film Fourteen Hours which was her debut in the big screen.
1954 Grace Kelly acted with Bing Crosby in the film The Country Girl and she was awarded an Oscar for best actress.She was also invited to the Film Festival in Cannes, where she met Prince Rainier.She also acted in several Hitchcock’s movies such as Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief .1956 She married Prince Rainier, and became a princess. She quit acting.
1957 Grace gave birth to her first daughter, Princes Caroline.1958 Prince Albert was born.
1982 Princess Grace died on September 14th, after a car accident that occured when she and her daughter Stephanie were driving along the Nice – Monaco highway. She is buried at the Cathedral of Monaco.

True Love~Trailer from the movie~High Society!

Ava Gardner

Born on a tobacco farm, where she got her lifelong love of earthy language and going barefoot, Ava grew up in the rural South. At age 18, her picture in the window of her brother-in- law's New York photo studio brought her to the attention of MGM, leading quickly to Hollywood and a film contract based strictly on her beauty.
With zero acting experience, her first 17 film roles, 1942-5, were one-line bits or little better. After her first starring role in B-grade Whistle Stop (1946), MGM loaned her to Universal for her first outstanding film, The Killers (1946). Few of her best films were made at MGM which, keeping her under contract for 17 years, used her popularity to sell many mediocre films. Perhaps as a result, she never believed in her own acting ability, but her latent talent shone brightly when brought out by a superior director, as with John Ford in Mogambo (1953) and George Cukor in Bhowani Junction (1956).
After 3 failed marriages, dissatisfaction with Hollywood life prompted Ava to move to Spain in 1955; most of her subsequent films were made abroad. By this time, stardom had made the country girl a cosmopolitan, but she never overcame a deep insecurity about acting and life in the spotlight. Her last quality starring film role was in The Night of the Iguana (1964), her later work being (as she said) strictly "for the loot". In 1968, tax trouble in Spain prompted a move to London, where she spent her last 22 years in reasonable comfort. Her film career did not bring her great fulfillment, but her looks may have made it inevitable; many fans still consider her the most beautiful actress in Hollywood history.

Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford was a bubbly ingenue of silent films during the "flapper era" of the late 1920s.
As her bubbly years passed she reinvented herself as a more glamorous Hollywood star of the 1930s and 40s, winning an Oscar for her role as a housewife-turned-businesswoman in Mildred Pierce (1945). Despite these successes Crawford is often remembered for an even later persona -- a severe and neurotic former beauty in heavy makeup -- based on the horror and suspense films she made in the 1960s.
Among those films was the hit Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), in which she appeared with her real-life rival Bette Davis. Crawford's reputation was tarnished by Mommie Dearest, a 1978 biography by her adopted daughter Christina, which described Crawford as a harshly abusive alcoholic.
(Christina's allegations of being beaten with a wire coat hanger gained particular fame.) The book was made into a 1981 movie starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford.
Crawford's first husband was actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.... Her fourth husband was Alfred Steele, chairman of the board of soft drink maker Pepsi Cola; after Steele's 1959 death, Crawford herself served on the Pepsi board... Crawford was directed by a young Steven Spielberg in a 1969 episode of the TV series Night Gallery.

Vivien Leigh

Vivian Mary Hartley was born on November 5, 1913.Her parents wanted to go home to England but because of World War I they opted to stay in India. At the end of the war the Hartleys headed back to their home country, where Vivien's mother wanted her daughter to have a convent education. She was one of the youngest in attendance, and it was not a happy experience for her. One of the few consolations was her friendship with a classmate who also became a successful actress, Maureen O'Sullivan While there her mother came for a visit and took her to a play on London's legendary West Side.It was there that Vivien decided to become an actress. At the end of her education, she met and married Herbert Leigh in 1932 and together had a child named Suzanne in 1933. Though she enjoyed motherhood, it did not squelch her ambition to be an actress. Her first role in British motion pictures was as Rose Venables in 1935's The Village Squire (1935). That same year Vivien appeared in Things Are Looking Up (1935), Look Up and Laugh (1935) and Gentlemen's Agreement (1935). In 1938, Vivien went to the US to see her lover, Laurence Olivier, who was filming Wuthering Heights (1939) (she had left Herbert Leigh in 1937). While visiting Olivier, Vivien had the good luck to happen upon the Selznick brothers, who were filming the burning of Atlanta for the film, Gone with the Wind (1939), based on Margaret Mitchell's novel. The role of Scarlett O'Hara had yet to be cast and she was invited to take part in a screen test for the role. There had already been much talk in Hollywood about who was to be cast as Scarlett. Some big names had tried out for the part, such as Norma Shearer, Katharine Hepburn and Paulette Goddard. In fact, most in the film industry felt that Goddard was a sure bet for the part. However, four days after the screen test, Vivien was informed that she had landed the coveted slot. Although few remember it now, at the time her casting was controversial, as she was British and many fans of the novel it was based on felt the role should be played by an American. In addition, the shoot wasn't a pleasant one, as she didn't get along with her co-star, Clark Gable. The rest, as they say, is history. The film became one of the most celebrated in the annals of cinema. Not only did it win Best Picture during the Academy Awards, but Vivien won for Best Actress. Already she was a household name. In 1940, she made two films, Waterloo Bridge (1940) and 21 Days (1940), though neither approached the magnetism of GWTW. That same year saw Vivien marry Olivier and the next year they appeared together in That Hamilton Woman (1941).

Rita Hayworth

Spanish dancer Eduardo Cansino's daughter Margarita trained as a dancer from early childhood. At age 12, mature-looking Rita joined Eduardo's stage act, in which she was spotted three years later by Fox studio head Winfield R. Sheehan, leading to her first studio contract and film debut at age 16 in Dante's Inferno (1935). Fox dropped her after five small roles, but expert, exploitative promotion by first husband Edward Judson soon brought Rita a new contract at Columbia Pictures, where studio head Harry Cohn changed her name to Hayworth and approved raising her hairline by electrolysis. After 13 mainly minor roles, Columbia lent her to Warner Bros. for her first big success, The Strawberry Blonde (1941); her splendid dancing with Fred Astaire in You'll Never Get Rich (1941) made her a star.In person Rita was shy, quiet and unassuming; only when the cameras rolled did she turn on the explosive sexual charisma that in Gilda (1946) made her a superstar. To Rita, though, domestic bliss was a more important, if elusive, goal, and in 1949 she interrupted her career for marriage--unfortunately an unhappy one almost from the start--to playboy Prince Aly Khan. Her films after her divorce from Khan include perhaps her best straight acting performances, Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) and They Came to Cordura (1959). From 1960 (age 42), early onset of Alzheimer's disease (undiagnosed until 1980) limited Rita's powers; the last few roles in her 60-film career were increasingly small. Almost helpless by 1981, Rita was cared for by daughter Yasmin Khan until her death at age 68.

Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on April 5, 1908. Her parents divorced when she was 10. Her early interests were in dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage. She gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge. She studied drama in New York City and made her debut on Broadway in 1929. In 1930, she moved to Hollywood where she hoped things would get better for her in the world of acting. They did indeed. She would become known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. She was first under contract to Universal Studios, where she made her first film, called Way Back Home (1931). After the unsuccessful film The Bad Sister (1931), made the same year, she was fired, which was wildly unpopular. She then moved on to Warner Brothers. Her first film with them was Seed (1931). More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath. In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award nomination for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. Bette would receive six more nominations, including one for her role as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950). While she was a genuine star in the '30s and '40s, the '50s and early '60s saw her in the midst of films that all lost money. Then came What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) in which she played a deranged former child star and a rather spooky one at that. This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times. Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer.