women i love
But this had to be said. I'm not into the "L" word - I can only go as far as Katy Perry's glammed up smoochers can take her. Okay? Good. Let's proceed with the drama.
They are icons, women who, despite the constraints presented by the world around them and the medium they chose to express themselves in, have been in our collective cultural awareness for the longest time. They are all pop, mainstream and familiar yet different.
I first came to know about Greta Garbo when I read in Time magazine the correction she made to the "I want to be alone" remark she allegedly had said. According to La Grabo, she never said that and that what she actually said was "I want to be left alone". And according to her "...there is all the difference". And I agree. After reading that article, and seeing the black-and-white in-your-face closeup picture that accompanied it, I found myself intrigued and viscerally interested. Since then, I have seen most of her movies, Ninotchka, Anna Christie, Grand Hotel, Camille and a slew of other starrers including those made when sound was all orchestral music. In all of them, the great Greta never failed to enchant with her thick Swedish accent and curious manly demeanor. And now I think, how can she possibly be beguiling in all of those monocrhomatic opuses when deep inside she shunned the lights that set her sailing from Sweden all the way to the US?
Bette Davis was another actress on a different plane. She was not considered a great beauty by Hollywood standards then but she made up for it with tons of talent and, of course, those eyes. In the movies I saw, Ms. Davis was almost always on fire. The roles she essayed were mostly never leading-lady-types, never sweetheart-y and definitely never boring. With her, it's almost always a love me or hate me situation. In All About Eve, she floored me with her often acerbic delivered with such bravura and speed and sass that you'd think there's no script and the lady was just speaking her mind out. In her other movies, like Now, Voyager, Jezebel and The Little Foxes, her roles bordered on villainy but laced with just the right amount of star power that you'd still end up liking her. And speaking of that star power, she had it in gargantuan scale that it's no wonder then that Warner Bros. at one point paid all the legal expenses she incurred in a suit she brought against them. They even gave her movies that earned her Oscar nominations. And to think that the suit stemmed from her diva-esque demands (we expect no less( that she be given "stronger" roles! Ah the irony! The drama! And this I wonder, would she have made a better Scarlett O'Hara - a role she so coveted but lost to Vivien Leigh. Did Margaret Mitchell had her in mind when she was writing Gone With the Wind? A delicious thought.
And then there's Madonna. Like the two ladies above, she's championed cause celebre as weapon in the business of entertainment. And why not? She's yet to be generally accepted as an actress despite a Golden Globe for Evita. Her singing alone, as is commonly highlighted in many a review, would not sell concert tickets like, say, Dame Streisand. would. And her terpsichorean skills will never be enough to have her name written alongside that of Martha Graham's. Not even in the same paragraph. But despite these shortcomings she has managed to become more than just a flash in the pop culture pan. She had been written off and vilified at various stages of her career but at 51, and two divorces later, she is still selling out stadiums everywhere, still a media darling and still the benchmark by which up and coming musical starlets are judged.
So what propelled these women to the summit of iconoclasm? In my opinion, not that I matter, I think its their rejection of compromises and sticking to their guns and games that made them distinct. By refusing mediocrity and living outside of the proverbial box of conventionality, they have proven that the middle of the road is not always the best way to go.
"Be an individualist-and an individual. You'll be amazed at how much faster you'll get ahead." - J. Paul Getty (1892 - 1976), oil magnate
Amazon:
Greta Garbo - The Signature Collection (Anna Christie / Mata Hari / Grand Hotel / Queen Christina / Anna Karenina / Camille / Ninotchka / Garbo Silents)
The Bette Davis Collection (The Star / Mr. Skeffington / Dark Victory / Now, Voyager / The Letter)
(Madonna) Celebration: The Video Collection
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