inexplicable leading ladies

[Dominic]

Here's my favorite:



Joan Crawford



This woman is the most inexplicable movie star of all-time. She's scary, she looks like Frankenstein after a gender reassignment, and, oh yeah, she couldn't act. There've been plenty of "odd" looking leading ladies, ones that aren't conventionally pretty: Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Kathy Bates, Amanda Plummer (all of them superb actresses) - but Crawford was just downright bizarre. I find it absolutely perfect that most people remember Crawford not for one of her many atrocious performances, but for Faye Dunaway's over-the-top lampooning of her in Mommie Dearest.

[Colt McCoy]

Angela Lansbury was actually considered pretty hot in her youth.

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
Angela Lansbury was actually considered pretty hot in her youth.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Blarg]

In Kirk Douglas's first autobiography(terrific read btw), he says he was very hot for her, and she had a great body back in the day. But when he was just about to do the nasty with her in her house, he realized she was nuts and beat feet hasty.

Crawford looked far more harsh and bizarre as she aged. She didn't start off too bad.

Comparisons to other female stars who rapidly lost their attractiveness:

Angela Landsbury started out as a hottie.
So did Shelly Winters.

[Blarg]

Rosie O'Donnell is not a leading lady in the traditional sense, but she has been consistently pushed to places she has no real reason to be, from movies to talk shows to her own magazine. The lady is extremely grating, but without being interesting or funny. People have staked -- and sometimes lost -- quite a bit of money on her. She should never have been given so much opportunity with so little to offer.

I'm going to pick up more hate by, first, going outside of movie roles, and second, by attacking someone a lot of people respect and/or like: Ellen Degeneres. I remember her from her earliest appearances on the Tonight Show. You could hear a pin drop in a lot of her routines. Relentlessly dull. She got her sitcom at a time when networks were grabbing any stand-up comic they could find and giving them shows. That she got trapped in the net was the luckiest fluke of her life. Her hystrionic self-promotion rose to sickening levels the likes of which probably only Paris Hilton has come anywhere near since then, and it assured her a place in the Hollywood firmanent from which she can bore us in perpetuity.

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
In Kirk Douglas's first autobiography(terrific read btw), he says he was very hot for her, and she had a great body back in the day. But when he was just about to do the nasty with her in her house, he realized she was nuts and beat feet hasty.

Crawford looked far more harsh and bizarre as she aged. She didn't start off too bad.

Comparisons to other female stars who rapidly lost their attractiveness:

Angela Landsbury started out as a hottie.
So did Shelly Winters.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, Crawford was fairly attractive back in the silent picture days but I don't think she really became a huge star until her 40s...

[Dominic]

I agree with you on Rosie, but I object to your inclusion of Ellen D.! I've always loved her brand of humor and find her to be quite charming, attractive and fun to watch. I even liked her sitcom.

[Blarg]

We'll definitely never agree on that. I'm amazed you could find her attractive, never mind the rest of it. Personally, I think her harping exploitation of her sexual orientation was abysmal and grotesque. And her stand-up was atrocious. But, well, we'll just have to disagree.

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
We'll definitely never agree on that. I'm amazed you could find her attractive, never mind the rest of it. Personally, I think her harping exploitation of her sexual orientation was abysmal and grotesque. And her stand-up was atrocious. But, well, we'll just have to disagree.

[/ QUOTE ]

no, dammit, I WILL convert you Blarg, just you wait and see.

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[katyseagull]

When you say "leading lady" are you talking the actress with the lead role or are you talking the main love interest?