5. KATHARINE HEPBURN (1907-2003)
Given her longevity, and her four Academy Awards (out of a total twelve nominations), it's easy to forget what a tough time of it Hepburn had early in her career. With the aristocratic-goddess bone structure that was built to last and the tremulous voice and her no-nonsense regal quality and the tall frame and strapping physicality that went with it, she stood apart from the run of Hollywood ingenues in the 1930s: a Fox News commentator would proclaim her "elitist"-like. (In her first movie, she played John Barrymore's daughter. In her first Oscar-winning role, in Morning Glory, she played an ambitious young actress who cares more about her career than about finding love with Mr. Right -- exactly what the mass audience had been indoctrinated to view as an unsympathetic character.) She had great successes in such comedies as Bringing Up Baby and Alice Adams, but there was always a love-hate relationship going on with her and the movie audience, and after a string of flops (which included a number of deadly costume dramas but also the inventive and risky Sylvia Scarlett, where she was in male drag for most of the picture) got her designated box office poison by distributor's groups. She retreated to Broadway and came back in the film version of the hit play The Philadelphia Story -- which made her bigger than ever, but in a comedy whose point was partly to bring her down a peg. Her character there has to be humiliated a little so that she can be humanized and become more of a regular Josephine Sixpack, an idea that was also a constant of the many, mostly dull movies she made with Spencer Tracy. She left a more durable image co-starring with Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen -- a comic marriage of mismatched equals -- and in the very fine 1962 version of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. She spent much of her last several years tending to her image and the images of those closest to her in a string of books and interviews.
4. ELIZABETH TAYLOR (1932 - )
Taylor is one of those rare larger-than-life legends (not a fat joke!) who packed seven or eight careers into a lifetime. Or was it seven or eight marriages? Actually it was both (for the record, the total is eight marriages, seven husbands), and though her offscreen exploits always threatened to overshadow her movie career, there can be no denying her place in the pantheon of leading ladies. She became a star at twelve years old in National Velvet, making fans of young girls, adolescent boys and dirty old men as fresh-faced, buxom horse trainer Velvet Brown. She transitioned into adult roles through the original Father of the Bride and its sequel, but it was 1951's A Place in the Sun that set her on the path to superstardom. She was the first actor to crack the million dollar mark in salary for the title role in Cleopatra, which turned out to be a disaster of biblical proportions. She emerged unscathed, more famous than ever, although that had as much to do with her tumultuous marriage to co-star Richard Burton as her onscreen work. Taylor was always renowned more for her beauty and glamour than her acting talent, until those attributes began to fade in the late '60s. She emerged as a terrifying, emasculating force of nature in Reflections in a Golden Eye with Marlon Brando and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Burton, winning her second Academy Award for the latter (she'd earlier won for Butterfield 8). After that, her film career was more miss than hit, but she did have two indelible moments on the small screen: she cursed Luke and Laura on their wedding day in the most-watched episode of General Hospital in 1981, and she was the voice of baby Maggie in a 1992 episode of The Simpsons.
3. INGRID BERGMAN (1915-1982)
At a time when an actress could still seriously damage her career by having an extramarital affair, Ingrid Bergman jeopardized a reputation as one of the greatest of all Hollywood stars by falling in love with Italian director Roberto Rossellini, by whom she soon became pregnant. While most Europeans shrugged with indifference (Bergman continued making films in Italy to great acclaim), America went apeshit, and for several years, the moralistic fervor of the ‘50s cost us the good graces of one of the shining lights of cinema. Bergman was simply too good for this world; when she finally died in 1982, she was assumed directly into Heaven, where God immediately put her to work making a sequel to Casablanca and gave St. Peter a dirty look for even daring to mention her affair behind closed doors. She was always something special, even in the early days: she was tall and striking in an era of waifs, she rarely wore makeup in an era of kohl and lipstick, and she remained resolutely Ingmar Bergman when Lucy Fay LeSuer was trolling around for a more cinematic name. And, happily for American moviegoers, she was never one to hold grudges: after years of being treated shabbily for the crime of falling in love, she favored us with Anastasia, for which she won her second Academy Award. She always wore her heart on her sleeve, much like many of her most famous characters: when she finally returned to Hollywood in 1958 as an Academy Award presenter, she was given a standing ovation by a crowd who, presumably, couldn’t stand to see her cry.
2. AUDREY HEPBURN (1929-1993)
Audrey Hepburn’s early career was the stuff of Hollywood legend -- plucked from relative obscurity (a handful of minor roles in European films) to star in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday, she proceeded to charm the pants off of moviegoers worldwide, and took home an Oscar for her trouble. Throughout the 1950s, Hepburn sustained the stardom that her breakthrough performance had brought her, using her dancer’s grace and petite, almost elfin beauty to bewitching effect in movies like Billy Wilder’s Sabrina and the musical Funny Face, in which she starred opposite Fred Astaire. But it wasn’t until her performances became a little more melancholy that she revealed what a truly great star she was. 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s is fondly-remembered today largely for Hepburn’s turn as the soulful party girl Holly Golightly (and admittedly for Henry Mancini’s score), and she proved surprisingly adept within the thriller framework of Charade and Wait Until Dark. Best of all was Stanley Donen’s Two For the Road as the increasingly dissatisfied wife of Albert Finney, a role that takes her character through the many seasons of a marriage. It’s perhaps her most down-to-earth role; yet at the same time that unmistakable Audrey Hepburn glow is always in abundance. In the last few decades of her career, Hepburn worked sparingly, with memorable roles in Robin and Marian and They All Laughed (let’s forget about the star-studded stink bomb Sidney Sheldon’s Bloodline, shall we?). But despite being mostly absent from the screen, she remained busy as a fashion icon and goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, all the while raising her children and keeping them largely out of the limelight -- an appropriately graceful life for a star who practically embodied the word.
1. BARBARA STANWYCK (1907-1990)
According to her IMDb bio, Barbara Stanwyck is best remembered today for her work on TV’s The Big Valley and The Colbys. To which we can only say -- what? Any true pop culture maven will at least recognize Stanwyck from her iconic turn as Phyllis Dietrichson, one of the most famously fatale of film noir femmes, and the owner of cinema’s most legendary anklet. And any cinephile worth his salt should be familiar with a number of her priceless comedic roles, particularly the irresistible con artist Jean Harrington in The Lady Eve and gangster’s moll Sugarpuss O’Shea (who else could have pulled off that name?) in Ball of Fire. But lest one think Stanwyck was all about tough-talking dames, there’s also her performance in Sorry, Wrong Number as a bedridden woman who picks up the telephone and overhears two men plotting a murder. In short, Stanwyck was one of classical Hollywood’s most complete stars, male or female. She was equally at home in a racy pre-Code drama (like Ball of Fire, in which she played a shameless social climber) as she was in a Breen Office-approved weepie (King Vidor’s Stella Dallas), and equally adaptable to the worlds of Frank Capra (Meet John Doe), Fritz Lang (Clash by Night), and Sam Fuller (as the “high-ridin’ woman with the whip” Jessica Drummond in Forty Guns). We could keep going, but you get the idea -- Stanwyck was a true-blue movie star to the core, and to suggest that her most memorable roles came on two late-period TV series is tantamount to cinematic blasphemy.
Click Here for Part One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven & Eight
Contributors: Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Paul Clark