Lindsey Lohan? Tara Reid? JLo? Jolie? Guess again.
Why do I beat up on Breitbart? Because they get all kinds of basics wrong, from spelling to grammar to sentence structure to, well, facts. Their managing editor can’t write a screed without stubbing his toe on English. Breitbart Sports has reporters who lose their way in the middle of a sentence. The Breitbart headline writers have only the vaguest idea about the relation between word order and meaning. My common reaction to Breitbart heads is “huh? What?”
Which reached a kind of zenith today with this headline and teaser copy:
Book Spills Ava Gardner’s Secrets, Shows Steamy Side of Three Star Marriages
A new excerpt from the tell-all “Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations” reveals the dirt behind the starlet’s three high-profile marriages.
Excuse me. Ava Gardner was no starlet. She was one of the most charismatic female superstars ever to grace the silver screen. She would rank in almost anyone’s top five most beautiful actresses ever. Don’t care who you lead with — Grace Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Greta Garbo — she’s still going to make the list. Of all of them, she’s the only one who had no bad angle. Oh? Really? You didn’t know Rita Hayworth shaved her forehead and Marilyn took amphetamines? Ava was always completely beautiful. Didn’t know that?
Then watch this. Yeah. Watch every minute. I’m serious.
The decisive difference? The cleft chin. Don’t tell me you ever encountered such a bewitching thing. Not to mention all the tits and hips and the fact that you can practically smell her in heat on screen and in part. Maybe the hottest woman who ever lived. All the sluts of today are just passing pikers. Ava Gardner was a courtesan for the ages. A superstar? A goddess. Kardashians be damned. Ava was not a force of media but of nature.
Starlet. What a tool to say it. Breitbart, grow the hell up and buy yourselves some writing talent. Getting tired of reading fake facts and phony punditry.
Come on, everybody. Read the post, watch the gorgeous video, and let’s talk for a change about something that doesn’t portend the end of the world. Hmmm? It’s called having fun for a change.
I’m all for this kind of change.
Let me get the conversation started. Imagine Joan Rivers making vagina jokes about Ava. Result? One dead Joan. Take it from there.
She’s beautiful, surely. But my big crush was always Audrey Hepburn. She moved through the world like she wasn’t really from here. Though maybe that was just my unconscious rationalization for how unobtainable she was. 😉
“Starlet” is a silly term to apply to either of them, indeed.
I agree about Audrey. I have a funny story about her too. I was in an all-male prep school when the Saturday night new release movie was “Wait Until Dark.” Remember it? Blind girl being stalked by a killer in her darkened apartment. She turns the tables, stabs him, and might be about to get away when he lunges and grabs her ankle. One of the biggest gotcha moments in the history of film.
But here’s the funny part. Most of us stop breathing while the heart rate goes through the roof. Not everyone. In the dark, in an all male audience, more than one SCREAMED. Funnier still. Everyone else was so rapt in the plot that I swear I’m the only one who noticed the screams.
Bottom line. Nobody, not one of us, EVER wants anyone to hurt Audrey Hepburn.
And for the record, if I ever saw Ava Gardner across a crowded room, I’d be making for the exit immediately. Femme Fatale is not a literary term. My dad knew her first husband in the Army Air Corps. He didn’t come back from the mission after she showed up at the gate of the base. That was before she tried (and thankfully failed) to polish off Sinatra. Takes one to beat one, I guess.
Anyone else want to play?
Good Audrey story. I remember that film… It was a great concept, and required a special actress to carry off the lead role: a blind protagonist that your Y-chromosome instinctively compels you to protect at all costs (though she ended up holding her own!). It was a nail-biter, for sure…
I think my first Audrey movie was “My Fair Lady”. I am wholly unashamed — even as a straight man — to admit that I’ve seen it at least a dozen times, and know most of the lyrics to the songs by heart (although it is a horrifying experience to hear me sing them). A truly fantastic cast, all the way down to Jeremy Brett as poor Freddy.
Ava and Audrey were both amazing. Though my own vote goes to June Marlowe — who you might know better as Miss Crabtree. Unfortunately I can’t find any YouTube videos that do her justice. She exudes a combination of lively humor and saintly patience that seems hard to come by these days.
Well, you may protest, but I would put Charlize Theron in a category with those women. Watch what she did in “Monster.” She gained more weight than Deniro in “Raging Bull,” turned in one of the great performances of the ages, and is still too beautiful for words.
Christina Ricci is, as Tim Burton observed, Peter Lorre’s long-lost daughter. Her appeal goes back even further, to probably the starlets of the silent era. She does all of her acting with her eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqHCFdl7w4k
I would crawl naked, dick-first, over a mile of broken glass just to hear either one of those women fart through a cellphone with poor reception.
Since these actresses were before my time, I have only seen them in passing, usually when my dad was watching old movies or TMC. What strikes me, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be nearly as many voluptuous, womanly actresses nowadays as there used to be. Is it just me?
Joe? Stop it. You’re spoiling the mood.
I’ll agree wholeheartedly. Christina Ricci? Come on, dude.
And you already used that last bit virtually word for word at the other site, though if memory serves it was to hear Lucy Liu queef through a cellphone with poor reception. Which…uh, yeah. I don’t think so.
My offer stands for both Lucy and Christina. And yeah, Christina seriously dude. Like a postal employee going out the hard way, I regret nothing.
Joe. Really? The ultimate nerd obstacle course, self made, self humiliating, self destructive. You want to do nasty things with Lucy and Christina? Here’s an idea: Ask them out on a date. But please spare US the details.