Ladies With an Attitude

We were reading over the comments in the latest Hair Harpy Cage Match with some amusement. It seems that if you mention Barbara Stanwyck, people have essays to write and things to say about her far out of proportion to any of the previous combatants. This is, of course, no surprise to us. Miss Stanwyck is in that rarefied group of ladies from the early part of the 20th Century, the one we like to call The Dames.

The Dames were a smattering of actresses and entertainers that so perfectly encapsulated the times in which they lived as well as the changing role of women throughout the century that they simply refuse to be forgotten. We can include among their number Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Miss Stanwyck, and to a lesser extent, women like Eve Arden, Rosalind Russell, Myrna Loy and Claudette Colbert. We say "lesser extent" not to impugn the immense talents of the latter ladies. They were no less talented than their more well-known colleagues, but the fact of the matter is, they never passed into legend on the same level as Davis, Crawford and Hepburn. We'll leave it to other scholars of Hollywood's Golden Age (read: middle-aged gay men) to explain why.

At any rate, they are all still beloved 60-plus years after their heydays, long after the names of countless other contemporaneous female entertainers have been shrouded by time and overshadowed by the accomplishments of others. And why? Because they were so damn good at what they did that even now, they stare out at us from their Hurrell portraits, just daring us to forget them.

And when we refer to "what they did," it's less about their acting accomplishments (which are considerable) and more about their ability to shape and mold the culture around them. After the sexual liberation of the Jazz Era and the callus-forming harshness of the Depression, these gals came on the scene with exactly the hard edge that people needed heading into the second World War.

They were all harsh quips and slaps, raised eyebrows and outrageous hats, cigarettes and gowns, furs and ambition. Unlike the female stars of a decade or two later, these women rarely played the types of roles that ended in blissful trips down the aisle. Instead, they opened businesses, had closets full of ball gowns, schemed to kill their husbands, had affairs and just generally waltzed into a place and said "Hey there, fellas. Come here and tell mommy what you can do for her."

They had sexual appetites and Ph.D-level vocabularies. They looked great in everything they wore and everything they did, whether it was laughing off suitors in a ballroom or flying an airplane or typing up their latest scoop or digging ditches by headlight to hide the body. The Dames were the very definition of fabulous and it's no surprise that they captured the imagination of everyone from housewives to soldiers to budding little homosexuals and, probably most important of all, the little girls and young women who would grow up and a generation later, declare themselves feminists and quite literally change the world. Meryl Streep, in a promo for Turner Classic Movies (the GayBoys favorite cable network after Bravo) tells of running home from school so she could catch the afternoon movie and gleefully "watch Bette Davis scare the hell out of a man."

These women represented feminism at a time when not only was the concept of equality for women largely derided, it didn't even have a name yet. They were never passive. Events didn't revolve around them; events happened because of them. One only has to look at the vast number of female-centered films that didn't star any of these women to see what a revolutionary concept that was for the time. That is why we're still so enthralled with them. Because even today, the idea of an ambitious, smart, sexually available woman still raises eyebrows and ire. Just imagine what it was like to be one (or just portray one - but let's face it, most of these women weren't playing characters too far off the mark in regards to their own personalities) sixty or seventy years ago.

You dames, you fabulous, strong, sexy dames. We hope you never go out of style. Long after we're gone, we hope little girls will look at you and sit up a little straighter and prouder and little gayboys will look at you and marvel at your impeccable makeup and endless wardrobe.

And if you haven't availed yourself of the talents of these legendary dames, we strongly urge you to do so. We'll leave it up to our fabulous commenters to make suggestions as to which of their films are the best.