Want your reality to get smacked between the eyes? Think about this.
Heather Locklear, as seen in this reunion photo of the cast of Melrose Place, is 51.
That’s the same age as Gloria Swanson as the hag of a silent screen star in Sunset Boulevard and Margaret Dumont in Duck Soup.
She’s not alone. Most of the other woman in that Melrose Place photo are older than Bette Davis was when she played the fading star in All About Eve.
The Golden Age of Hollywood did have a lot of great roles for strong women. But that era destroyed older women to an extent unthinkable today. You can argue that the demand for staying beauty longer leads to plastic surgery, botox, and starvation diets and that would be true. But that started penetrating society in the 1920s, with far more primitive medical practices that would probably be illegal, not just unethical, today.
Every time I look back at the Good Old Days I realize all over again how much better the world has gotten just within my lifetime.
This is not an example of how much better the world has gotten. This is an example of the unfortunate stereotype that a woman has nothing worthwhile to offer unless she is stunningly beautiful. And she’d better stay that way no matter how old she gets.
That’s not Heather Locklear, this is Heather Locklear. Three years earlier in fact. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. She looks perfectly great for a mere mortal 50 year old woman.
I can’t tell from the OP if they mean it’s a better world because images can be better manipulated, but off the set people age at the same rate they ever did as far as I know.
I mean that despite the use of makeup, photo retouching, soft lighting, plastic surgery, and quack nostrums to make women look younger, women over 50, over 40, even over 30 were destroyed and tossed by the industries that fed off them in the so-called Golden Age. I’d say this held true for a surprisingly long time. The 60s certainly, probably the 70s and 80s.
The ridiculously maligned Baby Boomers seem to be the force that turned this around. It’s no longer possible to tell older women that they must be resigned to playing matrons and hags. It’s become increasingly ludicrous to pair a 60-year-old male with a 25-year-old costar, as was the norm for decades.
It’s not that the industry has suddenly turned artificial and superficial. It always has been. Totally forgotten today, Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton was the best-selling novel of 1923 and made into a popular silent movie.
Back then, age was an embarrassing secret. The story has to end with the man getting the younger woman. Atherton, who was 66 at the time, had herself gone through rejuvenating treatments and spends large chucks of the book philosophizing about women and aging.
Sure, trophy wives are a modern invention. But generally speaking the world is more equally artificial and superficial today. Believe me, that’s an improvement.
I don’t think I’ve actually seen Heather Locklear act in anything since she was on Spin City, which went off the air a decade ago. Looking at her IMDb entry, in recent years she’s been in several made for TV movies and a short-lived “next generation” Melrose Place series that I didn’t know had even existed. She’ll also be appearing in the upcoming Scary Movie 5.
While this is certainly more work than plenty of performers get, I imagine she’d rather be starring in major Hollywood films like Bette Davis and Gloria Swanson were doing at her age.
Interesting tidbit from the November TCM magazine. Constance Bennett, age 60 and away from film for 15 years, was asked to play Lana Turner’s mother-in-law in Madame X. Without telling anyone, Bennett got a facelift and appeared on the set looking younger than her daughter-in-law.
Not the point of the OP, but one reason today’s actresses stay young-looking longer is because they don’t smoke (and they’ve stopped tanning). Look around at any class reunion (starting at the 20th or so), and you can easily spot the women who never smoked.
I think you mean well, but times are still like this. The very fact that people can’t discuss an actress over the age of 40 without first talking about how old she looks only underscores this reality.
Meryl Streep is the only actress that readily comes to mind who has had a fairly steady stream of leading parts well into middle-age. I’m really confused why Heather Locklear seems to be your inspiration for this thread, as she hasn’t been relevant since the 90’s.
Because I just happened to read the Entertainment Weekly article and because she was 51, thereby matching Gloria Swanson’s age. It could have been some other actress if it had been another article.
Those pictures (plus the dozens of others in the reunion issue) and the attitude they project toward older actresses would have been impossible in the 1930s fan magazines. It would have been as easy to run an article on Negro lesbians.
Television, especially cable, is full of series whose stars are older women. Limiting the trend to Meryl Streep is silly.
The objections I’m getting are fascinatingly like comments on articles I’ve read about today’s feminism. People are torn between proclaiming the astounding difference in attitudes between the 60s when the movement started and today or being furious that the change is not complete and universal. With the broadness of generalization, it seems that older feminists who remember the earlier times tend toward the former and younger feminists who have always seen the goal as a possibility tend toward the latter.
Your OP is about Hollywood, right? Where are the 40, 50, and 60 year-old women on the silver screen? I’m puzzled why you don’t think that is relevant in this thread, but okay.
I do get your point. Things are better for female actresses than they were in the 50’s. That is hard to argue against. But what you’re saying about peri-menopausal female actresses being tossed in the trash heap en masse is a long way from being a thing of the past, Heather Locklear notwithstanding.
Heather Locklear isn’t one of them, though. She hasn’t starred in a TV series since 2004, and that was a show I’ve never heard of before called LAX that was cancelled after 13 episodes. Wikipedia tells me she was only a guest star on the 2009-2010 Melrose Place. She may look good for her age, but Heather Locklear is pretty much a has-been. Looking at her IMDb credits the roles she has had recently appear to have been mostly playing “women of a certain age”, including starring in a TV movie actually titled Women of a Certain Age.
Aside from The Rocky Horror Picture Show most of Susan Sarandon’s best-known roles were in movies she made when she was in her 40s, but since she turned 50 (1996) she has been more in supporting roles. Her career seems a lot healthier than Heather Locklear’s though, despite being 15 years older.
