I’m sixty-eight, and I remember hearing about her pretty much since the earliest days when I was forming memories of the world at large, whenever that would have started. So she was very much present in my world as a well-known name. What I knew about her was that she was regarded as a sexy A-list movie star, but looking at her filmography now, the only movies of hers I know I’ve seen are Contempt and Spirits of the Dead, and those because of Jean-Luc Godard and Federico Fellini, respectively.
Yes, natural blond hair of that shade is very rare. They did a good job, it was one of her trademarks.
As a kid in the 1960s/1970s, the only Brigitte movie that aired with any frequency was “Dear Brigitte” (1965)–and I watched it every time it was on!
Bardot’s life in pictures… (gift link)
The Goon Show: “Tales of Men’s Shirts”; First Broadcast December 31, 1959
Mcgarrigle Sisters - Entre la jeunesse et la sagesse
Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse
Il y a un arrêt de métro
Deux dépanneurs, un bricoleur
Une affiche de Brigitte Bardot
Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse
I have VERY fond memories of The Legend of Frenchy King, which was inexplicably being shown to all audiences in the theater in Ontario around 1973 or so. I was about 12. I have to assume that whoever was supposed to be vetting such things thought it was just a Western. Well, it sorta was … with BB topless!
Seems she was largely promoted to Greatest/Silent Generation and early-cohort Boomer audiences as the face of the Woman of the Sexual Revolution (and of course, “oh, she’s French…say no more, say no more…” )
As other 60s kids here, I first encountered her name already as an established “brand”; by the time I finally got to look at her media cultural evolution already had taken some of the edge off. But I could see how the early-60s audiences would indeed get knocked over by that presence.
Ah, everything passes, and nothing is as perfect as what you display in the front window even if you try to rember only the good times.
The Beethoven sweatshirts were probably inspired by Peanuts.
We’re doing songs that mention BB? Cool.
“Cheerful Cosmic Prophetic Song”.
Like Bridget Bardot, who’s figured it all out
She left behind the good and the bad
And she watches things from her balcony
Something in you will tell you
Stop
Lyrics by Eli Mohar. Translation mine.
I had to ask my father to explain this Mafalda comic to me, and thus learned about BB.
If so, then we must mention Flanders and Swann’s “The Warthog”. (No, they weren’t calling Bardot a warthog. The reference involves a shapely young warthog maiden whose “these and those Are like Brigitte Bardot’s”. An updated later version changed the line to “like Marilyn Monroe’s”.)
And Bob Dylan had mentioned her already in 1963 in the song “I Shall Be Free”:
Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?
I said my friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren
Country’ll grow
Probably because she was out of the business in 2009, but at least she wasn’t among the “let Roman Polanski alone” petition.
It’s kind of surprising that she wasn’t. Here’s what she had to say about the Me Too Movement:
“In the vast majority of cases they are being hypocritical, ridiculous, uninteresting,” the 83-year-old said.
“There are many actresses who flirt with producers in order to get a role.”
She added: “Then, in order to be talked about, they will say they have been harassed. In reality, rather than benefiting them, it harms them.”
You swing all ways?