Jean Peters - (catch her in Pickup on South Street with Richard Widmark and you’ll be instantly spellbound.)
Ida Lupino - *High Sierra *and The Hard Way are two of her coolest performances
Jean Peters is great, but her performance in Singin in the Rain–while brilliant–is definitely not cool. Lupino’s a good one.
ETA: Brainfart: Singin in the Rain was Jean Hagen. Jean Peters is definitely a good addition to this thread.
My problem with this thread is that with the first, entirely absent, and second, very lax, definition of “cool dame” you have created a thread which is clearly destined to be just another “my fave actress” thread among thousands of similar threads. Uncool.
Evil Captor
Perhaps you have trouble understanding the meaning of this topic but I don’t. To me it seems the OP implies an actress that can play a tough role but still be incredibly sexy. A femme fatal dripping with class.
Two such actresses come to mind:
Gloria Grahame
Here’s some dialogue from one of her movies:
Dixon Steele: Go ahead and get some sleep and we’ll have dinner together tonight.
Laurel Gray: We’ll have dinner tonight. But not together.
And my other choice would be:
**
Theresa Russell**
Probably most famous for portraying the title role in the film “The Black Widow”.
I’d definitely add Stanwyck and Lupino, maybe Arden and mid-to-late Crawford.
A dame is a woman who takes a puff of her cigarette, snaps her purse shut and exits. If she doesn’t have a purse that snaps, she’s no dame.
I’ll go with Faye Dunaway
Anne Bancroft
Good definition.
actually I thought of the character “Auntie Mame” when I saw the phrase “cool dame”, so that’s why I nominated Rosalind Russell. I think I was really nominating Mame (though God forbid NOT played by Lucille Ball).
Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?
Um, no. They’re not my favorite actresses at all. Not sure why I should customize a CS opinion thread to your worldview, but I’ll try to do better.
…
lissener
Well, since you liked my definition, I guess I knew what you were talking about.
Gloria Grahame is definitely underappreciated and she’s very rarely talked about in any discussions of film.
Virginia Mayo.
Q
Mary Astor for “The Maltese Falcon” and Veronica Lake for “This Gun For Hire.” I would have Lauren Bacall a bit higher as well.
And why not?
[Talking about Audrey Hepburn]
Vulnerability and innocence. She’s the woman you toss your cape over the puddle for. A dame sees chivalry as weakness.
Kay Francis.
ETA: JKilez, you are killing me.
Sorry, but this continues to really piss me off. Just for the record, here are my favorite actresses. And allow me to suggest that, in future, if you don’t want to participate in a CS thread, EC, why then bless you, don’t.
[ol]
[li]Bette Davis[/li][li]Barbara Stanwyck[/li][li]Anna Magnani[/li][li]Julianne Moore[/li][li]Toni Collette[/li][li]Carole Lombard[/li][li]Glenda Jackson[/li][li]Myrna Loy[/li][li]Samantha Morton[/li][li]Shelly Winters[/li][li]Marisa Tomei[/li][/ol]