# Hotties from the Golden Age of Movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 12, 2005, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924 "2005-04-12T03:59:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ZeroGyro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47774/32.png) [@ZeroGyro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZeroGyro)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/61 "2005-04-13T14:47:19Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > **Manduck** , I spent an hour or so last night looking, and except for a shot of Joan in a bathtub that shows the side of her right breast, I couldn’t find anything even slightly racy. Certainly nothing like **Rube** describes. > > Could you please help us serious film scholars find this important historical document? For reseach purposes only, of course. Thanks. Just do a Google image search for “Joan Blondell nude” and make sure SafeSearch is off. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/62 "2005-04-13T15:19:42Z")
> [@ZeroGyro](#): > > Just do a Google image search for “Joan Blondell nude” and make sure SafeSearch is off. That’s what I did, and only found a million porn sites with the names of every female star ever, in tiny little type, followed by the word “nude.” Finally, I found this just now: [Definitely not work safe!](http://www.nude-celebrities-a-z-free-pictures.com/1celebrities/joan-blondell-nude/joan-blondell-nude-1.jpg) Is this the one, **Rube**? I think there’s a good possibility it’s a fake. First off, I couldn’t swear that’s Joan Blondell’s face. But even so, there’s something about the appearance of her face that makes me think it’s been pasted onto a different body. Also, the shaved pubes (which would, IMO, have been _highly_ unusual in the 1930s or '40s) definitely look like airbrush work. (Of course, that’s not necessarily germane to the question of whether the rest of the picture is fake, but it suggests some degree of manipulation.) But still, it’s certainly interesting from a film scholarship perspective. Does anyone know what the story behind the picture is supposed to be? ---
**Author:** ![Rube\_E.Tewesday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f0a364/32.png) [@Rube\_E.Tewesday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rube_E.Tewesday)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/63 "2005-04-13T15:34:09Z")
I didn’t check the not work-safe link, but what you describe sounds right, based on what I’ve seen in the past… I can’t swear it’s not fake. But it matches very closely the picture as it was described in an interview with Ms Blondell that I read many years ago, before the Net put these pictures everyplace. The interviewer was very, er, happy, about having seen the picture, and she laughed it off saying that she’d been distracted when she got a call on set and walked around nude. She certainly didn’t deny that the picture existed. This would have been a long time ago, maybe 30 years (odd the things that stick in your mind), so from a film history perspective, her nudity has been a matter of interest for quite a while). ---
**Author:** ![zagloba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/977dab/32.png) [@zagloba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zagloba)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/64 "2005-04-13T15:37:37Z")
> [@Dignan](#): > > Jane Russell. Wasn’t there trouble with getting her first movie _The Outlaw_ past the censors? It’s an otherwise terrible movie, but Jane Russell is great. > > I haven’t seen the movie, but why wasn’t she portrayed in _The Aviator_? There is some brief footage from _The Outlaw_ in _The Aviator_. If they’d given a few minutes to every starlet Howard Hughes was associated with, they wouldn’t have had time for anything else! ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/65 "2005-04-13T15:48:23Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > And that’s why I mentioned both Dorothy Malone and Martha Vickers earlier, and I shouldn’t have left off Sonia Darrin. Darrin was Agnes, the high-toned one who worked for the bad guys and didn’t know her books (which always made me wonder why they would run a bookstore front with people who didn’t know books). She’s very sleek. And thin. Her outfits made her waist look as tiny as a corset-bearing Victorian maiden’s. She looks thin standing next to Lauren Bacall, not an easy feat. (I had thought only Slim Keith could do that. Imagine what it took to be nicknamed Slim in those days. Anyway the connection is that fashion model Nancy Gross changed her name to Slim Keith, married Howard Hawks and recommended another fashion model to him: Lauren Bacall.) > > Anyway Bogie goes across the street to a real bookshop where Dorothy Malone works. She lets down her hair - literally - and Bogie’s eyes light up. She drinks too, and she closes down the store and shuts the curtains to give us a while to exercise our imaginations. > > Martha Vickers plays Carmen, the trampy younger daughter, who throws herself literally at Spade, showing lots of leg and tousled hair. Probably a hundred of today’s actresses could have played her part, but none of the others. > > Even Carole Douglas, in her only role, played a pretty librarian who caught Bogie’s eye. While we’re at it, don’t forget the cab driver (Joy Barlow) that hits on Bogie, as well as the smokin’ hottie cigarette and hatcheck girls (Shelby Payne & Lorraine Miller) at Eddie Mars’ club. The movie is funny, suspenseful, expertly-acted, and dripping with gorgeous women. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/66 "2005-04-13T16:00:11Z")
And has some of the best dialog ever put on the screen. “She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.” ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/67 "2005-04-13T16:12:56Z")
Bogart: “You’ve got a touch of class, but I don’t know how far you can go.” Bacall: “A lot depends on who’s in the saddle.” God, I love that film. Was lucky enough to see it a few years ago in a cinema. It was great to see it with a big audience all laughing at the smart witty dialogue. The woman is the bookshop is indeed stunning. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/68 "2005-04-13T16:37:39Z")
Yeah, never mind that even the original author couldn’t figure out the plot! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924/69 "2005-04-13T17:56:17Z")
> [@zagloba](#): > > There is some brief footage from _The Outlaw_ in _The Aviator_. If they’d given a few minutes to every starlet Howard Hughes was associated with, they wouldn’t have had time for anything else! Actually, in Son of Sinbad, Hughes DID give screen time to many of the babes he slept with in the picture. There were no less than 80 women cast in the film (40 of them were the Forty Daughters of the Forty Thieves). It was also an unusually HOT movie for its time, with lots of scantily clad dancing around – no nudity, of course. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotties-from-the-golden-age-of-movies/298924.md?page=3)