Partially, it was just to expand my knowledge of female Mad Scientists. An ongoing interest of mine, both artistic and professional.
This aided in my primary goal—testing out, at least informally, a completely weird and trivial observation of mine: That female mad scientists seem to be overwhelmingly blonde.
Result so far: More blonde scientists than brunettes, but only by one entry. So, if I had to hazard a guess—without comparing this to the hair color ratio of other kinds of characters—this probably isn’t statistically unusual. :smack:
If anything, however, it’s probably more meaningful that most of them had hair color—i.e., skewing younger than the popular image of many male mad scientists, being white haired, or balding.
Maybe this is more a job for a Mad Statistician. Or a Mad Film/Gender Theorist.
Maybe even less so than you think–several of us listed both Agatha and Lucrezia. Both are blonde…but they’re also mother and daughter, making it more likely (both for genetic reasons and for artistic reasons) that they’d have the same hair color. Maybe the pair of them should only count as one instance, or perhaps 1.5?
Actually, I have always been inclined to think that women of all character types on TV and in films tend to be blonde far more often than IRL. I noticed this all the way back in college while watching soaps on summer break and realizing that about 90% of the women had blonde or very light brunette hair. I’ve never made an actual breakdown of the numbers, but I still tend to see more blonde women on TV shows than any other hair color shade.
That is, in fact, statistically unusual. Blondes do not make up half of the women in the world. They don’t even make up half of the white women in the world.
Helen Esterhazy Pendergast from Child & Preston’s novels *Fever Dream *and *Cold Vengeance would be a candidate, I would think.
Maria Frankenstein from Jesse James Meets Frankstein’s Daughter * has already been named, but she was my first thought. It’s not as bad a movie as you would think.
The psychiatrist (sorry, but my Google Fu skills are not equal to finding her name and I’m not at home) from Michael Slade’s Primal Scream
You’d think the Legion of Super-Heroes would have bumped into a female mad scientist, but I can’t remember any.
True enough; however, as Don Draper notes, I’m not sure if the ratio is unusual for fictional characters—or at least ones on film.
And I’m afraid I didn’t do anything special like a spreadsheet graph for the hair color chart—just a simple tally, image searching the characters to check their hair color, and making a list. But, for the record:
So, roughly 27% of your sample is blond. Only about 2% of the world population is blond, but the Mad Scientist trope isn’t really a worldwide thing; European settings are probably the most common, though North America and Asia also contribute substantially to the ranks of the Mad. Tropical islands and jungles also have a substantial Mad population, but they are generally expatriates, driven out by fools who will no doubt all be shown.
Based on a quick look at the Wikipedia entry for “blond”, the 27% rate is low for northern Europe, roughly even around France, and high for nearly everywhere else (except Canada, which is about 25% blonde). The percentage of blondes would be pretty much on the mark if Mad Science were a predominantly central European occupation (and if the sample were sufficient for any statistical significance, of course).
Another one I thought of too late: Shannon Foraker, from the Honor Harrington books. She starts off as a tactical officer, but ends up heading a secret weapon development program, which I think is a suitably mad scientist occupation. I don’t think we ever learn her hair color, though.
You know, it was never established whether that hump-headed orange creature that Bugs Bunny outwitted by acting as a hairdresser was male or female…(“Such an innnnteresting monster should have an innnteresting hairdo.”) Remember? The one whose master had the neon sign outside flashing the message “Evil Scientist…Boo…Evil Scientist…Boo…”
The only one I could think of off the top of my head was Dr. Blight from Captain Planet.
Given enough time, I’d have probably thought of Agatha Heterodyne as well. I hadn’t previously considered Poison Ivy a mad scientist, but she totally is.
If I were more of a sci-fi devote, I’d be able to nominate some. But as it is, I can’t think of many movies featuring legitimate female scientists, sane OR mad.
Most of the female movie scientists I remember have been implausible eye candy- I mean, lots of James Bond’s girls were scientists (Christmas Jones, Holly Goodhead). And every cheesy giant monster movie of the 50s (Them, It Came From Beneath the Sea, Beginning of the End) seemed to have a beautiful female scientist who becomes the hero’s love .
Most have been mentioned already, however, two that haven’t are Ida Lapino as Dr. Faustina in Wild, Wild West (the TV show not the movie). She played Dr. Faustina. I really enjoyed Lapino in almost everything she did and predictably this was wonderfully campy.
The other was Joan Crawford in the wonderfully bad Trog. It was in the waning years of Crawford’s career and she played a mad woman scientist who turned hunky young men into blood-thirsty cavemen. I think her character’s name was Dr. Brauton or Bracton or something like that. If it wasn’t Crawford’s worst film, it is in the bottom three, easily.
