by Kim Krizan
When the great Marlene Dietrich was a young woman trying out for acting parts in Berlin of the 1920s, she was thought by some to be nothing particularly special. She was even described as a rather plump, clumsy cow who over-acted and over-dressed and, consequently, was over-looked for the best parts. When she saw herself on screen in one of her early films, she is said to have exclaimed, “I look like a potato with hair!” But then a fantastic Svengali, the director Josef Von Sternberg, saw her photograph and thought he detected something interesting under the excess weight and ruffles.
Von Sternberg cast Dietrich in “The Blue Angel” and got right to work. And here’s where Marlene Dietrich gets the credit, for she had the discipline to take the ball and run with it. Her first big part, filmed in both German and English, was that of a bawdy nightclub performer, the faithless seductress Lola Lola. The movie was an international sensation. Dietrich knew a good thing when it fell into her lap and so she embodied the role of the leggy seductress and world-weary chanteuse until the end of her life.
The truth is that Dietrich was an intelligent woman, though not one particularly well-endowed with acting or singing talent. And while she had many lovers, she had that cute European penchant for remaining married to her husband through it all. Her basic nature was a bit of a contradiction: the ardent, aggressive careerist who was also a dedicated hausfrau enamored of cooking, cleaning, and aprons. Still, Dietrich devoted her life to maintaining what she called “The Image” and her career lasted six decades. “Glamour is what I sell,” she explained. “It’s my stock in trade.”
If Dietrich’s myth continues to be indelible it is because she was a true soldier for Fatalism. She spent any money she earned on appearing the part of the elegant, remote femme fatale, swathing herself in avant-garde fashions and jewels, standing for hours at tedious dress-fittings, and refusing to be seen in public after she finally lost her looks in her eighties. She, more than most, understood that applying the signs and symbols of the femme fatale would give her a power beyond talent, money, and beauty—as well as a life in the public eye beyond her mortal one.
Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner was a sweet, shy, and predominately barefoot girl who grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina. After her portrait was seen in a photographer’s window by a talent scout she was sent to the Hollywood wolves who promptly attempted to remove her accent, her eyebrows, and her innocence. She won the battle to keep her eyebrows; it was her accent and her innocence that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Gardner was unlucky in love—what with husband #1 (boy star Mickey Rooney) not only declining to give her the white wedding she so desired but also ignoring her on their honeymoon. He also brought other girls into their bed (or so she believed) when she was in the hospital with appendicitis. Then her adored second husband (band leader Artie Shaw) systematically damaged her self-esteem by publicly berating her for being, as he chivalrously put it, “a stupid country girl.”
After the pain of those two failed marriages, Gardner tried her level best not to fall in love again and became a wild and cynical habitué of the fast lane. But then her resolve slipped. She famously took up with a tempestuous married man, singer Frank Sinatra, and learned to give as good as she got. Fighting in public, drinking in excess, cavorting with bullfighters, being banned from hotels for outrageous behavior, and driving Sinatra to a suicide attempt are just a few of the bullet points on her résumé. The shy tobacco farmer’s daughter had become a hell cat.
Gardner’s relationship with Sinatra was supposed to be the romance of the century, but Jeanie Sims, a production assistant on Gardner’s film “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman,” recounted the following story in the book Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing:
She was supposed to be lost in some deep thought about the man she was in love with. And she couldn’t get it right for Al [the director]. He was very gentle with her, but he was a bit frustrated or sad that he couldn’t quite get what he wanted from her, some look of complete absorption in this love affair. Then Al finally went over and said to her, ‘Ava, is there some one person in your life who you love or have loved more than anyone else on earth?’ And she answered him so quietly I could not hear her. And he told her to think of that person and it was just the impetus she needed, and she got it perfect on the next shot. And afterward I was a bit curious, and I asked Al what she had said, who she had loved more than anyone, and Al said, ‘The clarinet player—Artie Shaw.’ And, you know, I thought how interesting because she was thinking of Shaw and in the newspapers there was all that talk about Ava and Frank Sinatra.
Meanwhile, Sinatra was gnashing his teeth, pulling his hair, and wailing: “This love I feel for her, it’s sapping me of everything I got…. What is this spell she has me under?”
And so the sweet, shy sharecropper’s daughter became completely notorious. Her fate as dangerous femme fatale was sealed and she will forever be the untamable heartbreaker, famous for her redoubtable beauty, but also for throwing it all away. The truth is that people with broken hearts become heartbreakers. Ladies, you would do it too.
Coda
Think of the things that are said about women who step out of the box:
•“She’s a bitch.”
•“She’s conniving.”
•“She’s the creation of men.”
•“She’s stupid / untalented / lucky.”
•“She’s a lesbian / nymphomaniac / hermaphrodite.”
•“She’s slept with people to get ahead.”
In short, a certain sort of woman threatens the living shit out of a lot of people. Still, the cursory examination of “real” femme fatales detailed in this chapter should prove once and for all that even those ladies who were and are the genuine article weren’t and aren’t simplistic, sexy witches. Simplistic, sexy witches have not and do not exist (though we mustn’t reveal this secret, for imagination is everything). In truth, the previously described women possessed fully dimensional characters—but were wise enough to destroy most of the evidence.
Hell Raiser
A Handy Guide to Her Persona (And the Painful Origins
and God-Awful Events That Crystallized It)
“I’m not really such a hell cat, Frank. I just
can’t stand it any more.”
—Cora in “The Postman Always Rings Twice”
by James M. Cain
The psychology of the Fatale is truly Byzantine, for she is a vision of contradictions: She’s simultaneously scary as a horror movie, but still as inviting as a kitten. She’s as disciplined as a Swiss watch, yet as wild and destructive as a tornado. She’s as fragile as a champagne glass, but somehow forged in granite. The Fatale may display just one or perhaps many sides of her complex nature at any given time, but in the end she will never be truly known by anyone.
The female is born of her mother’s body, dominated by that mother throughout childhood, and destined to become like that mother. As she grows into adolescence men suddenly desire her with a fervor that sometimes seems predatory and threatening—and at other times seems like adoration and love. Eventually she submits to their advances, but she quickly feels trapped in a life that is less than appealing: one of caretaking and reproducing and raising children and keeping a home—in short, a life that stifles her. Meanwhile, the man who has stolen her youth and condemned her to a sentence of drudgery seems to escape scot-free out into a world of exciting adventures.
Some females try to side-step such a fate, to break the rules of gender, reproduction, and family—to upend the whole system of things. These females are called “femme fatales.” It appears to men that in rejecting her traditional role this woman is toying with him. She becomes for him an entirely dangerous entity, for she threatens to thwart all of nature and its imperative for reproduction. The situation becomes an untenable one of tension and struggle, calling for drastic action.
Rage Against the Cage
The continuation of the species doesn’t mat
ter one whit to the femme fatale for she is filled with existential bitterness. She has little interest in man’s or even nature’s plan. Instead, she finds the female role to be a cage, a trap, and a prison. She rejects society’s notion that she must show allegiance to man as her natural superior and she rejects the concept that she is his possession or property. She has a hunger for life beyond the dull confines of society’s strict definition of who and what she should be, and determines that her life will not orbit others. She rejects marriage as an inviolate institution and rejects the notion that she is a supporting character in life’s drama. The femme fatale sincerely doubts the legitimacy of society-made rules that attempt to hold her in subjection and curtail her freedom.
The femme fatale uses all of her cunning to escape the cage, to maintain her independence, to unrepentantly defy anyone who tries to control her destiny. The tricks that work on other women do not work on her. Like an animal that gnaws off its leg to escape a trap, she will resort to any means necessary to maintain her freedom, for she would rather die than be trapped.
The femme fatale is complex partially because her drive and steely focus are determination not to accept the suffocating role foisted upon her. Her cool restraint and emotional distance are actually iron-willed control honed of intense frustration. Her passion and abandon are fervent desperation chiseled by disappointment and repression. Her fierce world-weariness is a residual sadness because she knows that, in spite of its wonder and beauty, magic and mystery, life is also an inexhaustible cornucopia of shit.
Persona
The Fatale’s persona, her social facade or outward face, is one of cool indifference and effortless glamour. She seems to be unreachable and dispassionate, tough, and experienced. She appears tranquil—lethally so. Conversely, she telegraphs a dangerous undercurrent of seething passion, explosiveness, drive and intensity, a cauldron of emotion encased by her spooky placidity. She is magnetic and feline. Her manner is droll, teasing, tart, even mocking. Her movements are slow, graceful, languorous, and liquid, but also unselfconscious, seemingly unstudied. Her voice is low, deep, or very soft. She is usually not a woman of great verbosity, but is quiet, concise, laconic. She may seem bored, tired, sad, knowing, and world-weary. She exudes pride and contempt. She is the embodiment of existential ennui with a will to win.
Greta Garbo’s face in “Mata Hari” is a symphony of sensuality and roiling emotion, and yet is juxtaposed with restraint. Though many who knew her described Rita Hayworth as quiet and reticent, choreographer Hermes Pan witnessed her extreme eloquence and fiery passion as a dancer—a far more primal method of expression. When Lana Turner’s Cora is first confronted with Frank in “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” she appraises him coolly and disdainfully, then slowly turns her back and walks away. Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra appears before her people as a silent goddess, still and knowing as a Sphinx. And Anaïs Nin, famous for her lengthy diary and intelligent conversation, was described by Henry Miller as being an extremely eloquent listener.
Of course the Fatale also finds occasion to conceal her real attitude and intentions with the lady-in-distress routine. This calls for an appearance of the stereotypically fragile or flustered damsel complete with breathless, feminine anxiety and the need for male assistance. Such a role was displayed with Fatale perfection by Ruth/Brigid, played by Mary Astor in “The Maltese Falcon,” as well as by Rose, played by Marilyn Monroe in “Niagara.” Lulu, played by Louise Brooks in “Pandora’s Box,” is a playful child blithely luring her victims into the maelstrom of misery that desire for her creates. But it becomes clear soon enough that the appearance of helpless innocence is an act, an elaborate mask.
Betty Perske Goes to Hollywood
The studied assemblage of a Hollywood Fatale persona was described by a woman who had once been a skinny young model named Betty Perske and who had been given an acting contract by director Howard Hawks. At first, Hawks wasn’t so sure about Betty’s voice. She explains in her autobiography, By Myself:
He wanted me to drive into the hills, find some quiet spot, and read aloud. He felt it most important to keep the voice in a low register. Mine started off low, but what Howard didn’t like and explained to me was, ‘If you notice, Betty, when a woman gets excited or emotional she tends to raise her voice. Now there is nothing more unattractive than screeching. I want you to train your voice in such a way that even if you have a scene like that your voice will remain low.’ I found a spot on Mulholland Drive and proceeded to read The Robe aloud, keeping my voice lower and louder than normal. If anyone had ever passed by, they would have found me a candidate for an asylum.
Another concern was that while filming, Betty was so terrified she shook visibly. Betty learned to hide her trembling by holding her chin low. This caused her to gaze up at her co-star with apparent sensuality, thereby creating something called “The Look.” The end product was a seemingly sultry, deep-voiced vamp who, though feminine and beautiful, behaved much like a man, giving as good as she got with cool insolence. Betty Perske took the name Lauren Bacall and Hawks cast her as a pick-pocketing drifter and chanteuse in one of his masterpieces, “To Have and Have Not.”
In her next film, “Confidential Agent,” Bacall played the part of a British aristocrat. Before the film was released she began filming her third movie, “The Big Sleep,” again with Humphrey Bogart. Unfortunately, when “Confidential Agent” hit the screen Bacall’s performance was savaged by the critics who suggested that her talent was in doubt. It was then that her agent, Charles Feldman, wrote a letter to studio head Jack Warner. Robert Gitt, Preservation Officer at UCLA Film and Television Archives, describes a portion the letter as reading thusly:
Give the girl at least three or four additional scenes with Bogart of the insolent and provocative nature she had in ‘To Have and Have Not.’ You see, Jack, in ‘To Have and Have Not,’ Bacall was more insolent than Bogart, and this very insolence endeared her in both the public’s and the critics’ minds when the picture appeared. It was something startling and new. If this could be recaptured through these additional scenes with Bacall and Bogart, which frankly I think is a very easy task, I feel that the girl will come through for you magnificently. Bear in mind, Jack, that if the girl receives the same type of reviews and criticisms on ‘The Big Sleep,’ which she definitely will receive unless changes are made, you might lose one of your most important assets.
Warner ordered the new scenes of the insolent variety and “The Big Sleep” was Lauren Bacall’s second huge hit. Would she have been able to play the role of Fatale with such veracity had it not been lying dormant within her—perhaps a legacy from mother Eve—from the very beginning?
“A Beautiful Lady Without Mercy”
After MGM brought Ava Gardner to Hollywood and gave her a contract they set about “developing her talents.” According to Ava by Roland Flamini, Metro immediately put her in the hands of an Englishwoman who had once been an actress and who had developed her own method for bringing out the abilities in her charges:
She would zero in on the essential personality of her subject and help her develop it into a screen persona. Of course, the approach tended to produce performers of limited range, but it had the merit of infusing confidence and developing their personalities, the essence of stardom. Lillian Burns was smart enough to recognize Ava’s la belle dame sans merci quality, hardly the girl next door so much in vogue in the forties. The screen personality fashioned for Ava by Lillian Burns required more individual attention than Metro was prepared to lavish on a fifty-dollar-a-week newcomer.
After arduous training, Ava was eventually cast in “Whistle Stop.” Flamini suggests that it was the first scene in the movie, one that revealed Ava wearing a glamorous fur coat and lavish jewelry, which really kicked off her career:
In a larger sense, it marked the arrival of her screen personality. This was the role she was to play in her most successful pictures: a sensual, well-heeled woman of the world who was likely to be evasive
about how she came by her mink.
A decade later Ava’s real-life poise, no doubt developed through years of training at Metro, didn’t fail to impress even the most hardened of Hollywood galley slaves such as David Hanna, the publicist for “The Barefoot Contessa” who went on to become Ava’s personal publicist and manager. In his biography, Ava: Portrait of a Star, he describes her arrival at an airport in preparation for the filming of “Contessa”:
After what seemed an indeterminable time, Ava appeared at the head of the ramp—serene, cool, self-possessed and seemingly as sure of herself as a thoroughbred leaving a paddock… .
I began to learn to have vast respect for the quality about Ava that I had perceived the moment she stepped off the plane at Rome—her consummate showmanship. For someone who professed to dislike the world of movies and the artifices of Hollywood, she possessed a skill in the art of presenting herself to the public equaled by few of her celluloid sisters. It was not an accident that Ava could arrive somewhere after a long, arduous trip looking radiant and stunningly groomed.
Ava’s preparations were as deliberate and painstaking as though she were preparing to step before the camera. And seeing them executed aboard an airplane would, I know, fascinate an expert in ‘time and motion.’
Though many of her friends and co-workers insist she was painfully shy, Ava gained the reputation for being extravagant and difficult. It’s a chicken-and-egg (or perhaps good girl-and-femme fatale) dilemma. Which came first? Or are the continual revolutions an unending, cyclical phenomenon?
Lana Turner’s All-Important Image