Five actresses, five stars - but how many do you recognise?
N.B.: This list is not intended to be definitive. It is merely intended to highlight the talent of ten largely forgotten actresses who played a significant role in Hollywood history, be it as a great box-office star, an Oscar winner, a pioneer or an unfulfilled talent that shone all too briefly. In deciding on my order, I have rated the actresses on both their contribution to cinema and how little I perceive them to be remembered by the general public. The biggest star will not necessarily come out on top.
10 – Betty Hutton
If you were to look up the word ‘energetic’ in the dictionary you may well come across a picture of Betty Hutton. Her performances were delivered with total gusto and her obvious enthusiasm is a delight to watch on screen. Her major breakthrough came as the wonderfully named Trudy Kockenlocker in Preston Sturges’ ‘The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek’ (1944) but she hit her peak in movies like ‘The Perils of Pauline’ (1947) and ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ (1950). These roles allowed Hutton to show off her boisterous personality with tomboy personas but the studios knew she was also pretty enough to carry of the romantic sub-plots that sometimes came with on-screen adventure, most notably in ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ (1952). Her screen career was cut short due to contract disagreements and a reputation for being difficult to work with. Be that as it may, Betty Hutton’s sheer strength of personality should have made her a well remembered and much-loved star but the unavailability of her movies, certainly in the UK, seems to have ensured she will continue to be over looked.
Watch Betty Hutton in: It has to be ‘Annie Get Your Gun’. A whirlwind of a performance in a film that seems to have been largely forgotten despite the wealth of talent involved.
9 – Greer Garson
One of the most successful British exports to Hollywood during the Second World War, Greer Garson’s movie career started in a classic (‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips’ (1939)) and carried on in the same vain through the 1940s in well received films with Garson playing strong female characters. As is so often the case for Brits in Hollywood, she was MGM’s star of choice for any role that required a touch of gravitas and her record-equalling run of five consecutive ‘Best Actress’ nominations at the Academy Awards demonstrates that Garson was only given prime material by her studio. She won the Oscar for the rousing ‘Mrs. Miniver’ (1942) playing the head of an English family that have to face up to the various trials of life on the home front during the Second World War. The film was a seriously important piece of propaganda that played no small part in raising support for American intervention in the war. Garson received seven Academy Award nominations in all and she is almost certainly the best remembered of my ten. However, her phenomenal screen appearances during those golden years of MGM in the early 1940s still don’t seem to add up to the sum of her reputation today.
Watch Greer Garson in: Despite not being one of her seven Oscar nominations, it is the portrayal of Jane Austen’s greatest heroine Elizabeth Bennett opposite Laurence Olivier’s Mr. Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1940) that shows Garson in her best light. It also makes you realise what a seriously inept actress Keira Knightly is.
8 – Thelma Todd
A beautiful, blonde-haired actress, best known for allying her looks with excellent comedy timing, becomes a star in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Her talent sees her appear alongside some of the biggest stars of the decade before her life is cut tragically short by her untimely death whilst still in her 20s. All of this is true of Jean Harlow. It is also true of Thelma Todd. At the Hal Roach Studios, she starred opposite the studios biggest names Laurel & Hardy as well as making a series of short films teamed with another long-forgotten actress ZaSu Pitts. She made the odd foray into more serious movies including the 1931 version of ‘The Maltese Falcon’ but her most famous roles came opposite The Marx Brothers in ‘Monkey Business’ (1931) and ‘Horse Feathers’ (1932). In 1936, aged just 29, Todd died in suspicious circumstances, found in her car in a closed garage with the engine running. Some say accident, some say suicide and some say murder. Whatever the truth, Todd’s fans will always be wondering if that really big break was just around the corner or if it would have always remained just out of reach.
Watch Thelma Todd in: ‘Horse Feathers’ is the better movie but ‘Monkey Business’ is a better showcase for Todd’s talent. She’s feisty, funny and ends up being fought over in a barn. How many actresses can say that?
7 – Rosalind Russell
Ask most people who played Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother in the film of the musical ‘Gypsy’ (1962) and they will probably say “Ethel Merman” (or look at you blankly for a few seconds before moving the conversation on to the latest Guy Ritchie movie). Merman played the role on Broadway but the film starred the wonderful Rosalind Russell. This perfectly illustrates Russell’s problem – she always seemed to exist in the shadows of other actresses. No-one would have expected that to happen to Russell’s career in 1939 after she stole the show from virtually every well known actress on MGM’s books in ‘The Women’, the film that established Russell as a comedienne. She followed this up with ‘His Girl Friday’ (1940) where she played Hildy Johnson to Cary Grant’s Walter Burns in Howard Hawks’ reworking of ‘The Front Page’. This is Russell’s best remembered role - fast talking, sassy but ultimately married to the job. Her career during the 1940s was certainly successful. She had a string of box-office hits and three Oscar nominations before the decade was out. However, when stars of that era are discussed these days her name is more often than not missing from the conversation. Overshadowed by Katherine Hepburn, Irene Dunne and Merman who played similar types of characters to Russell at various stages of her career, she seems destined to be remembered as ‘the woman who played Hildy Johnson’ and little else. For someone like Rosalind Russell that is a crying shame.
Watch Rosalind Russell in: Her best roles were behind her when Russell played Patrick Dennis’ ‘Auntie Mame’ in 1958 but she pulled out all the stops for one of the finest performances by an actress ever seen on screen.
6 – Paulette Goddard
Was it her difficult relationship with the press? Was it suspicions over the validity of her marriage to Charlie Chaplin? Or was it just that she simply wasn’t the right actress for the part? Whatever it was, Paulette Goddard would have been a household name forever if she had been cast ahead of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in ‘Gone with the Wind’ (1939). How close was she to getting the part? She was, by all accounts, one of four actresses in with a genuine chance of the role. Movie history could have been so different but as it is Goddard, an actress who mixed terrific talent and exceptional beauty, will be best known for her personal and professional association with Chaplin. He spotted her at a Hollywood party and decided that she would be perfect for the ‘gamine’ role in ‘Modern Times’ (1936) and perfect she was. Her career took off from there. Like Rosalind Russell (see above), she was one of the stand-outs of the very strong cast of ‘The Women’. She was the ideal foil for Bob Hope in ‘The Cat and the Canary’ (1939), and in ‘The Great Dictator’ (1940, again opposite Chaplin) her performance was perfectly judged. Before her career petered out in the late 1940s she made ‘So Proudly We Hail’ (1943), ‘Kitty’ (1945) and ‘The Diary of a Chambermaid’ (1946) all of which displayed Goddard’s talent, one that should have brought her greater fame, a lasting legacy and, perhaps, should have landed her that most iconic of female roles.
Watch Paulette Goddard in: I am sorely tempted to go for ‘Modern Times’ as it is rare that one of Charlie Chaplin’s co-stars gives as memorable a performance as he does but I have decided that to see Goddard in all her glory the uninitiated should plump for the ‘Pygmalion’-like romantic drama ‘Kitty’.
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