Why Is There a Mary Astor, Rather Than No Mary Astor?

Happily’d be half-way ever aftered by the time you got started if you were all mistaking those such gents for your Handsome Prince, notwithstanding the “Handsome”.

…and another thing.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a looker, not a sexpot. She manipulates men by feigning timidity and breathless innocence, so they want to protect her as well as sleep with her. Lauren Bacall is all brass and moxie, nothing like Brigid.

q, the very fact that you would point to Katharine Hepburn as an example of a not obviously beautiful woman is an indication of how the beauty level required for actresses is orders of magnitude greater than that of male stars.

Always liked Mary Astor, though hard to explain why. Not a Louise Brooks or Claudette Colbert, but “Dodsworth” would perhaps show some of her appeal. Brains, of course. A subtle discernment required, “Red Dust” an example, where the slattern Harlow is the buddy, but Astor the more attractive.

Of course, as the private lives were later revealed of Harlow and Astor (Harlow’s “bad luck” in marrying gays;Mary’s diary entries about George Kaufman) it was true that Astor was the sexual superior.

The sexiest woman of the 30’s? Myrna Loy. “Fu Manchu” and “Thin Man”, God’s greatest gift is a woman who can make me laugh.

The amazing thing about Gable is how rapidly he aged. Only 59 when he died, Gable already looked mummified. If you take a look at “It Happened One Night” you’ll see a young, skinny Gable, full of boyish charm. Three years later he was already middle-aged and fading fast.

Belle, at the time of The Misfits Marilyn had just been divorced from Arthur Miller, who was hardly a spring chicken (he was about a decade younger than Gable) and was, I think it’s fair to say, never movie-star material when it came to looks. Is it really so implausible that she’d find Gable attractive? In any case, the movie is called “The Misfits,” so we shouldn’t be surprised that in part it’s about people making choices that more sensible people might not make.

As for Katherine Hepburn, it’s not so much that she’s not goodlooking as that she’s so sexless.

what’s wrong with diane keaton?????????

I also note that there has been not a peep about Jack Nicholson in Something’s Gotta Give. JN is so repulsive in that role that

[SPOILER, I guess, though if you can’t see it coming from the beginning of the movie I really can’t help you]

at the end of the movie you think “Why would a smart woman like Diane Keaton leave Keanu Reeves for him?”

From Baude’s original post:

Of course, in both TH&HN and Casablanca, Bogart comes away with the girl.

I remember that scene in Casablanca–came right after Godot’s triumphant entrance into Moscow with the Three Sisters, didn’t it?

Aaargh. I waited to see if the first one showed up, I swear.

Matt, always having had Paris is widely considered close enough for rock n roll, and in many cases closer.

Oh, and no one should be allowed to rank on Mary Astor without having seen The Palm Beach Story. In fact, nobody should be allowed not to have seen The Palm Beach Story.

what’s wrong with diane keaton?????????

You’re kidding, right? This is the woman who is perfectly cast breaking up with Woody Allen on a regular basis because of his annoying foibles, and yet she can’t quite convince herself to leave a criminal mastermind who has ordered half the city murdered.

There was no attraction ever demonstrated between Kay Adams and Michael Corleone. She is just the girfriend brought home one day and — Whoops — looks like we’re married now because the script says we should get married.

Fair enough, des, if he had said “gets the girl” I would probably not be snarking; but coming away with the girl is so precisely what he does not do…

Ted, that’s fair enough, but Sandler’s ladykilling didn’t seem like such a crucial part of 50 First Dates, so I didn’t mind that much. (Insofar as there is any crucial part of 50 First Dates.) Cut the opening montage and the scene in the bar with the blue drinks and you still have basically the same movie, with no suspension of disbelief required–Sandler spends most of his time as the sweet goofy loser who wins the heart of fair Drew.

But you remind me–in case anyone else saw Picture Perfect, were we really supposed to think Kevin Bacon was the sort of guy anyone could succumb to against her better judgment? Ewww. For that matter, was Jay Mohr (I had to look it up) supposed to actually be a decent guy, or we were supposed to have a hideous sinking feeling when Jennifer winds up with him? This is without a doubt the worst movie I have ever cited in a philosophy paper.

Matt–

THANK YOU for saying what had to be said about “Something’s Gotta Give.” While the young Jack Nicholson wasn’t repulsive, I’ve never been able to understand the purported sex appeal of the older, ickier Jack. At all.

Richard–

I think that a large point behind the Michael Corleone/Kay Adams pairing is that his attraction to her wasn’t carnal — it was more a matter of social climbing. Kay was a WASP trophy wife and, perhaps, also an intellectual peer, but she was never meant to be the love interest in a carnal sense.

About the best I can say here is that the women I know do not share this distaste for Bogart. Mary Astor does seem a bit, er, flat to me in the Maltese Falcon, but that’s likely because the “helpless flutter” doesn’t really do it for me.

But maybe that’s the point of the character, it’s easy to just dismiss her, but it turns out that you shouldn’t have.

I am firmly of the opinion that sex appeal is far more a matter of attitude than of looks. And my life experience suggests that its difficult to predict what a woman will like in a man.

Aren’t we in chacun-a-son-gout land here?

Thank God, women seem to have very diverse tastes in men, including old ugly men, and even short fat old men, but unfortunately not usually short fat old broke men, except sometimes women with major personal issues (Mrs. Charles Bukowski types).

And likewise, the supposed femme fatale Uma Thurmond looks very ordinary to me. I’d love to meet her father, though.

And so on.

I agree with the main post. The Maltese Falcon is a marvelous movie except for the egregious Mary Astor performance. She doesn’t have that undercurrent of manipulation that should be there, demonstrates no convincing flirtatiousness, and Sam’s sudden desire to kiss her makes no sense. She looks like she was imported from another movie.
Who else was available that year and was under contract to the studio?

Worst casting ever? No atrocity mentioned so far can compare with John Wayne as Genghis Khan.

M.T. has been one of my favorite movies for over 30 years and I think Mary Astor is great in it and beautiful to boot. I’m flabbergasted by the opinion in this post. (It’s definitely a minority opinion, judging by the user comments on the film in imdb.com).

I don’t think that Keaton’s performance in the “Godfather” movies is really her fault. As noted, she’s supposed to be a repressed WASP, and she played it that way. Also, the second half of the first movie is very odd. One day, they just happen to be married and have kids.

Oh, you forgot Love in the Afternoon, with the completely decrepit Gary Cooper sweeping Audrey Hepburn, who looked about 12, off her feet, and High Noon, with the completely decrepit Gary Cooper sweeping Grace Kelly, who looked about 18, off her feet.

I look forward to a plot and script that can handle the challenging romantic pairing of Sean Connery and Cameron Diaz.

Humphrey Bogart doesn’t have to be conventionally sexy because regardless of your gender he’s the character you want to be. Not have, be. It makes the love interests in his movies kind of secondary as a result. In Casablanca what man or woman bothers identifying with Ingrid Bergman? Doesn’t everyone want to be Bogie or Victor Laszlo?

And you will forgive me if I am not gracious, but there’s no comparison between Casablanca and To Have and Have Not. To Have and Have Not is only a movie, albeit a good one. Casablanca is a political as well as an artistic inspiration and almost every line is quotable — “Shocked, shocked,” and “Round up the usual suspects” are the least of it. Yeah, I know, James Agee hated the film and gave a personal award for dumb expository dialogue to the line, “Oh, Victor, please don’t go to the underground meeting tonight.” Yeah, but nevertheless.

I turn 70 this month and find more women in their 20’s attracted to me these days than ever were in my salad days. Of course, it’s not the fault of Bogart, Gable, Astaire or Nicholson that they’re not me.

“Humphrey Bogart doesn’t have to be conventionally sexy because regardless of your gender he’s the character you want to be. Not have, be.”

Ah, I guess that’s what I meant! Well said.

“In Casablanca what man or woman bothers identifying with Ingrid Bergman? Doesn’t everyone want to be Bogie or Victor Laszlo?”

Well yeah but that’s (isn’t it?) mostly for the usual obvious reasons. The Woman is just a generic Woman; Rick and Victor do stuff. We all want to be the people who do stuff, not the generic Byootifool Woman wot inspires them. But so that’s true of most movies. They have generic Women who don’t do or say much while The Men get on with running the world or killing everyone or taking over Vegas or whatever the hell it is.

So it’s right that Rick and Louis go off together at the end.

Belle, who would you like to have seen in the role of O’Shaughnessy, given that Bacall was too young? I’d go with Barbara Stanwyck, who was great as a vamp in another outstanding film from 1941, The Lady Eve. (The only drawback would be that perhaps her role as Phyllis in Double Indemnity would be less memorable as a result. But I doubt it.)