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By Kim Morgan
Special to MSN Movies
If you had to separate the world in simplistic terms, it might take on a movie title: The Good, the Bad and the Blonde. Though we all love redheads and brunettes, blondes are a special category of human. Be they fake, classy, honey, wholesome, crass, icy ... they represent the grand spectrum of life.
Take our current blonde du jour, Reese Witherspoon. Celebrating the Fourth of July with her greatly anticipated sequel to "Legally Blonde," "Legally Blonde: Red, White and Blonde," the once-cute character actress and talent in movies like "Freeway" and "Election" is now a major Hollywood player. Like it or not, she's taken over the reign of blonde Mop Top from Meg Ryan and is cinema's newest A-list sweetheart.
But before La Reese, blonde trails were blazed by babes who endured recrimination, dumb stereotypes and much harsher, old-school hair chemicals. We're talking Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Veronica Lake, Lana Turner, Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Brigitte Bardot, women who revealed in film (and life) that blondes aren't just a brand, but embody all kinds of women. You need proof? Just look around: some of the most powerful, controversial and (gulp) feared figures in the world are blonde. Martha Stewart, anyone? Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen? Senator Hillary Clinton? Yes, it is quite possible that in 2008, we'll not only have a female president, but a blonde one.
So, in honor of Reese and her blonde brethren, we celebrate the top 10 greatest blonde movies ever made. And please note: We don't mean the greatest blondes -- cinema's full of fab flaxens -- but the greatest blonde movies, where blonde-ness is either integral to the plot or created a pop-culture phenomena. Grab the peroxide and settle in ...
10. "Born Yesterday" (1950) -- The
Not-So-Dumb-Blonde
Now would this title make any sense if our
leading lady were a brunette? Judy Holliday practically created the funny,
bottle-blonde, good-time moll whose fractured vocabulary can be more creative
than the poetry of e.e. cummings. Her high-pitched, birdbrain voice even
embarrasses her bullying gangster boyfriend as he attempts to socialize with the
classy people in Washington, D.C. Enter William Holden, who's paid to smarten her up. But in
the age-old dilemma of men not really wanting their women that smart (too smart
to figure out he's a jerk), her boyfriend tires of all her newfound knowledge.
For example, while attempting to degrade her, he yells, "You think you're so
smart, huh? What's a peninsula?" "It's that new medicine!" she shrieks back. But
after his violent threat of, "Shut up! You ain't gonna be tellin' nobody nothin'
pretty soon!" she barks back: "Double negative!!" Holliday's physical and vocal
incarnations would later surface as Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont in "Singin' in the Rain" ("An' I can' stan' em!") and Mia Farrow's chorus chorine in Woody Allen's "Radio Days" ("Hawk! I hear the canon's woar!") and, of course
Reese Witherspoon's "Legally Blonde" protagonist Elle Woods, who may not even
know just how indebted she is to this movie. Well, Reese is blonde ...
9. "Blade Runner" (1982) -- Cyber Blonde
A little bit
Marlene Dietrich, a little bit David Bowie and all man, Rutger Hauer's Lucifer-like replicant in "Blade
Runner" is one of the most sublime blonds ever to hang from a rain-soaked
rooftop. Against the hard-boiled Harrison Ford, the perfectly made Hauer steals the
show as a broken hearted baddie who finalizes the picture with one good deed.
Making many a guy weep for that extraordinarily good-looking Aryan (Hauer's
Dutch but ... same thing), he no doubt, made legions of guys sneak into their
girlfriend's supply of Clairol. Or come out of the closet.
8. "Double Indemnity" (1944) -- The Femme Fatale
Film
noir had an overflow of dangerous blonde dames. For example, Lana Turner's
blonde-in-white in "The Postman Always Rings Twice," Veronica Lake's peek-a-boo in
"The Blue Dahlia" and Peggy Cummins' pistol-packing mama in "Gun Crazy." But it is Barbara Stanwyck in Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" that still reigns
as noir's meanest ice queen and perhaps cinema's smartest blonde. As Phyllis
Dietrichson, the double crosser to Fred MacMurray's Walter Neff, Babs wore one of
cinema's greatest wigs: a shoulder-length, golden-blonde number with thick
under-curled bangs. With those dark glasses, she's the eternal symbol of the
femme fatale. It's no mistake that Brian De Palma opens his "Femme Fatale" with her steely image. Don't ever think blonde
means soft.
7. "The Bad Seed" (1956) -- The Terrible
Towhead
Though Marlene Dietrich sang, "You'll try in vain, you can't
explain, the charming, alarming blonde women," she could have just as easily
been singing of blonde children. Being an evil blonde child is the ultimate
perversion: Blonde kiddies are supposed to represent purity. But "The Bad Seed"
tapped into what some of us secretly think about those do-gooder Goldilocks with
their cutesy smiles, pigtails and pinafore dresses -- evil! Not only does little
8-year-old badass Patty McCormack clobber a kid to death with her shoes
(the ones with the taps on them), she then torches the maintenance man who is on
to her. Never trust anyone over 30? Try under 13 ... and blonde.
6. "White Oleander" (2002)
-- The Blonde-semble
piece
"We're not like that. We're the Vikings," says sociopathic
blonde mother Michelle Pfeiffer to her crying teenage daughter Alison Lohman in "White Oleander." One of cinema's
great blonde-semble pieces, this melodrama is supposed to be, in part, about the
foster-care system, but "Oleander" really shows the varied, sometimes insane
incarnations of blonde womanhood. Pfeiffer -- a gorgeous mix of Ted Bundy and
Grace Kelly -- gets thrown in the slammer for killing her lover, leaving Lohman
to endure a series of traumatic foster moms. One is a trashy blonde ex-stripper
(Robin Wright Penn) who ends up pulling a gun on the
teenager. The other is a loving but needy blonde actress (Renee Zellweger) who's so insecure she overdoses on
sleeping pills. Somehow these women's tragedies are made all the worse because
they're blonde, giving the picture a subversive, underlying theme of blonde
oppression. A stretch? Hardly. Check out the two massively dramatic scenes
involving hair. One has a hardened Lohman attacked by a (ahem) brunette in a
juvy facility. Sick of being pretty, Lohman cuts her long blonde hair with a
knife! You can practically hear the ringlets screaming. She then lumbers over to
the offending brunette and threatens to cut her throat. And when Lohman makes
the decision to avoid the painful foster moms she's drawn to (you know,
blondes), she chooses the no-nonsense, saucy foster mother with the dark hair.
Then she does something that makes her gorgeous prison mama almost faint in the
visiting yard: She dies her hair black! What is the world doing to her?
5. "Blonde Venus" (1932) -- Uber Blonde
At the same
time of Jean Harlow's popularity, Josef von Sternberg was crafting his own goddess in
the very German form of leggy, sunken-cheek-boned and languid Marlene Dietrich. Sternberg made many iconic blonde
movies for Marlene ("The Blue Angel" and "The Scarlett Empress" just to name a few) but "Blonde Venus"
stands out as the ultimate in blonde ambition. Dietrich plays the full spectrum
of the blonde. She's an ex-German café singer who marries a good-hearted
Englishman. She's a happy hausfrau and adoring mother. Then, she's a cabaret
star and harlot who dances in a gorilla suit and becomes really, really famous.
You know, the whole blonde journey. The film features two iconic blonde numbers:
There's Marlene in her famed white tux, tails and top hat and (you heard us
right) Marlene in a gorilla suit. In one of film's most surreal moments, Marlene
removes a gorilla head revealing her blonde-haloed face. To make herself even
more eye-popping, she grabs a blonde Afro wig, places it on her head and sings
"Hot Voodoo." Describing this moment requires two words you don't often see
together: blonde genius.
4. "... And God Created Woman" (1956) -- Initials BB
What a difference a movie makes ... Though Marilyn was a sensation,
it's French sex kitten Brigitte Bardot who created a sexual revolution.
Directed by her then-husband, Roger Vadim, "... And God Created Woman" essentially
invented the sexuality, style and liberation of the next decade. Gyrating to
bongo drums, frolicking naked on the beach, engaging in illicit sex and driving
men crazy with a desire they never knew existed, BB threw the late '50s finely
coifed blonde world on its soft derriere. Simone de Beauvoir wrote an ode to
her; the Catholic Church condemned her; and paparazzi hurled themselves over
cliffs for her. Not to mention Serge Gainsbourg wrote songs for and about her -- "Je t'aime"
was written especially for Bardot. BB was so ahead of her time here, with her
exotic, lioness blondeness of long unkempt hair, full lips and sun-kissed skin,
it took the '90s to catch up to her. There would be no Claudia Schiffer and no Pamela Anderson without BB.
3. "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"
(1953) -- The Bombshell
There are those men who swear this title
isn't true, and in many cases they're right, but if you had a choice between Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe in Howard Hawks' "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," come on,
who would you choose? Not that Jane isn't hot; her distinct dark-brown beauty
and decency is important to "Gentlemen," serving as the temper to Marilyn's
gold-digging pluck. You see, the brunette gal understands MM (who, incidentally,
had the same colorist as Harlow over two decades later): She's got a heart of
gold, it's just heaving for diamonds. This, of course, leads to one of the
greatest blonde musical numbers in cinema history: "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best
Friend," extolling the virtue of having your assets and eating them too. The
number is one of the greatest blonde contributions to world history, not to
mention the inspiration for another famous blonde -- Madonna.
2. "Vertigo" (1958) -- The Hitchcock Blonde
"Blondes
make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody
footprints." So said Alfred Hitchcock, whose fave blonde, Grace Kelly, you
would expect to grace this list (not to mention fellow fair-heads Tippi Hedren in "The Birds" and "Marnie," Eva Marie Saint in "North by Northwest," and Janet Leigh in "Psycho"). Sorry. Kim Novak in "Vertigo" makes this thriller the
ultimate Hitchcock blonde movie. Revealing the fetishistic obsession the auteur
had with the fairer haired, Hitch made the aw-shucks Jimmy Stewart into a raving pervert thanks to Kim and
that hair! Falling for the suicide blonde with the upswept 'do, Stewart goes to
pieces when he sees her apparently dive from a church tower. But when he finds
her look-a-like in a decidedly floozy brunette (Hitchcock really found a
difference between the classy blondes and the feral brunette), he simply can't
love her unless she's the cool blonde in the gray suit. When Novak finally walks
towards him with her hair EXACTLY the way he likes it, you'd think she'd just
parted the Red Sea. Leave it to Hitchcock to film the most magically perverse
and sickly romantic blonde moment ever.
1. "Bombshell" (1933) -- The Prototype
With the help of
eccentric aviator Howard Hughes, who labored over the starlet's moniker ("Blonde
Landslide"? "Blonde Fury"? "Blonde Sunshine"?), cinema's first and greatest
blonde, the swaggering, tough-talking but endearing Jean Harlow, was labeled the "Platinum Blonde."
Director Frank Capra dutifully changed the title of his Harlow
screwball from the decidedly un-sexy "Gallagher" to, well, "Platinum Blonde."
Harlow, the first fake blonde (her natural color was ash blonde), had
already changed follicle history forever by making blonde the "it" color. Brave
women went peroxide crazy attempting to emulate the newest screen sensation,
defying those who deemed them floozies. In Victor Fleming's 1933's "Bombshell," Harlow was game
to make clever fun of her persona, on screen and in real life (though the film
was also based on the first "it" girl Clara Bow). A hilarious look at the goofy shenanigans
of a movie star, her "people," the industry, and the man who falls in love with
her, "Bombshell" contains this famous line, hysterically uttered by a
blonde-smitten Franchot Tone: "Your hair is like a field of silver
daisies. I'd like to run barefoot through your hair!"
Honorable mentions:
"The Girl Can't Help It" (1956)
"The Blue Dahlia" (1946)
"Madonna: Truth or Dare" (1991)
"My Little Chickadee" (1940)
"Village of the Damned" (1960)
"Lost Highway" (1997)
