Stars With Pluck

Hedy Lamarr’s perfectly arched eyebrows emphasize her symmetrical features. Considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, Lamarr was also incredibly bright, co-inventing, in 1941, a “frequency-hopping device that now serves as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology.” That quote is grabbed from Wikipedia. I have absolutely no idea what it means, but darn, I’m impressed. Anyhoo. Married six times, Lamarr gained and lost several fortunes. After her career was over she was arrested on shoplifting charges.

Screening movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, I’ve noticed an interesting trend—in eyebrows.

During the early days of silent films, female stars appeared pretty normal. Which is to say, eyebrows were lightly plucked, but retained a recognizably human configuration.

But the Flapper Age of the 1920’s, a time of huge social upheaval in America, ushered in severely plucked eyebrows, styles that were eventually refined into Baroque loops and harsh anorexic gashes.

A close friend, a brilliant cultural observer, wrote to me with this fascinating bit of cultural information:

Flappers were the first group of women outside of prostitutes to shave their legs and armpits. They changed the world, depilation-wise.

Narrow eyebrows seem to have come into fashion as Hollywood, and society in general, turned away from the Nineteenth Century ideal of the woman with the hourglass figure to the starved creature of the modern age.

Plucked eyebrows reached their apotheosis in the 30’s as whip-thin Art Deco was all the rage. Eyebrows in Hollywood evolved into extra fine lines that seemed drawn by Dexedrine fueled designers.

Studio stylists regularly shaved the eyebrows of the vulnerable young actresses being groomed for stardom, but after a few shavings the eyebrows of the chosen Pygmalions failed to grow back. Thus, several generations of Hollywood stars lacked eyebrows and their faces became blank canvasses for the powerful studio stylists.

The clash between the reality of her true self with the manufactured Hollywood image was deeply alienating for many young women, most of them uneducated teenagers from hard scrabble childhoods. No wonder Lana Turner wryly commented on her seven disastrous marriages: “The problem is that men marry Lana Turner—and wake up next to me.”

Let’s go to the visuals:

Jean Harlow had narrow, deep-set eyes—difficult to photograph—and so along with false eyelashes like shelves, studio stylists inscribed eyebrows, like soaring roman arches, to create the illusion of rounder, wider eyes. Harlow suffered to maintain her bombshell image. So toxic was the dye used for her platinum blond hair that it finally started falling out in clumps—like a chemotherapy patient—and she was forced to wear wigs for extended periods.

Carole Lombard had a lovely forehead, cheekbones like blades, and her eyebrows—low slashes—were etched in order to draw attention to those patrician features. In January, 1942, on a national tour selling U.S. War bonds, Lombard, one of the most beloved figures in Hollywood, was killed in a plane crash, making her one of America’s first casualties of World War II.

Clara Bow’s drooping eyebrows seem to echo her emotional instability—she was probably bi-polar. Her mother, an occasional prostitute, twice tried to murder Bow when she was just a child. Her father repeatedly raped young Clara after Bow’s mother was confined to a mental institution. Clara Bow was one of Hollywood’s greatest natural actresses, but her important body of work is barely recognized and a “nothing”—so said the great George Cukor—like Louise Brooks is built into a cultural and movie icon. We have the French—what a shocker—to thank for initiating this bit of historical lunacy.

Marlene Dietrich, monstrously self-absorbed, positioned a full length mirror beside the camera to keep an eye on her reflection. Dietrich understood her own image, and worked hard at refining the mystery and glamor that characterized her fame. Dietrich wielded her beauty like a sexual totalitarian, seducing scores of men and women with frightening self-assurance. When John Wayne rebuffed her advances she flew into a rage calling Wayne a “stupid American cowboy.”

Marion Davies started out as a teenage Ziegfeld Girl. Posing in the elaborate costumes, Davies looked fresh and lovely, and the severe stutter that plagued her, was rendered unimportant. In Hollywood, her all-American looks gave way to various make-up extremes. Here, Davie’s eyebrows seem to be crawling down her cheek bones. One of the kindest, most generous women in Hollywood, Orson Welles admitted that in his cruel portrayal of supremely untalented Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane, 1941, he did Davies, a hugely gifted comedienne, “a dirty.”

Garbo’s eyes were probably her best feature and her eyebrows draw attention to her hypnotic gaze. Garbo was most effective in close-up, that’s what her fans best remember and fetishize. In medium and long shot, Garbo is often noticeably uncomfortable—she had a tendency to slouch—and her attempts to control her klutziness results in some awkward moments. Take a look at her performance in Grand Hotel, 1932. She plays a ballerina, but she’s a dancer with two left feet.

Bette Davis hated Hollywood’s emphasis on beauty, but even she submitted to extreme plucking. Later in her career at Warner Bros., when she had clout, and didn’t hesitate to use it, Davis let her eyebrows grow in and she reconstituted her own image with an iron fist. Eventually, Davis refused to pose for the studio glamor portraits.

Known in her later career for thick as mink eyebrows, Joan Crawford actually started out with the harshly plucked Flapper look. Watching Crawford in close-up can be an eerie experience: those saucer eyes never blink and her unyielding stare burns a hole through the silver screen.

Anna May Wong was Hollywood’s first and greatest Chinese star—though she was born and raised in Los Angeles. The studios carefully constructed her image as an Oriental femme fatale using the full Hollywood arsenal of hair styles, wardrobe, props and barely there eyebrows. Catch her in the pre-code Shanghai Express, 1932, in which she plays a slinky courtesan. Anna May Wong blows Marlene Dietrich off the screen by remaining Buddha-still in contrast to Dietrich’s Rococo poses. A natural leading lady, beautiful and talented, Anna May’s movie career was severely hampered by the Motion Picture Code where portrayals of miscegenation were forbidden.

Alice Faye is barely remembered today, but, for a few years, she was a huge singing star for Twentieth Century Fox. Not conventionally beautiful, rather the cute girl next door, the studio imposed on Faye a glamorous image that just didn’t fit. When her film career sputtered, Faye moved into radio starring in a successful show with her husband, band leader Phil Harris.

Joan Marsh was the daughter of the great, pioneering Hollywood cinematographer Charles Rosher and as such, she knew something about the primacy of image. This offspring of Hollywood gained positive attention as a child actress in Mary Pickford’s delightful Daddy Long Legs, 1919. There’s something silkily feline about Marsh in this iconic George Hurrell portrait. Her darting eyebrows draw attention to her flowing river of hair. Marsh never gained leading lady status, she was primarily a feature and day player—her continuous battles with weight are just heartbreaking. Marsh retired from the screen in 1944. In later years, she managed a stationary shop on Ojai, California.

Now, let’s skip forward to 1956, eyebrows are back, bigger and badder than ever:

It looks like two caterpillars have taken up residence over Audrey Hepburn’s eyes. Hepburn was lovely, a charming actress who projected intelligence and vulnerability. She was a class act, but never a star who caused men to walk distractedly into walls. Her carefully constructed image—boyish hair, boyish figure, and he-man eyebrows—short circuited the traditional Hollywood look.

And finally, the greatest eyebrows in Hollywood history.

Julie Newmar gained fame as Catwoman, “the purrfect villainess,” from the Batman TV series, her episodes running from 1966-67. Newmar’s mother, Helen Jesmer, was one of Ziegfeld’s most stunning girls. Newmar wrote the introduction to the ravishing volume, Jazz Age Beauties, in which Jesmer appears along with dozens of other Ziegfeld girls. Next time you watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, 1954, feast your eyes on the unbelievably leggy and wasp waisted Newmar as Dorcus, one of the abducted brides.

For more great visuals of notable Hollywood eyebrows, head on over to Starlet Showcase.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech