In Love With the Classics

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE (1962)

Van Heflin and Ava Gardner , c.1942

Farley Granger as Franz Mahler Senso (1954) dir. Luchino Visconti

Judy Holliday

(Nina Leen. 1951)

In the early 1930s, scholarly studies were done on the impact of screen stars on teenagers, because of fears that the movies were sexualizing them. These studies found that teenage girls learned sex techniques through watching Garbo’s sex scenes, especially those in Flesh and the Devil; they then practiced her techniques at home with their girlfriends. Raymond Daum described Garbo’s many young female fans as having “schoolgirl crushes on her” that “defined a national idolatry.” And knowledge of Garbo’s non-heteronormative sexuality was spread through lesbian networks “from coast to coast.” Moreover, the 1920s was an era of commercial expansion in which the ranks of saleswomen and typists, careers dominated by young women, increased. These women made enough money to see a movie more than once. They identified with female stars and liked to see them in powerful roles. Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1926)

Rita Hayworth

Hedy Lamarr

LOVE LETTERS (1945)

Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, and Cab Calloway (1958)

Dexter, this is Ms. Imbrie and Mr. Connor from SPY magazine. SPY? Your tastes have changed a little, haven't they, Sam? HIGH SOCIETY (1956) dir. Charles Walters

Gary Cooper leaning on a wall in a suit. Photo by Cecil Beaton.

DORIS DOWLING and ALAN LADD in The Blue Dahlia (1946) dir. George Marshall

Nan Taylor

Barbara Stanwyck in Ladies They Talk About (1933)

Rita Moreno noir, unpublished LIFE photograph, 1954

Rudolph Valentino reading his fan mail aboard a ship, 1922.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) dir. Albert Lewin