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Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

A photo inscribed to Dr Irving Ress by Janis Paige.
Around 1950. A photo inscribed to Dr Irving Ress by Janis Paige. Read more.

In the aftermath of World War II, unmarried women faced a hard dilemma when it came to sex. Damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.

In the words of a 16-year-old girl quoted by Michael Phillips in his article Women and the Sexual Double Standard of the 1950s:

How are you supposed to know what they want? You hold out for a long time and then when you give in to them and give your body they laugh at you afterwards and say they would never marry a slut, and that they didn’t love you but were testing because they only plan to marry a virgin and wanted to see if you would go all the way.

The pressures could be especially intense in the torrid and ultra-competitive world of the Hollywood studios, where the casting couch cast a long shadow and having a flexible attitude to sex could be the route to stardom or the road to perdition.

The inspiration for this piece is a collection of photos given to Dr Irving Ress by his clients. Dr Ress was an obstetrician who worked in Hollywood. Among the women who came to him for advice on pregnancy and childbirth were a number of movie stars and actresses. Perhaps they dedicated their photos to him spontaneously. More likely he was susceptible to their charms and asked them to contribute to his collection. Flattered by the request, they were happy to do so.

The predicaments and concerns they confided in him we can only imagine. But that’s not difficult in the context both the time (the 1940s and early ’50s) and the place (Hollywood).

Betty Grable by Frank Powolny
1943. Weapons of mass seduction. The image that made Betty Grable the number one pin-up girl of the World War II era. Read more.

Unsafe sex – the sexual revolution of the 1940s

20 years before the permissive society of the 1960s, a sexual revolution is taking place in the US in the 1940s.

The war years have already seen the flowering of the pin-up, perfected by the Hollywood studios and designed both to market their product and to boost morale by presenting an all-American view of the sweetheart waiting back home for the soldiers and sailors — the girls worth fighting for. As the GIs return, they also bring with them pornography from Europe and Asia.

In the late-1940s “camera clubs” are formed to get around laws restricting the production of nude photos. The clubs claim they exist to promote “artistic photography”, but in reality… The years 1952 through 1957 see Bettie Page posing for Irving Klaw, who distributes his pin-up and bondage shots by mail-order. And in 1953 Hugh Heffner publishes the first issue of Playboy.

At the same time, researchers are taking a new, more scientific interest in sex and sexuality. In 1948 the Kinsey Report, Sexual Behaviors in the Human Male and Sexual Behaviors in the Human Female, is published, shining a light on topics that have hitherto been taboo. Around this time, courses on human sexuality begin to appear on college campuses.

Sex is in the air. And in this context and after 15 years of depression and war, it’s hardly surprising that young people are less inclined than their parents to defer to traditional restraints on their behavior. Between 1941 and 1953, the overall rate of single motherhood more than doubles. But it’s not a straightforward matter of celebration, liberation and hedonism holding sway.

The post-World War II years bring with them a new period of economic and sexual anxiety. The US faces a major housing crisis. Juvenile delinquency supposedly reaches epic proportions. Both Republicans and Democrats go after Alfred Kinsey and comic books (Batman and Wonder Woman are accused of promoting homosexuality and lesbianism). The mood is one of pride and depression, valour and self-doubt, stoicism and vulnerability. Welcome to the heyday of film noir.

Unsafe sex – damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t

Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
1947. In The Two Mrs Carrolls, Barbara Stanwyck is a victim of her husband. But his portrait of her seems to reflect the period’s underlying ambivalence and paranoia about women.

Meanwhile, women face a tricky dilemma. Leaving aside social attitudes to women having sex outside marriage (boys will be boys so that’s okay), contraceptive techniques are crude and unreliable. So women in relationships are playing with fire – always susceptible to getting pregnant or picking up a sexually transmitted disease.

It’s no wonder that women are strongly motivated to get married at the first opportunity (during the 1950s, the average age of women at marriage is 20). But there’s always the chance that they’ll make a bad choice and end up with a violent and abusive partner. And guess what? Domestic violence is rarely punished and there are no laws against rape in marriage. Which is hardly surprising given that police forces have no special domestic-violence units or policies.

The alternative – walking out – is unlikely to be a bed of roses. Single mothers and divorcees don’t have the same rights to state aid as widows with children so money is a problem. If they can get a job, it’s likely to be menial and low-paid. In other words, there’s a good chance those women end up ostracized and impoverished.

Marilyn Monroe
1950. Like most Hollywood actresses, Marilyn Monroe is a manufactured product. Read more. Photo by Frank Powolny.

Unsafe sex – the honey trap

Pretty girls are drawn to Hollywood like gazelles to a watering hole, where the lions and hyenas lie in wait. Some wannabes, such as Judy Garland, arrive under the influence of ambitious and domineering parents. Most are talent-spotted – Ava Gardner via a portrait photo in a New York photographer’s studio window, Lana Turner at a soda fountain – or so the story goes. Models (like Hazel Brooks) and theatre actresses (like Ella Raines) are popular prey.When they arrive in Tinseltown, they are young and innocent. And, like lambs to slaughter, onto the production conveyor-belt they go. Each is given a name (Frances Ethel Gumm becomes Judy Garland, Betty Joan Perske is rechristened Lauren Bacall ), a more or less fanciful back-story, a makeover and a contract.

What next for our aspiring starlet? A series of photo sessions with plenty of cheesecake shots and, if she’s lucky, a few bit parts. Her fate is down to a combination of factors, not the least of which is the relationships she manages to establish. Which brings us, or rather her, to the casting couch. Three of Hollywood’s foremost lechers in the 1940s are Harry Cohn, Darryl F Zanuck and Howard Hughes.

Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, is a blustering, foul-mouthed, abrasive taskmaster and acts like a tyrant. His office contains an enormous desk for him, and small seats for his visitors, enabling him to tower over them. On his desk is a photo of Benito Mussolini, whom he greatly admires. He also has ties to organized crime and is friendly with mobsters such as Chicago gangster John Roselli. Cohn enjoys using concealed microphones to eavesdrop on employees’ conversations, such as those of Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth during the filming of Gilda. Rita, Joan Crawford and Kim Novak are three of the better-known actresses who manage to build careers for themselves in spite of rejecting his advances.

Bette Davis and Howard Hughes
1938. Bette Davis with predator Howard Hughes. Read more.

Darryl F Zanuck, Cohn’s counterpart at 20th Century-Fox, is widely credited with inventing the “casting couch”. In Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Last Tycoon, Leonard Mosley quotes a startling recollection of the mogul’s long-term associate Milton Sperling:

You know that Darryl was mad about women. Everybody talked about it in Hollywood and the rumor was that his prowess as a cocksman was just unbelievable. I don’t know whether it was true or not. I was a shy young man, a bit backward in that regard. I guess, but even I knew that every day at four o’clock in the afternoon some girl on the lot would visit Zanuck in his office. The doors would be locked after she went in, no calls were taken, and for the next half hour nothing happened – headquarters shut down. Around the office work came to a halt for the sex siesta. It was an understood thing. While the girl was with Zanuck, everything stopped, and anyone who had the same proclivities as Zanuck, and had the girl to do it with, would go off somewhere and do what he was doing. I honestly think that from four to four-thirty every day at Fox, if you could have harnessed the power from all the fucking that was going on, you could have turned the tides at Malibu. It was an incredible thing, but a girl went in through that door every day.

Howard Hughes is not just a film producer and the owner of RKO Pictures; he is a business tycoon, engineer and pioneering aviator. He has a “secret” house near his LA home where he “interviews” would-be starlets. Rumour has it that he’s had affairs with a host of young actresses including Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Ava Gardner, Carole Lombard and Ginger Rogers. Jane Greer’s career hits the buffers when she rejects his advances.

It’s not just the studio heads and producers who are in on the act. Agents, actors, publicists and others are all circling.

But back to our aspiring starlet… Assuming she makes it onto the big screen, the studio, fan magazines and gossip columnists work together to paint an attractive picture of her. By providing details of her domestic life, the studio enables fans to feel as if they can get close to the real person. Articles and photos of her home, her clothes, the events and parties she attends and so on, add grist to the mill. As does the slightest suggestion of romance – but only if our starlet is single.

It’s essential that there’s no hint of scandal. To that end, the studio enlists “fixers” to clean up potential embarrassments such as a drug addiction or an extra-marital affair. That is why it’s important for our starlet to tow the line and keep on the right side of her bosses. Otherwise they could hang her out to dry.

Jane Greer by Ernest A Bachrach
1945. Jane Greer, a talented actress as well as a beautiful woman, has her career wrecked by Howard Hughes, whose advances she rejects. Photo by Ernest A Bachrach.

The trouble is that temptation is everywhere. If you want to get a sense of the corrupt and corrupting forces that are rife, just read the novels of Raymond Chandler. Carmen Sternwood, for example, Lauren Bacall’s wild, drug-addicted younger sister exploited by pornographers and blackmailers in The Big Sleep, is an object lesson in what can become of a girl who gets in with the wrong crowd. In My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, Scotty Bowers, an ex-Marine who works as a bartender at Hollywood parties, paints a picture of the LAPD vice squad prowling the hills in their patrol cars, looking for parties and opportunities to arrest the participants.

Even big stars are vulnerable to scandal. Ingrid Bergman is one of the most-loved stars in America but all that changes overnight when, in spite of having a husband and a daughter, she gets pregnant by Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Colorado Senator Edwin C Johnson takes to the floor of the Senate to denounce her as “a powerful influence for evil.”

And if our starlet fails to make the grade? She might be relegated to the stock character pool, kept around to “pleasure” visiting executives, or just spat out.

Unsafe sex –and what of Dr Ress and his clients?

It is in this glittering and sleazy environment laced with opportunity and danger that some at least of Dr Ress’s clients seek to make their way.

Of the twelve young women who dedicate photos to Dr Ress, seven taste a modicum of success, meet and romance a few of the ‘beautiful people’ and come through (relatively) unscathed, as far as we can tell. “Tommye” Adams crashes and burns – hers is a cautionary tale if ever there was one. Virginia Walker dies tragically young. The other three are mysteries.

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Angela Greene

Angela Greene

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "For Doctor Ress With sincere thanks and appreciation – Always, Angela."

Angela Greene is born in 1921, grows up in Flushing, New York,...

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Constance Dowling

Constance Dowling

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Dear Dr. Ress – I hope this was worth waiting for – Love, Connie Dowling".

Constance Dowling has come to Hollywood via...

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Doris Dowling

Doris Dowling

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress. With great affection and appreciation. Doris Dowling (yr. new daughter)".

Doris Dowling has followed her sister, Constance, from Broadway to...

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Kay Aldridge

Kay Aldridge

1947. Inscribed “Irving Ress, With great appreciation, Kay Aldridge, 1947”.

Kay inscribes this photo two years after retiring. Her career began 13 years earlier –...

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Janis Paige

Janis Paige

1945. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress, My dearest thanks and appreciation for being such a wonderful friend to me. With love, “The Brat” Janis Paige"

Janis...

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Lynn Merrick

Lynn Merrick

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "If there’s a doctor in the house, I hope it’s DR. RESS! Best Always, Lynn Merrick"

Lynn, blonde and blue-eyed, dedicates this photo...

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Charmaine du Rois

Charmaine du Rois

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To my favorite Doctor and friend, sincerely always, Charmaine Du Rois".

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Diane

Diane

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "For my beloved doctor – the best in the world and a dear friend – Thank you for my beautiful little girl –...

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Abigail

Abigail “Tommye” Adams

8 March 1944. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress:– All my deepest affection. Tommye".

In May 1944, three months after inscribing this photo to Dr Ress, Tommye...

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Marta Linden

Marta Linden

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Irving. On account you’re such a love! Marta".

Marta Linden doesn’t hang around for long in Hollywood. Between 1942 and 1945 she...

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Liliana Chanel

Liliana Chanel

Around 1950. Inscribed "A Irving, sperando di conservare per sempre la sua meravigliosa amicizia. Liliana".

A label on the back of the photo identifies the...

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Virginia Walker

Virginia Walker

1945. Inscribed "For my very favorite doctor. Virginia".

This photo is issued by 20th Century-Fox to promote A Royal Scandal (1945), a film about the...

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Information about the doctor himself is thin on the ground, apart from a brief entry in Wikipedia. But we do catch a tantalizing glimpse of him in Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946 by Tom Weaver and Michael Brunas. They recount an incident involving Australian actress Betty Bryant, cast by Universal as the female lead in The Jungle Captive (1945).

Around 1948. A photo inscribed to Dr Irving Ress by Betty Bryant. Read more.

Australian actress Betty Bryant, recently signed by Universal to a term contract, was originally chosen to play the female lead in The Jungle Captive (1945).

On August 30, 1944, one day before production began, she appeared in the office of associate producer Morgan B. Cox and informed him that she didn’t know whether she could find a babysitter to stay with her two year old on certain nights she was scheduled to work. On the first day of shooting she was unprepared, and on the second day she arrived 40 minutes late, just in time for a reprimand from director Harold Young.

To quiet the actress’ maternal apprehensions, her physician Dr Irving L. Ress, Hollywood’s “obstetrician to the stars,” was summoned. In private, Dr. Ress emphatically told Cox that there was nothing about motion pictures or motion picture people that he could admire. According to Ress, all the men in the movie business were concerned primarily with “making” any and all women in any way connected with the industry. Bryant was drawn into the argument and Ress nearly succeeded in creating a scene.

Over the next several days this embarrassing situation continued, with Ress hanging around the set, creating disturbances, careening around the darkened lot in his car and, in the words of Cox in a 16-page September 12 memo), “acting more like a thwarted lover than a reputable doctor.” Cox concluded in his memo that Bryant, slightly ill throughout much of this ordeal and genuinely apologetic for the entire situation, was a victim of circumstances over which she had little control. Of course the boom was inevitably lowered on the hapless actress, and she was bumped. (In his September 9 Los Angeles Times column, Edwin Schallert sugar-coated the incident, reporting that Bryant had gotten ill and “has to go in the hospital for observation and treatment.”) Amelita Ward replaced her in the picture, which ran two days over schedule (wrapping on September 16), probably as the result of the turmoil created by the mysterious Dr. Ress.

Clearly the good doctor has a jaundiced view of the industry. And who, other than the studios and their stooges, could really blame him?

Want to know more?

Two important sources for this piece are a blog about Women and the Sexual Double Standard of the 1950s (apparently no longer available online) and “Silent” Sexual Revolution Began In 1940’s and ’50s, an article by Alan Petigny.

For the lowdown on Hollywood, Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema by Anne Helen Petersen is a great read. Or you could take a look at Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars by Scotty Bowers. For an online article, there’s a Daily Express article on Hollywood’s dirty little secret.

For more about the individual actresses, Wikipedia, IMDb and Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen are excellent starting points.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Carole Landis publicity photo for Secret Command
Carole Landis – die young, stay pretty
Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford in a passionate embrace
Gilda – the movie that made Rita Hayworth into a bombshell
Sex and power – Nazism in 1970s cinema

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Stars, Studios Tagged With: Abigail Adams, Alfred Kinsey, Angela Greene, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Bettie Page, Betty Bryant, Betty Grable, Charmaine du Rois, Constance Dowling, Darryl Zanuck, Doris Dowling, Dr Irving Ress, Harry Cohn, Howard Hughes, Ingrid Bergman, Irving Klaw, Janis Paige, Kay Aldridge, Liliana Chanel, Lynn Merrick, Marilyn Monroe, Marta Linden, pin-up, Playboy, sex, starlet, Virginia Walker

Perc Westmore – makeup king of Hollywood

Perc Westmore, Marguerite Chapman and acolytes
Perc Westmore, Marguerite Chapman and acolytes. Read more.

If you’re going to create heroes and heroines, villains and villainesses who look credible under the camera’s unrelenting gaze, you need fantastic raw material.

You also need brilliant make-up. And when it comes to make-up, Perc Westmore is the best in the business.

Perc (pronounced ‘Purse’) is the son of an English wigmaker and just one of a whole family of Hollywood make-up artists. He is Head of Warner Brothers’ make-up department and the highest-paid make-up artist in the world with a salary of $50,000 a year (well over half a million dollars in today’s money).

Of course he works with leading actresses such as Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis. So when he speaks, starlets (and indeed stars) listen – as the starlets gathered round him are doing in this picture.
He’s a real innovator, who has revolutionized make-up. To his credit are:

  • The panchromatic base – a tan cream that keeps faces and lips from fading out by evenly reflecting all lights.
  • A systematic approach to make-up based on a rigorous categorization of hair colour and facial type. For example, prior to Perc, studios described actresses simply as blonde or brunette. His system involves a chart of thirty five shades of blonde alone.
  • The ‘hair lace wig’, which adds years of professional life to the likes of Bing Crosby, Charles Boyer and Fred Astaire.

And he’s formidable too. According to his nephew, Mike:

There are makeup people who didn’t work if they wronged Perc. Perc was a powerful guy in the business. Very creative and nice, but you didn’t cross him. He was a tidy guy. I remember he used to wear these white suits and never got anything on them.

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The science of the lungs

The science of the lungs

1941. Perc Westmore lectures Warner Bros starlets on the science of the lungs assisted by Marguerite Chapman. The caption on the back of the...

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The art of applying rouge

The art of applying rouge

1941. Perc Westmore lectures Warner Bros starlets on the art of applying rouge, assisted by Mary Brodel The caption on the back of the print...

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The art of arching the eyebrow

The art of arching the eyebrow

1941. Perc Westmore lectures Warner Bros starlets on the art of arching the eyebrow, assisted by Faith Dorn. The caption on the back of the...

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Want to know more about Perc Westmore?

Look no further than Tattered and Lost.

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Crew, Stars, Studios Tagged With: make-up, Marguerite Chapman, Perc Westmore, Warner Brothers

Hazel Brooks – the human heat wave

Hazel Brooks, model, pin-up and Hollywood star of the 1940s is all but forgotten now. Except for here…

‘Known among the wags of Hollywood as “The Human Heat Wave”’, as the caption of one of her publicity stills puts it, she was lucky in love but not in her career. Or perhaps, when push came to shove, her marriage was more important to her than her career.

Hazel Brooks’ MGM years and before

The story starts in 1941 and Hazel, age 17, is working as a model for New York’s two leading agencies of the period – Walter Thornton and Harry Conover. With her red hair, green eyes, high cheekbones and svelte figure she certainly has what it takes.

Hazel Brooks – dream girl dreaming
1944. Hazel Brooks, ‘chosen by servicemen as the girl about whom they would like to dream’. Photo probably by Laszlo Willinger. Read more.

So it’s not surprising that she’s ‘discovered’ by Arthur Freed, who has recently become head of his own unit at MGM and has quite a track record as a talent spotter. He is in the process of helping establish MGM as the leading Hollywood studio for musicals and will go on to produce An American in Paris, Singin’ in the Rain and Gigi. A couple of years after her arrival in Hollywood, he will cast Hazel as one of the 14 ‘glorified girls’ in Ziegfeld Follies.

When she arrives at MGM, the studio goes to work on her, one of the first steps being to send her for a photo session at the stills studio. An early sitting for Laszlo Willinger uses dramatic lighting and props to create some truly moody images, aspects of which seem almost to foreshadow Guy Bourdin. The three shots by Clarence Sinclair Bull a year or so later seem to be experimenting with different personas.

As with Ava Gardner, MGM can’t decide what to do with Hazel and she ends up with a series of bit-parts. But Alberto Vargas, pin-up painter extraordinaire, has no such doubts. In 1942 he uses her legs as inspiration for the perfect MGM glamour girl. The other features are Inez Cooper’s hands, Mary Jane French’s hair, Thea Coffman’s feet, Ruth Ownbey’s hips, Aileen Haley’s bust, Eve Whitney’s’ waist, Kay Williams’ arms, Kay Aldridge’s profile, Natalie Draper’s lips, Marilyn Maxwell’s ankles, and Georgia Carroll’s eyes.

In the meanwhile, though, Hazel meets Cedric Gibbons, head of MGM’s art department and the designer of the Oscar statue. Is it a coincidence that that the year she arrives, he divorces Dolores del Rio? Anyway, Hazel has a thing about older men and on 4 February 1943 the couple announce their engagement in Los Angeles Superior Court, where her $150-a-week MGM contract has to be approved by Judge Joseph W Vickers because she’s under legal age. He stipulates that one-tenth of her earnings be in vested in war bonds. The following year they marry. He’s 49, she’s 19 and eyebrows are raised.

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God’s gift to the sweater industry

God’s gift to the sweater industry

New York, 1941. The term sweater girl was made popular in the 1940s to describe Hollywood actresses such as Lana Turner, who wore tight sweaters...

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Hazel Brooks by Laszlo Willinger

Bedroom eyes

Hollywood, 1944. The tilted camera angle, the bed-head with its exaggerated padding (Guy Bourdin would have loved it!) and the deep shadows combine to give...

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Ghostly apparition

Ghostly apparition

Hollywood, 1944. Three years on from her sessions with Clarence Sinclair Bull, here’s another shot that’s high on drama with exaggerated perspective, a rather sinister...

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Girl next door

Girl next door

Hollywood, 1945. Brought to Tinseltown age 17 by MGM, Hazel Brooks poses for Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of the Studio’s stills department. She’s no longer...

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Drama queen

Drama queen

Hollywood, 1945. Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM’s stills studio, uses dramatic lighting, a striking pose and mysterious foreground sculpture to create a striking portrait...

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Glamour puss

Glamour puss

Hollywood 1945. The gold lamé dress, the textured background, the subtle lighting – a totally fabulous example of Hollywood image-making by Clarence Sinclair Bull. And...

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A bit of a mystery

A bit of a mystery

Hollywood, around 1944. This slightly old-fashioned but very romantic portrait with its soft focus is a bit of a mystery. It’s by Max Munn Autrey,...

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Relaxing at home

Relaxing at home

Around 1945. Hazel Brooks in a printed floral dress reclines on a banquette sofa as light filters through the the picture window behind her. A...

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Hazel Brooks, outdoors girl

Hazel Brooks, outdoors girl

Hollywood, around 1945. You can almost feel the heat of the California sun in the picture. Hazel poses, hands on hips, very much the mistress...

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Body and Soul – Hazel Brooks’ greatest movie

In 1945 Hazel Brooks obtains her release from MGM and tests for Selznick. 18 months or so later, she gets her big break – she will be groomed as a star by The Enterprise Studios, a new independent production company co-founded by actor John Garfield alongside producers David Loew and Charles Einfeld. You can read the story, including some comments from Hazel herself, in The million dollar gamble.

The studio goes into marketing overdrive for the release of Body and Soul. By way of illustration, here’s an extract from an article in Showmen’s Trade Review, November 22, 1947.

The News Post ran a contest on the question, “What Type of Girl Do You Prefer,” using portraits of Hazel Brooks as the “body” type and Lilli Palmer as representative of the “soul” type. Two radio stations also ran contests, with theatre tickets as prizes. The “Body and Soul” records were exploited through window displays in 23 music shops. Department stores also came through with fashion windows. The campaign was one of the most widespread Saxton has staged in some time, and the results at the box-office were ample proof of its effectiveness.

Body and Soul is one of the all-time-great boxing movies, with Hazel cast as Alice, a ‘gold-digging tramp’, as Bosley Crowther characterizes her in his New York Times review. Bud Graybill, the stills photographer for the movie, captures some great noir shots in which she seems to relish letting her hair down and vamping it up for the camera – her modelling background coming to the fore perhaps.

Regardless, it sounds like Hazel enjoys flaunting what she’s got. In May 1947, vacationing in Hawaii she…

Took with her for the edification of the islanders, all of the top-revealing dresses and swim-suits that the Johnston Office prevented her wearing in Body and Soul…

And the following year, Cobina Wright in an article for Modern Screen called Banned in Hollywood reports that…

Along the French Riviera, the ladies are wearing what they call “diaper suits” for swimming. The suit consists of a trifle of material on the top, a trifle of material on the bottom, and an almost unbelievable amount of girl in between.

Incidentally, just because I’ve said Hollywood’s pretty conservative, and we don’t go for the diaper suit, doesn’t mean we don’t have our own exotic fringe. Take Hazel Brooks (the Body and Soul menace). I saw her lounging near Mr. Kent’s pool, all covered by a flesh-colored clinging leotard covered with skin-tight black lace.

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Femme fatale

Femme fatale

1947. Hazel Brooks in full-on, femme-fatale mode with smouldering gaze and décolleté black dress decorated with an eye-popping baroque ornament. You just know there’s trouble...

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Centre of attention

Centre of attention

1947. The room is crowded, the lighting moody, the atmosphere hot and sultry, the stakes high. And there's no doubting the centre of attention: Hazel...

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Close up

Close up

1947. Another publicity shot for Body and Soul using natural rather than studio light. Hazel Brooks has a great complexion – there’s little sign of...

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Unfazed

Unfazed

1947. Hazel Brooks, as Alice in Body and Soul, recline behind an extraordinary piece of coral that looks all set to embrace her. The shadow...

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Hollywood’s latest heat wave

Hollywood’s latest heat wave

1947. This photo by Bud Graybill speaks for itself. But just in case you’re not getting the message, here’s what the caption on the back...

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Relaxing by the pool

Relaxing by the pool

1947. After a hard day's work filming Body and Soul, what better way to recuperate than lounge in front of the swimming pool in a...

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“Retouch as indicated”

1947. Stamped on the back of this photo is ‘APPROVED / ADVERTISING COUNCIL / SEP 24 1947 / HOLLYWOOD’ and ‘RETOUCH AS INDICATED’. The indications...

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Vital statistics

Vital statistics

1947. Everything we need to know about Hazel Brooks… But what are those strange lesions on her left forearm? They're traces of the potted palm...

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More body than soul

More body than soul

1947. Femmes don’t come more fatale than this. Smouldering in a fitted, black-satin dress and perched on a white-sheepskin rug, Hazel Brooks gives the camera...

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In the sunshine

In the sunshine

1947. As a femme fatale in Body and Soul, Hazel is of course a creature of the night and spends most of her time indoors....

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Most provocative still of 1947

Most provocative still of 1947

1947. Caressed by ostrich feathers, eyes half-closed in ecstasy, Hazel Brooks is in a world of her own. And who wouldn’t want to join her...

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After the shoot

After the shoot

1947. Hazel Brooks faces the camera, head in hands and with a spaced expression. And there to the right is that extraordinary piece of coral...

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Mixed messages

Mixed messages

1947. So here’s Hazel Brooks in the gown she wears as a nightclub singer in Body and Soul. If the lacy bodice says ‘Come and...

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Perfect housewife

Perfect housewife

1947. Hazel Brooks might have been typecast as a heartless vamp by Enterprise Studios, but that doesn't mean she's like that in real life. She's...

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Making a meal of it

Making a meal of it

1947. . Hazel Brooks looks all set to devour John Garfield. Here’s what the caption on the back of the photo has to say.

THE...

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Sleep, My Love – Hazel Brooks’ follow-up movie

In 1948 Hazel Brooks stars as Daphne in Sleep, My Love, a Douglas Sirk melodrama that in terms of plot is a bit of a Gaslight rip-off. It is her only other major starring role. As Daphne, she’s another scheming bitch and in this case she likes to parade around in diaphanous garments. MGM might have struggled to figure out how to cast her but Triangle have no such problems.

One of the aspects that makes Sleep, My Love interesting is the way in which it illustrates the Hollywood studios’ attempts to push the boundaries of what is acceptable in 1940s America. According to IMDb:

In 1947, an amendment was made to the Production Code that cleared the way for the production and release of films dealing with drugs, and Hollywood wasted no time driving through the “drug” door. (Drugs still couldn’t be smoked or used free-will or for recreation, though.) While not the first film to take advantage of the drugs-can-be-used-when-essential-to-the-plot loophole, this Mary Pickford production for Triangle Productions made certain the use of a drug was most essential to the story of “Sleep, My Love.”

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More of the same, please

More of the same, please

1948. Hazel Brooks' performance in Body and Soul goes down a treat. So for her next movie, Sleep, My Love, Triangle Productions want more of...

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Illicit lovers

Illicit lovers

1948. It's a hot night in every sense as eyes meet and hands clasp. But all is not well, as the caption on the back...

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Dreaming

Dreaming

1948. Hazel Brooks lies back on a slightly-rumpled bed, and there’s a suspicion that she’s not wearing anything under that fur. But what’s on her...

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Filming a scene

Filming a scene

1948. Hazel Brooks and crew filming a scene for Sleep, My Love. Note the chalk lines on the floor indicating where to stand.

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Preparing to shoot

Preparing to shoot

1948. Hazel Brooks and George Coulouris getting ready to film a scene for Sleep, My Love. He had been a member of Orson Welles’ famed...

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Take it from me…

Take it from me…

1948. On the set of Sleep, My Love, Hazel Brooks discusses the scene she’s about to film with director, Douglas Sirk. He is one of...

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Hazel Brooks smiles on set

Hazel Brooks smiles on set

1948. A rare shot of Hazel with a smile on her face. Her usual demeanour is a good deal less relaxed – a touch of...

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Mistress and slave

Mistress and slave

1948. It's not difficult to see who wears the trousers here. Hazel Brooks can scarcely be bothered to conceal her contempt as she looks down...

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Dressed to kill

Dressed to kill

1948. Hazel Brooks, dressed to kill in a diaphanous outfit, makes an eye-popping entrance. The angular staircase, raking light and deep shadows add to the...

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Haughty look

Haughty look

1948. Hazel Brooks casts a disdainful glance towards George Coulouris, which typifies her attitude towards his character in Sleep, My Love. He is taking instructions...

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And afterwards…

Hazel Brooks appears in a couple more films before leaving the movie industry.  So why does her career stall? One factor is that though she looks terrific and is a competent actress, she doesn’t have the on-screen electricity or charisma of the likes of Lauren Bacall and Ava Gardner. But it could also have been down to the politics of Hollywood, to personal motivation and to luck.

Cedric Gibbons, Hazel Brooks and Kathryn Grayson at the premiere of Showboat
1951. Cedric Gibbons, Hazel Brooks and Kathryn Grayson at the premiere of Showboat. Read more.

According to long-time friend Maria Cooper Janis, Gary Cooper’s daughter, in the years after her retirement from films Hazel becomes a skilled stills photographer and works actively for a number of children’s charities.

In 1960, Cedric Gibbons dies. In 1967 history repeats itself.  Hazel marries Rex Ross, Jr., a Beverly Hills surgeon and founder of the Non-invasive Vascular Clinic at Hollywood Hospital – he’s 58, she’s 40.

He will die in 1999, she in 2002 after a long illness.

Want to know more and Hazel Brooks?

Apart from the captions on the backs of some of the photos, my two main sources of information have been:

  • Oscars obituary page
  • Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen

Other topics you may be interested in…

Hazel Brooks swathed in ostrich feathers
Hazel Brooks – the million dollar gamble
Jinx Falkenburg poses outdoors
Jinx Falkenburg – all-American girl
Martha Vickers, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep
Martha Vickers – the starlet who dared to upstage Lauren Bacall

Filed Under: Films, Stars, Studios Tagged With: Alberto Vargas, Bud Graybill, Cedric Gibbons, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Harry Conover, Hazel Brooks, Laszlo Willinger, MGM, Walter Thornton

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