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Helen Keller
Marlilyn
Monre (1926-1962)
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Marlene Dietrich.
(1901-1993) (part-two)
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Most of her
remaining films were unremarkable , some even excruciating but there are a
few bright moments –Witness for the Prosecution (1958) and Orson Welles
Touch of Evil and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) sealed the career of an
unmatchable star. Lesser actress may have more films in the time span, or
rung greater changes in characterization but that’s not the point.
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Lola-Lola,
Army Jolly and Shanghai Lily and French are the timeless creations of a
great star who even managed to transcend the mountains of kitsch that became
associated with her name. In Dishonored as a streetwalker who becomes a Mata
Hari and faces a firing squad , she says ;” I am not afraid of life or of
death either.
In the last reclusive years death had been stealthily creeping up on
her. The final photographs , showed her aged , wrinkled , that her last
days of privacy had been violated. |
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For almost seventy years she had remained an icon. Her lounging , top –hatted
, cabaret pose in ‘The Blue Angel’ , frilly knickers and thighs prominent ,
a bare arm clasping a raised stocking leg, is as essential image of cinema
as Chaplin’s tramp or Disney’s mouse . She is unique and unrivalled a
genuine celluloid immortal. In The Blue
Angel she was demonic , sensual slut; in later films she epitomized an
unattainable allure in astonishing gowns by Travis Banton or cultivated an
androgynous ambiguity in immaculately tailored men’s trousers and yachting
caps .Critic Ken Tynan, wrote of her ;” She lives in a sexual no man ‘s
land and no woman’s either. She dedicates herself to looking , rather than
to being sexy. The art is in the seeming”.
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