Top Ten Anniversary: Favorite Movie Bitches

Let's face it... This post could have been simply ten Joan Crawford or Faye Dunaway roles (or split down the middle!) I reined it in so that some other gals could have a turn in the spotlight. Amazing as it may sound, I don't have Stella Stevens' Linda Rogo of The Poseidon Adventure (1972) on here even though I worship and adore her. Despite her (very!) rough edges, I don't really think of her as a bitch, at least not the way Stevens inhabited her. (The Linda in the book surely was an unmitigated one!) I also don't have Eleanor Parker's Baroness Schraeder of The Sound of Music (1965) on the list because I also don't consider her one either, even with some of her sarcasm and manipulations firmly in place. She knows when she's licked and responds gracefully. Carving the list down to ten was, as usual, difficult. But here we are in alphabetical order of their character's names.

AMANDA FARROW of The Best of Everything (1959) -- Rona Jaffe's novel of young career women facing the perils of office employment (and the wolves lying in wait to steal their virtue) was made into a plush romantic melodrama and on hand to show the kids how it's done was a recently widowed Joan Crawford as the tough-as-nails female exec. She orders Suzy Parker around like a slave, bites off Diane Baker's head ("Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!") and squares off against ambitious newbie Hope Lange. When Lange gingerly asks Crawford if she wants some comments "typed," she replies, "No... Beat it out on a native drum." Hardened from years of enduring her own boardroom battles, she finds solace in a married lover once a week, but when that begins to sour she hysterically tells him off over the phone, ending with the immortal line, "Now you and your rabbit-faced wife can both go to hell!" There isn't a wasted line, glance or gesture in the film from Miss C., who turned a barely-there character from the novel into an unforgettably steely and formidable antagonist for the film, yet she still has a certain amount of humanity and dignity in the end. And, like a couple of the ladies here, one can't help wondering if she isn't right more often than not.

CORA HALLETT of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) -- With this film and the hooty Jacqueline Susann's Once is Not Enough (1978), Alexis Smith turned me into a life-long fan. Jodie Foster is almost the whole show (along with a slimy Martin Sheen) in this creepy thriller, but for the brief moments that Smith is on-screen as an imperious landlady, the screen crackles with tension and animosity. Again, there is not a single frame of Smith's performance that isn't completely on board with what she's there to do and she creates some really fun antagonistic fireworks with her fourteen year-old adversary.  Haughty, imperious and harboring certain secrets and fears, she's an uppity, busy-body bitch, but she has her reasons to be wary.

ESTELLE ANDERSON of Madame X (1966) -- The key word that comes to mind is brittle for this dragon-lady mother-in-law. Constance Bennett's voice is brittle, her reed-thin body seems brittle and oh, that hair! As the iron-willed matriarch of a powerful family with political aspirations (methinks at least part of this role was inspired by Rose Kennedy!), Bennett came out of a twelve-year retirement to make Lana Turner's life hell. Friendly for maybe a hot second, she soon betrays her instant loathing of the new wife her son John Forsythe has brought to the family mansion. My great love of grande dame, above-it-all, highly manipulative characters of this ilk probably stemmed from watching Bennett drive the unwanted pest out of her life with vigor and venom. Even with all this, she brings conviction to a moment near the finale where the regret for what she's done shows through. It's a wondrous performance from someone who was once the highest-paid actress in Hollywood and a major star thirty-years prior, yet who in fact was brittle enough that she never even lived long enough to see the film released!

HELEN JORGENSON of A Summer Place (1959) -- "I've read about how the Swedes bathe together and... and have trial marriages and free love. I've read all about that. Anything goes." Thus saith the sexually frigid and repressed mother to Sandra Dee as played by the estimable Constance Ford. This hilariously simmering Bitter Betty has all sorts of great moments as she frets over clean toilet seats and sneers at frowsy alleged "harlot" Dorothy McGuire. Then there's the "merry" Christmas during which she slaps Dee into their pitiful plastic tree, something only a real ogre could do. The sequence in which she insists that her poor daughter be inspected by a doctor for proof of her virginity is probably a teen girl version of Dustin Hoffman going to the dentist in The Marathon Man (1976!) My own favorite moment is when impudent Troy Donahue tells her that if she hurts Dee again, he'll kill her! I think it would take more than Troy to take down this brawny battle axe.

HELEN LAWSON of Valley of the Dolls (1967) -- The rock-hard Broadway musical veteran was intended to be played by Judy Garland, but when the wheels came off of that troubled situation, Miss Susan Hayward was immediately called in and somehow managed to embody the fire-breathing gorgon as if she'd been studying the part for months. Like Joan Crawford before her, Hayward showed the three young ladies who were starring in the film what it meant to be a powerful presence on-screen. Virtually every line that growlingly slips out of her smoky mouth is a quotable hoot. "The only hit that comes out of a Helen Lawson show is Helen Lawson, and that's ME, baby, remember?," "Neely hasn't got that hard core like me. She never learned to roll with the punches," "You oughtta know... you just got out of the nuthouse" and, of course, "Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope!" The whack-a-doodle lip-sync to (Margaret Whiting's rendition of) "I'll Plant My Own Tree" is splendiferously awful, but only adds to the fun.

KAREN WALLACE of Airport '77 (1977) -- In this movie, Lee Grant is probably the most selfish character imaginable. She's also one of the most audacious and hilarious to behold. When the luxury plane she's on with her agricultural scientist husband (Christopher Lee) crashes below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, she looks at him and says, "What's going to happen to me?" Uh... ME, not US! Ha ha! She does care for him in a possessive, grasping fashion, but isn't above dallying with his hunky associate Gil Gerard. When she's not insulting Lee's endowment by comparing it to toy-size liquor bottles, she's telling dewy Kathleen Quinlan to "move your ass, dear." After trying to extort sex out of Gerard lest she tell her husband about them, he accuses her of blackmailing him. Her response? "Well... Who else have I got to blackmail? I don't get to fool around that much," as if she is required to blackmail someone and he's all there is handy! One of the highlights is when she, in a state of abject shock, decides to put her purse on her arm and open the watertight door to the plane! Brenda Vaccaro attempts to stop her and starts getting pounded by a deranged Grant until finally in retaliation and defense she socks her in the jaw and drops her to the floor!

LIZ SAXON of Back Street (1961) --Although Lee Grant was a good primer, I think it was Vera Miles in this film who truly taught me what a shrew was! She's just positively awful to her gorgeous husband John Gavin, though it's likely that she has somehow sensed all along that his heart never fully belonged to her, but to a wartime lover (Susan Hayward) he lost due to a misunderstanding. Once he's rekindled his affection for Hayward, all bets are off where the already venomous (and drunken) Miles is concerned. She thinks it's fine to carry on with a ski instructor, but God forbid he pay any attention to another woman. She pulls out every stop from threatening suicide to using the children to outright going off the deep end near the climax. But her finest hour is when she realizes that the woman her husband is devoted to is the very fashion designer whose show is happening right in her social circle. She bleats out of the winning bid on Hayward's showpiece wedding dress and then publicly announces that it be sent to woman her husband "keeps on some back street!" It's a sterling piece of melodramatic cinema that I could watch endlessly. Fun fact: one year prior, Miles and Gavin played devoted cohorts in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), but here are at each other's throats most of the time.

MILADY DeWINTER of The Three/Four Musketeers (1973/1974) -- Faye Dunaway was the first movie star I ever recognized as such. As a dunderheaded seven year-old, I figured that every movie had its own unique cast and that was it, but after seeing The Three Musketeers and obtaining the paperback tie-in novel, I knew her name. When that name showed up in 1974's The Towering Inferno, my love of seeing stars paired up in all sorts of ways was born. But my love of deep-seeded villainy came with the truly deplorable Milady DeWinter, who let nothing lie in the way of what she wanted (or secrets she wanted to protect.) Dazzling to look at in a series of stunning Yvonne Blake finery, she was one dangerous cookie to try to crumble. At the end of the first film, she tells Charlton Heston's Cardinal Richelieu, "Your Eminence is a great player - great enough to lose. I do not like to lose," thus setting up the second part of the story, which was her revenge on the musketeers for thwarting her plans to disgrace Queen Anne. Having returned to France from arranging an assassination, she tells her lover, "I reek of England and Calvinism" and turns her attention to "the slut Bonancieux," played by Raquel Welch. I've yet to see any actress come close to the level that Dunaway achieved in this famous and much-filmed role.

REMY GRAFF of Earthquake (1974) -- "God-DAMMIT!" says Miss Ava Gardner at the opening of this film (oh, excuse me, this "Event" as the ads said!) and she never looks back from there. She pleads and grasps and commands and claws her way through the whole catastrophe as her screen time continues to sadly diminish. Her opening sequence (sadly trimmed for the final cut) is a symphony of bitchy antagonism towards her hubby Charlton Heston. "Don't you dare lower your voice to me!" Though he bears the brunt of her disdain, few people are safe from it. She grabs a dazed secretary after the big one hits and screams, "Laura, what about my fathah? LAURA! My FATHAH?!?" (her father being played by the less than eight years older Lorne Greene!) Later, she's all over physician Lloyd Nolan, too with, "Doctah, why aren't you with my fathah?!" There is no line of dialogue she delivers that I do not know by heart and try to use in real life whenever possible. Ha ha!

ROBERTA CARTER of Return to Peyton Place (1961) -- The day I saw this movie, my life changed forever. I bought it because I wanted to see Eleanor Parker in Lana Turner's old part and to check out Carol Lynley as the lead, but I was scarcely prepared for the sure-handed bitchery of one Mary Astor as the conservative town's most steely, domineering citizen. That Astor, who was made love to as a teen by John Barrymore and - trapped in a loveless marriage to a stodgy doctor - carried on a torrid affair with George S. Kaufman, should play this judgemental, smothering, controlling monster was a stroke of casting genius. It's not as if she chews scenery or gnashes her teeth at anyone. No, she's a cool customer who knows precisely how to delicately lob a death blow at her enemies, sometimes with a smile. This highly-troubled production (which suffered considerable editing prior to release) was not a great success, and Astor's role was interfered with in post-production, but it matters not. Her presence in the film is towering and unforgettable and caused me to utterly adore her where before I merely appreciated her.

BONUS PICS!

Who can turn the world on with her bile? The stone-hearted Estelle Anderson as played by the zesty Constance Bennett (with Mary Tyler Moore-ish wig in place!)

This is a full version of the picture used in the above post. After Bennett decided to come out of a dozen years' retirement, she had her face done, leading some folks to remark that she looked younger and better than star Lana Turner. As a diehard Lana fan, I can't go that far, but she did look pretty good (and was certainly slim!) She died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage not long after Madame X was in the can at only age sixty.

This is a three-page spread from a 1975 British television channel guide that was published not long before Susan Hayward's death and is heavily centered on Valley of the Dolls.

VOD was playing on the telly that week and so the issue had info on not only Hayward, but also Charles Drake, with Barbara Parkins gracing the cover. Here, Hayward shows off her spangled Travilla muu muu.

In case anyone wanted to read the accompanying text, which tells some of her up & down real life story while strenuously trying to associate it with VOD...

Our gal Lee Grant, showing off her Burton Miller get-up. Somehow all these years later (I first saw Airport '77 in a theater forty-two years ago - can it be possible?!) I had no idea that she was in platform shoes in the movie?! Or were these replaced at some point with other black heels...? I always adored this pantsuit, which starts off with a coordinating jacket over it (and another brooch!)

Don't let the soft frills fool you. Liz Saxon is a dangerous and retaliatory adversary. Vera Miles had shaved her head for Five Branded Women (1960), which led to her wearing a wig for Psycho (1960.) Now, one year later, she had much of her coiffure back, though it was still short and needed some assistance towards the back at times.

No one whams a purse down onto a bed like Mary Astor. Her character was intended to be so aghast at her unsuitable daughter-in-law that she burns the house down with her in it (!), but this story point was eliminated in the final cut. I would love, love, LOVE to see any of the deleted footage of Astor's performance even though I consider what's there to be perfection.

Ava Gardner sports what was then a hot trend: The Drowned Rat Look! Actually, the plucky Miss Gardner (then fifty-two) refused the aid of a stunt double for much of the climactic flood of Earthquake and earned a round of applause from the crew after one particularly grueling take.

Lastly, I've posted this hooty pic before, but not with the caption provided by Universal Studio's publicity department. "Sheer terror!" LOL  This outfit is only seen momentarily in the film because the scene it was featured in was cut. In it, we were asked to believe that Charlton Heston wanted more-than-half-a-century-old Gardner to have children and was furious because she'd recently had a secret abortion...!