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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 34 |
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Put these ladies together
and you have witchcraft
of TheColumnists.com
For the makers of the classic horror, suspense and mystery movies of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, it was easy to fill out your cast with sinister supporting actors by just telling your casting director to "round up the usual suspects."
That meant you'd immediately have the guys you could count on to spook up the set nicely, like Lionel Atwill, who always looked as if most of the crucial screws were loose in his head; Dwight Frye, who didn't need a lunch break because he probably ate spiders off the wall; George Zucco, who had blueblood mannerisms, but hardly any actual blood; Akim Tamiroff, who looked as if he'd like to eat your kid sister, head first; Milton Parsons, who had the demeanor of a mortician, but specialized in playing dead bodies that fall out of closets, and Tor Johnson, the guy you hired if you wanted a giant fat, bald guy who couldn't remember dialogue.
But what if you needed sinister women? The work for them wasn't as steady, so you had to think creatively. You didn't just push a button and get a printout of likely candidates. Still, I think the casting directors must have done a pretty good job because I grew up with images of some really sinister women permanently locked into my skull.
For instance, consider these Five Frightful
Fenales:
 Poor Joan Fontaine has the poisonous persona of Dame Judith Anderson hovering behind her in REBECCA. |
This petite Australian was a leading lady in the legitimate theater, but rarely starred in the movies. (1941's "Lady Scarface" was an exception.) But she was one of our all-time great supporting actresses--and was never better than when she was BAAAAD! Maybe it was just me, but my skin has been crawling ever since I first saw her as the evil Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's "Rebecca." She tried to get romantic with, of all people, Vincent Price in "Laura." And I thought she had it coming when Barbara Stanwyck threw a pair of scissors at her in "The Furies"--and hit her smack in the eye. |
 In Asian makeup to menace Bette Davis in "The Letter" |
Gale Sondergaard certainly started out on top, winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her screen debut in 1936's "Anthony Adverse," in which she was a high-spirited and rather attractive villainess. But I remember her best for all the really nasty types she played--including Lady Nazi spies--in the 1940s. Her all-time nastiest: Sherlock Holmes' arch rival "The Spider Woman" in 1944 and the non-Sherlock sequel, "The Spider Woman Strikes Back" in 1946. She was blacklisted, along with husband Herb Biberman, during the McCarthy Era. Ironic point: Her last film before the blacklist was MGM's "East Side, West Side" (1949). One of her co-stars was Nancy Davis, who went on to marry red-baiter Ronald Reagan, who praised the blacklist. |
 Drawing a bead on Joan Crawford? |
Mercedes McCambridge, like Gale Sondergaard, won a Supporting Actress Oscar in her debut film--"All the King's Men" (1949). A great radio actress before that, she had a voice like a diamond-edged rasp, which is why she played the voice of the demon inside Linda Blair in "The Exorcist." Her nastiest-ever? I'd say the two-gun butch-bitch who dukes it out with Joan Crawford in "Johnny Guitar." Although her most notorious performance was her unbilled cameo in Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" as a dyke biker who stands around while male gang members rape Janet Leigh, claiming, "I like to watch!" |
 Beauty by day and....this, by night! |
Acquanetta was the first woman Universal studios actually tried to develop as a "monster" to rank with Boris, Bela, Lon and the rest of the Universal male monsters. She was prettier than all of them put together, but her character, Paula, turned into a gorilla in "Captive Wild Woman" (1943) and "Jungle Woman" (1944). That did it for me! Ever since those movies, I've had this recurring nightmare: I go to bed with this exotic, sexy woman and she'll suddenly go ape on me and mistake me for a banana. |
 Was she asking Bogie to pay $100,000 to get his name out of her diary? |
The real Mary Astor was a very sexy lady whose diary once was exposed to the public in a court case--and, well, let's say they didn't make it into a movie called "The Nun's Story." Meanwhile, she was real mean and nasty on screen. She was the real bad news in "The Maltese Falcon" or else Sam Spade never would have turned her over to the cops, right? And she won her supporting actress Oscar in 1941 being REAL mean to Bette Davis in "The Great Lie." All I can say is, if you can out-mean Bette Davis on screen, lady, you're a piece of work! |
©2006 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Oct. 23, 2006.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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