I’ve never heard Judy Garland described as ‘sexy’ before, even as a ‘runner up’

Not surprisingly, Rita Hayworth makes the Top 10, at AllThingsKevin:

Margarita Cansino, as she was born, was one of the most desired pin-up girls of the WWII era, and of course then there was that performance of Blame it on Mame in Gilda. Though her natural hair colour was dark brown, almost black, and she famously went  blonde for hubby Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai, Rita was mostly known as a knock-out redheaded beauty. Hell, the lady even married a prince (more than a decade before Grace Kelly) and according to some stories, had the cocktail (the Margarita!) named after her by a lovestruck bartender-cum-drink inventor.

I re-watched Gilda the other day — it gets weirder, and therefore better, all the time.

How many times has David Lynch watched it, I wonder…

Marked by the distinctly cynical viewpoint and shadowy ambiance of film noir, Gilda could be described as a “hate story.” By focusing on the polluted, venomous relationship between Gilda and Johnny, Vidor gives the film its slightly perverse – some have said sadomasochistic – feel. Ford showed remarkable insight into the film’s racy themes when he pronounced “the picture was about hate being as exciting an emotion as love.” Johnny and Gilda seem to delight in hurting and humiliating each other, making this one of the oddest film romances ever made.

In reality, Ford and Hayworth were great friends and even lived next door to each other for a time in Hollywood. Gilda was Ford and Hayworth’s second pairing after The Lady in Question (1940), which some said began Ford’s screen infatuation with Hayworth. Ford admitted to having an affair with Hayworth, though he was a man of discretion and never gave details about his involvement with the luscious movie star in his autobiography.

But what keeps it from greatness is the same problem I have with Rio Bravo:

The almost farcical door-slamming — characters constantly running back and forth from Location A to Location B.

It’s the sort of thing I expect from a high school play written by a talented but less-than-confident student; in a “serious” movie, all that “action” grates on my nerves.