In Praise of 42 Year Old Classic Movie Actresses

Being a 42 year old woman myself, I'm fascinated by the presumption of Tom Junod's recent Esquire piece, which opens with the statement that "there used to be something tragic about even the most beautiful forty-two year old woman." The essay has swiftly and justly provoked a chorus of mockery and retort from both men and women alike. What particularly caught my attention, though, was Junod's use of Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967) as his touchstone for the "old view" of the forty-two year old woman's tragic sexuality. For the record, Anne Bancroft was just 36 when she played Mrs. Robinson, while her supposedly 22 year old lover, Dustin Hoffman, was actually 30. Once Junod brought up the subject of classic films and the 42 year old woman, I couldn't help but think about iconic actresses and the roles they were playing when they really were 42. Let's take a look, shall we?

Bette Davis, born in 1908, turned 42 in 1950, the year she starred in All About Eve, one of her most celebrated films. Beautiful, successful, and certainly desirable, her Margo Channing was one of her greatest characters, and one who had a lot in common with her real-life self. The movie won six Oscars, including Best Picture, and Davis picked up her ninth Best Actress nomination.

Joan Crawford, born in 1906, turned 42 in 1948. She didn't have a picture come out that year, but the next year saw her star in Flamingo Road (1949), and in 1950 she made The Damned Don't Cry and Harriet Craig. Sex appeal is her character's chief weapon in the crime drama, The Damned Don't Cry, and Joan would go on being fabulously tough and sexy in This Woman is Dangerous (1952), Torch Song (1953), and Johnny Guitar (1955).

Katharine Hepburn entered the world in 1907 and celebrated her 42nd year in 1949, when she gave Spencer Tracy every ounce of trouble she could muster in the marvelous comedy, Adam's Rib. Hepburn wasn't done, either, not by a long shot. She still had The African Queen (1951), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957), and even Rooster Cogburn (1975) ahead of her. She would earn eight of her 12 career Oscar nominations after she was 42, and she would win three more times, all in the last two decades of her long screen career. Irrelevant? I think not. Tragic? Hardly.

Claudette Colbert, born in 1903, was by no means fading at the age of 42, which she reached in 1945. She starred that year in Guest Wife, but she had bigger hits later on, especially with The Egg and I in 1947. Funny, sassy, and classy, Colbert also starred with John Wayne in Without Reservations (1946) and with Walter Pidgeon in The Secret Heart (1946).

Living legend Maureen O'Hara, she of the fiery heart and hair, was born in 1920. She turned in 42 in 1962, a year before her iconic turn in McLintock! (1963) with frequent leading man John Wayne. In 1962 she starred in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation with Jimmy Stewart, and she reunited with Stewart for The Rare Breed in 1966. She was still yanking Duke's chain as late as 1971, when they made Big Jake.

Not enough for you? We're not even close to finished.

Doris Day starred in The Glass Bottom Boat  in 1966, 42 years after her birth in 1924.

Olivia de Havilland, born in 1916, made The Proud Rebel in 1958, the year she turned 42.

Ginger Rogers, born in 1911, turned 42 in 1953, the year she starred with Cary Grant in Monkey Business and more than held her own against nubile newcomer Marilyn Monroe.

Joan Blondell, born in 1906, made Nightmare Alley in 1947, and turned 42 in 1948. The feisty Pre-Code star continued to work right up until her death in 1979.

Ingrid Bergman, who was born in 1915, turned 42 in 1957. She won an Oscar that year for Best Actress for her performance in Anastasia (1956). In 1958, she starred with Cary Grant in Indiscreet and with Robert Donat in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. She still had two more Oscar-nominated roles ahead of her; she won Best Supporting Actress for Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and picked up her final Best Actress nod for Hostsonaten (1978).

Pause with me a moment to imagine any of these great ladies of Hollywood responding to Tom Junod's assertion that they were tragic because of their age at 42. Are your imaginary ears blistering yet? Mine sure are. Sic' em, Bette, Joan, and Kate!

Classic Films in Focus: THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

Screwball comedy director Preston Sturges offers a frothy concoction in The Palm Beach Story (1942). It's a light, short film, daring for its day in its treatment of the idea that an attractive woman might willingly use her sex appeal to advance her husband's career. The dialogue is witty, and the characters are certainly charming, but those who are bothered by loose ends will have fits over the way in which the movie leaves much unsaid and even more unexplained in its opening and closing scenes.

Our story involves a young married couple, Tom (Joel McCrea) and Gerry (Claudette Colbert), whose marriage isn't going so well because Tom has yet to get his big break and Gerry is tired of being poor. Gerry decides to help Tom out by divorcing him so that she can romance rich lovers and bankroll Tom's idea for a revolutionary airport design. Despite Tom's confusion over how exactly this is supposed to be a swell plan, Gerry takes off for Palm Beach to get a divorce, proving along the way that she can in fact charm men into giving her just about anything she wants. Her most devoted victim is an alarmingly wealthy bachelor named John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee), who falls hard for Gerry in short order. Tom pursues his wife to Florida, where Hackensacker's sister (Mary Astor) promptly conceives a passion for him, and the four besotted characters run around making fools of themselves until everything eventually gets sorted out, thanks to a deus ex machina so wild and so unaccounted for that it will either make you roar with laughter or tear your hair out in frustration.

The cast assembled for this trip to the loony bin is first rate. Colbert is lovely enough to sell the idea that men might fall all over themselves for her benefit, and Joel McCrea excels at comic reaction shots where he gapes open-mouthed in disbelief at the extent of his wife's zany endeavors. Rudy Vallee gets high marks for his amiable blueblood, and Mary Astor is a scream as the loopy sister. Even the secondary players bring plenty of laughs; Robert Dudley gets the movie off to a hilarious start as the generous Wienie King, whose inspection of the couple's apartment sets the plot in motion. Later, we get a whole club car of humorous characters with the Ale and Quail Club, who gallantly give Gerry a ticket so that she can board the train to Palm Beach. William Demarest, Victor Potel, Robert Warwick, Chester Conklin, Arthur Stuart Hull, Sheldon Jett, Dewey Robinson, Jimmy Conlin, Jack Norton, Torben Meyer, Robert Greig, and Roscoe Ates pack the train scenes with their drunken conviviality. A lot of these old character actors were regulars in Preston Sturges' pictures, and the director clearly takes great delight in their antics, literally setting them loose on the unsuspecting passengers and train crew until they eventually end up being set loose in a different way by the conductors.

It is difficult to say much about the beginning and ending of the movie without spoiling it, but it doesn't take two minutes to figure out that The Palm Beach Story opens with a scene from a completely different tale, one that won't be addressed in the scenes that follow. Who is the woman tied up in the closet? Why are both the bride and groom late for the wedding? What the heck is going on? I don't think Sturges means to torture his audience with these mystifying bookends to the main plot; I think that the title's wording is supposed to suggest that this is merely yet another story in the lives of these wild characters, and the beginning and ending show that the Palm Beach adventure is neither the first nor the last time that Tom and Gerry will find themselves doing crazy things. Like the television series Friends, where every episode is titled, "The One...," The Palm Beach Story is one story among many stories for our protagonists, with the only problem being that the other stories never actually get told. Personally, I would have liked to see the story that led up to the film's opening scenes; the comedic possibilities suggested there are marvelous.

If you enjoy The Palm Beach Story, you should certainly try out other Preston Sturges films, especially The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944). For more comedy with Claudette Colbert, try It Happened One Night (1934), Midnight (1939),  and The Egg and I (1947). See Joel McCrea in The Most Dangerous Game (1932), The More the Merrier (1943), and Ride the High Country (1962). Mary Astor is best remembered today as the femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon (1941), but you'll also find her in The Great Lie (1941) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). See more of Rudy Vallee in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) and Sturges' darker comedy, Unfaithfully Yours (1948).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.