FOR ALL FANS OF SUSAN HAYWARD

#6 the bottom right picture. Though it's a dramatic scene from I WANT TO LIVE, I like to think she had humor and fun to be with.

Just for the sake of this thread not becoming overlooked, I shall point out that members here should not only show appreciation towards Susan Hayward on account of her astonishing beauty and appeal (as evident in the pictures above), but also for her highly accomplished talents as an actress seen in many of her movies.

Susan Hayward is a fave actress of mine-the one great performance in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

I must agree with both Cinemaniac and Melvin in their assessments. Cinemaniac tells what the studios wanted Hayward's persona to be and she succeeded to be a great actress as well and Melvin tells what makes some women cringe. Too often actresses appear nude in films in "tastefully" done scenes only to be thereafter used as the sex object or forgotten forever.
I like Hayward's character in SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. She snaps at the men drooling over her. Was there any other actress allowed to display toughness without being labelled the dreaded term b****?

I believe there is a difference between playing a strong, independent, slightly hard woman and playing one that comes off as just a "b*****".

Also, a lot of a woman's reaction depends on how the man acts towards said woman. Take the film House of Strangers, and the exchanges between Peter Conte and Hayward. When I first saw the film about 30 years ago, I felt the Hayward character was just a "b*****". I.e. what man would wish to be with such a woman! But subsequent viewing (as well as my experience with my Italian in-laws), changed my POV. The Conte character is a typical-for-the-time arrogant, self-centered and selfish man, who models his behavior based on his stereotypically Italian father. What woman with a backbone would wish to be with such a man!

Most Hayward characters were strong competent woman and often the primary way an insecure man deals with such a woman is by labeling her a 'b*****'.

I've seen I Want to Live a few times.   Hayward does give a great performance and the Oscar was well deserved.    But the subject matter is a little off putting since, as noted, the character is anything but a saint and deserves her fate.  

Here's a Susan Hayward film that doesn't receive much attention - "YOUNG AND WILLING". This movie has aired a couple of times on MOVIES! in the past, but I haven't seen it in a few years since.


The movie's from about 1943, and also stars a young William Holden, Eddie Bracken, Martha O'Driscoll, Barbara Britton, and Florence McMichael. The later really steals the show because she speaks in such an unusually high-pitched voice. I don't mean she sounds like Jean Hagen in "SINGING IN THE RAIN", I mean she sounds almost exactly like Shari Lewis' Lamb Chop character. The movie is about a group of young actor wannabes residing in an apartment building all ambitious of making it to the big time and incorporating various dramatic acts to their regular mundane situations. Robert Benchley also stars in this film. For those who don't know of him, he's that comic actor in those MGM shorts of the 1930s-1940s who would demonstrate the proper and typical way of performing certain everyday activities, such as how to sleep, or read, or start the day off right as the every man character Joe Doaks. Not to get confused with "Joe McDoaks", a character played by George "George Jetson" O'Hanlon in a series of Warner Bros. short subjects of the 1940s-1950s. Incidentally, Benchley was the pest who kept popping up simultaneously in various scenes in "ROAD TO ZANZIBAR" with Bob Hope/Bing Crosby/Dorothy Lamour in order to provide some form of useful information.

I saw that film on GRIT-TV.    They featured woman of the west and they had some good films.

As you note, Hayward's French accent is done well.