These are the actresses I consider my favorites.  In order to enter into the Hall of Fame and, be a recipient of the Veronicas, I must have seen at least five of their films.  I will be adding new actresses at the end of every month as well as updating links and movie totals to any actresses already included.  Rank is in order of personal preference.  Clickable links take you to any reviews I’ve written.

Marilyn Monroe

Top Films: All About Eve, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot, Monkey Business

What I love about Her: her sweetness, her humor and the fact that you could laugh with her but not at her.

Favorite Movie:  Some Like It Hot

Total Films Seen: 22

Additional Films Reviewed: All my reviews of Marilyn’s work can be found in the My Month with Marilyn section.

Natalie Wood

Top Films: Miracle on 34th Street, Gypsy, West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, Love With a Proper Stranger

What I Love About Her:  Natalie Wood was the first classic actress I ever took notice of starting with West Side Story.  There was an innocence to her performance that was more poignant in Splendor in the Grass.  Not only did Natalie appear innocent but her personal story is filled with struggle and in many ways I find her own tragic demise to be more heart-wrenching than Marilyn’s (but that’s me).

Favorite Movie: Splendor in the Grass

Total Films Seen: 10

Additional Films Reviewed: Inside Daisy Clover

Lauren Bacall

Top Films: To Have and Have Not, Written on the Wind, Young Man with a Horn, Key Largo, The Big Sleep

What I Love About Her:  Lauren Bacall smolders on the screen!  She was the first femme fatale character I saw and from the minute she walked in I was mesmerized by her beauty, her swagger, and the fact that she meant business.  Even as she’s grown older in films like The Fan she’s still got that edge!

Favorite Movie: The Big Sleep

Total Films Seen: 12

Additional Films Reviewed: How to Marry a Millionaire

Katharine Hepburn

Top Films: Bringing Up Baby, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Stage Door, Adam’s Rib, The Philadelphia Story 

What I Love About Her:  I’d be yelled at by the amazing Margaret over at The Great Katherine Hepburn if I didn’t include Katharine.  Katharine is one of the few “feminist”-focused actresses of a time period where feminism hadn’t hit its stride.  While there is debate in regards to how much of a feminist icon Hepburn was she makes it in my book.  She was an actress who played characters on equal footing with men, and most times surpassed them in intelligence and ingenuity all while making you laugh!

Favorite Movie: Bringing Up Baby

Total Films Seen: 11

Additional Films Reviewed: Desk Set, Little Women (1933), The Lion in Winter, Holiday

Goldie Hawn

Top Films: Cactus Flower, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, Overboard, Private Benjamin

What I Love About Her: Goldie Hawn is just so bubbly and sweet, the epitome of the California girl although I know she wasn’t born in California!  All of her movies had her playing the dumb blonde but she played the blonde who knew she was dumb and thus tried to rise above it.  Her films when she became older are my favorites although I adore her in Shampoo.

Favorite Movie: Shampoo

Total Films Seen: 7

Ingrid Bergman

Top Films: Notorious, Casablanca, Cactus Flower, Gaslight, Indiscreet

What I Love About Her: Ingrid always played the girl with the horrible love life which made her relatable to me in that a girl who beautiful didn’t have it easy.  She also conveyed emotion beautifully even in situations where her life was on the line seen in Gaslight, Casablanca and Notorious.

Favorite Movie: Notorious

Total Films Seen: 6

Julie Andrews

Top Films: Victor/Victoria, The Sound of Music, The Princess Diaries, Mary Poppins, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement

What I Love About Her:  Julie is my songstress (and the woman I wish was my grandmother if I ever got to recast my family).  She possesses a beautiful voice and has always provided a source of comfort and warmth in her roles, it helps that she’s played a nanny and a nun in her films.  Despite her Mary Poppins image she’s definitely played her share of wild cards including a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman in Victor/Victoria.

Favorite Movie: The Sound of Music

Total Films Seen: 8

Joan Blondell

Top Films: Three on a Match, Night Nurse, Grease, Topper Returns, Desk Set

What I Love About Her: Blondell was usually relegated to being the best friend, but she made the most of it.  Her wisecracking, saucy attitude made her perfect for comedy or romance.  She was a pre-Code darling able to be sexual while removing vulgarity and her expressive eyes make you want to hug her, or laugh with her.

Favorite Movie: Night Nurse

Total Films Seen: 5

Jean Harlow

Top Films: Libeled Lady, Wife vs. Secretary, Red Dust, Platinum Blonde, Dinner at Eight

What I Love About Her:  Jean could be brash but there was always a humor and a vulnerability.  Where you laughed at Marilyn’s attempted stupidity with Jean you laughed because she was a comedian.  She also played every genre!

Favorite Movie:  Libeled Lady

Total Films Seen: 14

Additional Films Reviewed: All Jean Harlow’s films can be found in my Films of Jean Harlow Retrospective

Elizabeth Taylor

Top Films: A Place in the Sun, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Little Women (1949), Jane Eyre (1943)

What I Love About Her: She’s stunning for one!  Marilyn Monroe was blonde and sweet whereas Elizabeth Taylor was dark and sexual.  Those eyes alone could stop you and she just exuded power, she was Cleopatra after all!

Favorite Movie: A Place in the Sun

Total Films Seen:  9

Additional Films Reviewed: Father’s Little Dividend

Angela Lansbury

Top Films: The Manchurian Candidate, The Company of Wolves, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Gaslight

What I Love About Her: I only recently discovered that I’ve seen so many Angela Lansbury movies, mainly during her earlier years.  I’d always associated her with “old” television shows like Murder She Wrote and yet she was an amazing movie actress playing a variety of characters.  I particularly love her in villainess roles like Gaslight or Manchurian Candidate.  Not to mention Angela provided voices in two of my favorite animated films (Beauty and the Beast and Anastasia) and is a Broadway legend!

Favorite Movie: The Manchurian Candidate

Total Films Seen: 7 (+2 television productions)

Additional Films Reviewed: Sweeney Todd, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: 50 Years of Magic

Audrey Hepburn

Top Films: Sabrina, Wait Until Dark, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Love in the Afternoon, My Fair Lady

What I Love About Her:  What can be said about Audrey that hasn’t already been said?  She’s a fashion icon who could play a romantic lead or a terrorized woman.

Favorite Movie: Sabrina

Total Films Seen: 5

Myrna Loy

Top Films: The Thin Man, Libeled Lady, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, Wife vs. Secretary, After the Thin Man

What I Love About Her:  Myrna is one of the few I think combines elegance with a casual flighty air.  She can be serious but she can also be serious with a playful side à la Nora Charles.  She can play rich or poor, she even played a judge for crying out loud!  And that look that combines classic Hollywood with a mysterious exotic edge!

Favorite Movie:  The Thin Man

Total Films Seen: 6

Shirley MacLaine

Top Films: The Apartment, Bernie, Sweet Charity, The Turning Point, Mrs. Winterbourne

What I Love About Her:  Shirley MacLaine is my “kick in the pants” actress because she’s just spunky.  She tells it like it is and isn’t afraid to make a complete fool of herself for love which she’s done in two movies.  Her published works emphasize her eccentricities and even those are fun.  She’s the actress I don’t think takes herself too seriously.

Favorite Movie:  The Apartment

Total Films Seen: 7

Billie Burke

Top Films: The Wizard of Oz, Topper, Father’s Little Dividend, Dinner at Eight, Father of the Bride

What I Love About Her:  Before Lucille Ball there was Billie Burke.  Burke epitomized the flighty ditz with a heart of gold mostly playing a socialite in films like Topper and Dinner at Eight.  She’s best known as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, the first film I saw of her and she was a squeaky voiced symbol of goodness in that fairy tale story.

Favorite Movie: The Wizard of Oz

Total Films Seen: 7

Additional Films Reviewed: Topper Takes a Trip, Topper Returns