Anna May Wong, Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, etc., here is our list of 30 classic beauties from the 1930s with the most beautiful eyes.
1. Tallulah Bankhead.
Born 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama, American actress Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was known for her husky voice, outrageous personality, and devastating wit. Originating some of the 20th century theater's preeminent roles in comedy and melodrama, she gained acclaim as an actress on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bankhead became an icon of the tempestuous, flamboyant actress, and her unique voice and mannerisms are often subject to imitation and parody.
Bankhead died in St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan in 1968, aged 66.
2. Thelma Todd.
Born 1906 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, American actress Thelma Todd appeared in about 120 pictures between 1926 and 1935. She is best remembered for her comedic roles in films such as Marx Brothers' Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and a number of Charley Chase's short comedies and co-starring with Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante in Speak Easily.
Todd also had roles in Wheeler and Woolsey farces and several Laurel and Hardy films, the last of which (The Bohemian Girl) featured her in a part that was truncated by her suspicious death in 1935, at the age of 29.
3. Toby Wing.
Born 1915 as Martha Virginia Wing in Amelia Court House, Virginia, American actress and showgirl Toby Wing began working onscreen at age 9. In 1931, she became one of the first Goldwyn Girls, and in 1932, she was seen in Mack Sennett-produced comedies made by Paramount, one starring Bing Crosby. Wing made an impression with producers and moviegoers, but she seldom broke through to leading roles.
Wing died in 2001, aged 86.
4. Vivien Leigh.
Born 1913 as Vivian Mary Hartley in in British India on the campus of St. Paul's School, Darjeeling, English stage and film actress Vivien Leigh won two Academy Awards for Best Actress, for her iconic performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963).
Leigh died in 1967, at the age 54, cause of tuberculosis. She was considered to be one of the most beautiful actresses of her day, and her directors emphasised this in most of her films.
5. Alice White.
Born 1904 as Alva White in Paterson, New Jersey, American film actress Alice White had her career spanned late silent films and early sound films.
White left films in 1931 to improve her acting abilities, returning in 1933 only to have her career hurt by a scandal that erupted over her involvement with boyfriend actor Jack Warburton and future husband Sy Bartlett. Although she later married Bartlett, her reputation was tarnished and she appeared only in supporting roles after this. By 1937 and 1938, her name was at the bottom of the cast lists. She made her final film appearance in Flamingo Road (1949) and eventually resumed working as a secretary.
White died of complications from a stroke in 1983, aged 78.
6. Anita Page.
Born 1910 as Anita Evelyn Pomares, American film actress Anita Page reached stardom in the last years of the silent film era.
Page became a highly popular young star, reportedly receiving the most fan mail of anyone on the MGM lot. She was referred to as "a blond, blue-eyed Latin" and "the girl with the most beautiful face in Hollywood" in the 1920s. She retired from acting in 1936. Page married her second husband the following year with whom she had two children.
Page returned to acting sixty years later in 1996, and appeared in four films in the 2000s. She died in September 2008 at the age of 98.
7. Ann Dvorak.
Born 1911 as Anna McKim in New York City, American stage and film actress Ann Dvorak made her film debut when she was five years old in the silent film version of Ramona (1916) and was credited "Baby Anna Lehr". She continued in children's roles in The Man Hater (1917) and Five Dollar Plate (1920), but then stopped acting in films.
In the late 1920s, Dvorak worked as a dance instructor and gradually began to appear on film as a chorus girl. Known for her style and elegance, she was a popular leading lady for Warner Bros. during the 1930s, and appeared in numerous contemporary romances and melodramas.
Dvorak appeared as secretary Della Street to Donald Woods' Perry Mason in The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937), as a saloon singer in Abilene Town, released in 1946, and the following year she showed she could handle comedy well by giving an assured performance in Out of the Blue (1947).
Dvorak retired from the screen in 1951. She died in 1979, aged 68.
8. Anna May Wong.
Born 1905 as Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles, American actress Anna May Wong considered to be the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her long and varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Wong died of a heart attack as she slept at home in Santa Monica, two days after her final screen performance on the television show The Barbara Stanwyck Show in 1961, at the age of 56.
9. Bette Davis.
Born 1908 as Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Massachusetts, American actress of film, television, and theater Bette Davis regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history, she was noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and was famous for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films, suspense horror, and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer in 1989, with more than 100 film, television, and theater roles to her credit.
In 1999, Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
10. Billie Dove.
Born 1903 as Bertha Bohny, American actress Billie Dove worked as a model to help support her family and was hired as a teenager by Florenz Ziegfeld to appear in his Ziegfeld Follies Revue.
In the early 1920s, Dove moved to Hollywood, where she began appearing in silent films. She soon became one of the more popular actresses of the 1920s, appearing in Douglas Fairbanks' smash hit Technicolor film The Black Pirate (1926), as Rodeo West in The Painted Angel (1929), and The American Beauty (1927).
Aside from a cameo in Diamond Head (1963), Dove never returned to the movies. She died of pneumonia on New Year's Eve 1997, aged 94. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6351 Hollywood Blvd. Jazz singer Billie Holiday took her professional pseudonym from Dove as an admirer of the actress.
11. Claire Trevor.
Born 1910 as Claire Wemlinger in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, American actress Claire Trevor appeared in over 60 films, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Key Largo, and earning nominations for her roles in The High and the Mighty and Dead End. She also received top-billing in Stagecoach.
Trevor died of respiratory failure in 2000 in Newport Beach, California, at the age of 90.
12. Clara Bow.
Born 1905 in Brooklyn, American actress Clara Bow rose to stardom in silent film during the 1920s and successfully made the transition to "talkies" after 1927. Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.
In 1931, Bow retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. Bow died of a heart attack in 1965, at the age of 60.
13. Dolores Del Rio.
Born 1904 as María de los Dolores Asúnsolo López-Negrete in Durango City, Mexican actress Dolores del Río was the first major female Latin American crossover star in Hollywood, with a career in American films in the 1920s and 1930s. She was also considered one of the more important female figures of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s.
Del Río is remembered as one of the most beautiful faces of the cinema in her time. Her long and varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage and radio.
Del Río died from liver failure in 1978 at the age of 78, in Newport Beach, California.
14. Dorothy Sebastian.
Born 1903 in Birmingham, Alabama, American film and stage actress Dorothy Sebastian performed in George White's Scandals and later co-starred with Joan Crawford and Anita Page in a popular series of MGM romantic dramas including Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Blushing Brides (1930).
By the mid-1930s, Sebastian was semi-retired from acting after marrying Hopalong Cassidy star William Boyd. After their 1936 divorce, she returned to acting appearing in mostly bit parts. Her last onscreen appearance was in the 1948 film The Miracle of the Bells.
Sebastian died of cancer in 1957, aged 54.
15. Frances Drake.
Born 1912 as Frances Morgan Dean in New York City, American actress Frances Drake is best known for playing Eponine in Les Misérables (1935). She died in 2000, aged 87.
16. Greta Garbo.
Born 1905 as Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Södermalm, Stockholm, Swedish film actress Greta Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an Academy Honorary Award in 1954 for her "luminous and unforgettable screen performances."
After the failure of Two-Faced Woman (1941), Garb retired from the screen, at the age of 35, after acting in twenty-eight films. from then on, Garbo declined all opportunities to return to the screen. She also became an art collector in her later life; her collection, including works from painters such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, and Kees van Dongen, was worth millions of dollars.
Garbo died in 1990, aged 84, in the hospital, as a result of pneumonia and renal failure.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on their list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema, after Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman.
17. Gwen Lee.
Born 1904 as Gwendolyn Lepinski in Hastings, Nebraska, American stage and film actress Gwen Lee began her career as a model before being discovered and signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She was typically cast in supporting roles. Lee appeared in over sixty films before retiring in 1938.
Lee died in 1961 in Reno, Nevada, aged 57.
18. Jeanette MacDonald.
Born 1903 in Philadelphia, American singer and actress Jeanette MacDonald is best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade, Love Me Tonight, The Merry Widow and One Hour With You) and Nelson Eddy (Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, and Maytime).
During the 1930s and 1940s, MacDonald starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars (The Love Parade, One Hour with You, Naughty Marietta and San Francisco), and recorded extensively, earning three gold records. She later appeared in opera, concerts, radio, and television.
MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing opera to film-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers. She died in 1965, aged 61, with her husband Gene Raymond at her bedside. According to press reports, MacDonald's last words to Raymond while he massaged her feet were "I love you". He replied "I love you, too"; she smiled and succumbed.
19. Joan Crawford.
Born 1904 as Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, American film and television actress Joan Crawford began her career as a dancer and stage showgirl.
Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars, and one of the highest-paid women in the United States. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress by starring in Mildred Pierce in 1945. Crawford would go on to receive Best Actress nominations for Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952). She achieved box office success with the highly successful horror film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962), in which she starred alongside Bette Davis, her long-time rival.
After the release of the British horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life and became increasingly reclusive until her death in 1977.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
20. Josephine Baker.
Born 1906 as Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, American-born French entertainer, activist, and French Resistance agent Josephine Baker had her career centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France.
During her early career, Baker was renowned as a dancer, and was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in the revue Un Vent de Folie in 1927 caused a sensation in Paris. Her costume, consisting of only a girdle of bananas, became her most iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age and the 1920s.
Baker was the first person of color to become a worldwide entertainer and to star in a major motion picture, the 1934 Marc Allégret film Zouzou.
Baker died in 1975, aged 68.
21. Katharine Hepburn.
Born 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, American actress Katharine Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years. She appeared in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards—a record for any performer—for Best Actress.
Hepburn remained active into old age, making her final screen appearance in 1994 at the age of 87. After a period of inactivity and ill health, Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of 96.
In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
22. Lilian Bond.
Born 1908 in London, British-American film actress Lilian Bond had her career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1940s.
Bond began her film career in the 1929 film No More Children. Between 1929 and 1931, she starred in nine films. Possibly her best-known film role was in the 1940 film The Westerner, in which she played Lillie Langtry. By the 1950s, her career had declined, with her having mostly TV appearances. She retired from acting at the age of 50 in 1958.
Bond died in 1991 at aged 83 from a heart attack in a care home in Reseda, California.
23. Lois Moran.
Born 1909 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, American film and stage actress Lois Moran made her first film in Paris at age 14. She is probably best known for her role as Laurel Dallas, daughter of the title character, in the 1925 film Stella Dallas, which was her Hollywood film debut.
Moran appeared in early sound movies such as Behind That Curtain (1929), and some musical movies, such as A Song of Kentucky (1929), Words and Music (1929), and Mammy (1930). She then moved to Broadway, where she appeared in the play This Is New York (1930), and the musicals Of Thee I Sing (1933) and Let 'Em Eat Cake (1934).
Moran died at a nursing home in Sedona, Arizona after suffering from cancer in 1990, aged 81.
24. Louise Brooks.
Born 1906 in Cherryvale, Kansas, American film actress and dancer Louise Brooks was noted as an iconic symbol of the flapper, and for popularizing the bobbed haircut.
Brooks is best known as the lead in three feature films made in Europe: Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Miss Europe (1930). She starred in seventeen silent films and eight sound films before retiring in 1938.
Brooks published her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood, in 1982; three years later she died of a heart attack at the age of 78.
25. Lucille Ball.
Born 1911 in Jamestown, New York, American actress, comedian, model, film-studio executive, and producer Lucille Ball was the star of the self-produced sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, and Life with Lucy.
Ball was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning four times. In 1977, she was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award.
Ball was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1984, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986, and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
Ball appeared in film and television roles for the rest of her career until her death in 1989 from an abdominal aortic dissection at the age of 77.
26. Marlene Dietrich.
Born 1901 in Schöneberg, now a district of Berlin, German actress and singer Marlene Dietrich held both German and American citizenship. Throughout her long career, which spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s, she maintained popularity by continually reinventing herself.
In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel (1930) brought her international fame and a contract with Paramount Pictures. She successfully traded on her glamorous persona and "exotic" looks, and became one of the highest-paid actresses of the era.
Throughout World War II, Dietrich was a high-profile entertainer in the United States. Although she still made occasional films after the war, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a marquee live-show performer.
Dietrich died of renal failure at her flat in Paris at age 90.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema.
27. Mary Pickford.
Born 1892 as Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canadian-born film actress and producer Mary Pickford was a co-founder of both the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio (along with Douglas Fairbanks) and, later, the United Artists film studio (with Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith), and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who present the yearly "Oscar" award ceremony.
Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. She was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname "Queen of the Movies". She is credited as having defined the ingénue archetype in cinema.
Pickford was awarded the second ever Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound-film role in Coquette (1929) and also received an honorary Academy Award in 1976. She died in 1979 of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage.
The American Film Institute ranked Pickford as 24th in its 1999 list of greatest female stars of classic Hollywood Cinema.
28. Nina Mae McKinney.
Born 1912 in Lancaster, South Carolina, American actress Nina Mae McKinney worked internationally during the 1930s and in the postwar period in theatre, film and television, after getting her start on Broadway and in Hollywood.
Dubbed "The Black Garbo" in Europe because of her striking beauty, McKinney was one of the first African-American film stars in the United States, as well as one of the first African Americans to appear on British television.
McKinney died of a heart attack at the age of 54.
29. Pat Paterson.
Born in Bradford, England, Scottish film actress Pat Paterson (1910-1978) made more than 20 films, she is best known as the wife of actor Charles Boyer. The couple's only child, Michael, died by self-inflicted gunshot at the age of 21.
30. Ruby Keeler.
Born 1909 in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canadian-born American actress, dancer and singer Ruby Keeler is most famous for her on-screen pairing with Dick Powell in a string of successful early musicals at Warner Brothers, particularly 42nd Street (1933). She retired from show business in the 1940s, but made a widely publicized comeback on Broadway in 1971.
In 1979, Keeler was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree by St. Bonaventure University. In 1992, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her. She has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6730 Hollywood Blvd.
Keeler died of kidney cancer in 1993, aged 83, in Rancho Mirage, California.
1. Tallulah Bankhead.
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| Tallulah Bankhead, 1930s |
Born 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama, American actress Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was known for her husky voice, outrageous personality, and devastating wit. Originating some of the 20th century theater's preeminent roles in comedy and melodrama, she gained acclaim as an actress on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bankhead became an icon of the tempestuous, flamboyant actress, and her unique voice and mannerisms are often subject to imitation and parody.
Bankhead died in St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan in 1968, aged 66.
2. Thelma Todd.
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| Thelma Todd by Max Munn Autrey, 1934 |
Born 1906 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, American actress Thelma Todd appeared in about 120 pictures between 1926 and 1935. She is best remembered for her comedic roles in films such as Marx Brothers' Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and a number of Charley Chase's short comedies and co-starring with Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante in Speak Easily.
Todd also had roles in Wheeler and Woolsey farces and several Laurel and Hardy films, the last of which (The Bohemian Girl) featured her in a part that was truncated by her suspicious death in 1935, at the age of 29.
3. Toby Wing.
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| Toby Wing, circa 1933 |
Born 1915 as Martha Virginia Wing in Amelia Court House, Virginia, American actress and showgirl Toby Wing began working onscreen at age 9. In 1931, she became one of the first Goldwyn Girls, and in 1932, she was seen in Mack Sennett-produced comedies made by Paramount, one starring Bing Crosby. Wing made an impression with producers and moviegoers, but she seldom broke through to leading roles.
Wing died in 2001, aged 86.
4. Vivien Leigh.
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| Vivien Leigh, 1935 |
Born 1913 as Vivian Mary Hartley in in British India on the campus of St. Paul's School, Darjeeling, English stage and film actress Vivien Leigh won two Academy Awards for Best Actress, for her iconic performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963).
Leigh died in 1967, at the age 54, cause of tuberculosis. She was considered to be one of the most beautiful actresses of her day, and her directors emphasised this in most of her films.
5. Alice White.
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| Alice White, circa 1930s |
Born 1904 as Alva White in Paterson, New Jersey, American film actress Alice White had her career spanned late silent films and early sound films.
White left films in 1931 to improve her acting abilities, returning in 1933 only to have her career hurt by a scandal that erupted over her involvement with boyfriend actor Jack Warburton and future husband Sy Bartlett. Although she later married Bartlett, her reputation was tarnished and she appeared only in supporting roles after this. By 1937 and 1938, her name was at the bottom of the cast lists. She made her final film appearance in Flamingo Road (1949) and eventually resumed working as a secretary.
White died of complications from a stroke in 1983, aged 78.
6. Anita Page.
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| Anita Page, circa 1930s |
Born 1910 as Anita Evelyn Pomares, American film actress Anita Page reached stardom in the last years of the silent film era.
Page became a highly popular young star, reportedly receiving the most fan mail of anyone on the MGM lot. She was referred to as "a blond, blue-eyed Latin" and "the girl with the most beautiful face in Hollywood" in the 1920s. She retired from acting in 1936. Page married her second husband the following year with whom she had two children.
Page returned to acting sixty years later in 1996, and appeared in four films in the 2000s. She died in September 2008 at the age of 98.
7. Ann Dvorak.
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| Ann Dvorak by Elmer Fryer, circa 1930s |
Born 1911 as Anna McKim in New York City, American stage and film actress Ann Dvorak made her film debut when she was five years old in the silent film version of Ramona (1916) and was credited "Baby Anna Lehr". She continued in children's roles in The Man Hater (1917) and Five Dollar Plate (1920), but then stopped acting in films.
In the late 1920s, Dvorak worked as a dance instructor and gradually began to appear on film as a chorus girl. Known for her style and elegance, she was a popular leading lady for Warner Bros. during the 1930s, and appeared in numerous contemporary romances and melodramas.
Dvorak appeared as secretary Della Street to Donald Woods' Perry Mason in The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937), as a saloon singer in Abilene Town, released in 1946, and the following year she showed she could handle comedy well by giving an assured performance in Out of the Blue (1947).
Dvorak retired from the screen in 1951. She died in 1979, aged 68.
8. Anna May Wong.
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| Anna May Wong by Otto Dyar, 1932 |
Born 1905 as Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles, American actress Anna May Wong considered to be the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her long and varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Wong died of a heart attack as she slept at home in Santa Monica, two days after her final screen performance on the television show The Barbara Stanwyck Show in 1961, at the age of 56.
9. Bette Davis.
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| Bette Davis by Elmer Fryer, 1936 |
Born 1908 as Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Massachusetts, American actress of film, television, and theater Bette Davis regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history, she was noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and was famous for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films, suspense horror, and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer in 1989, with more than 100 film, television, and theater roles to her credit.
In 1999, Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
10. Billie Dove.
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| Billie Dove by Everett, 1932 |
Born 1903 as Bertha Bohny, American actress Billie Dove worked as a model to help support her family and was hired as a teenager by Florenz Ziegfeld to appear in his Ziegfeld Follies Revue.
In the early 1920s, Dove moved to Hollywood, where she began appearing in silent films. She soon became one of the more popular actresses of the 1920s, appearing in Douglas Fairbanks' smash hit Technicolor film The Black Pirate (1926), as Rodeo West in The Painted Angel (1929), and The American Beauty (1927).
Aside from a cameo in Diamond Head (1963), Dove never returned to the movies. She died of pneumonia on New Year's Eve 1997, aged 94. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6351 Hollywood Blvd. Jazz singer Billie Holiday took her professional pseudonym from Dove as an admirer of the actress.
11. Claire Trevor.
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| Claire Trevor by Max Munn Autrey, 1933 |
Born 1910 as Claire Wemlinger in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, American actress Claire Trevor appeared in over 60 films, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Key Largo, and earning nominations for her roles in The High and the Mighty and Dead End. She also received top-billing in Stagecoach.
Trevor died of respiratory failure in 2000 in Newport Beach, California, at the age of 90.
12. Clara Bow.
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| Clara Bow, 1933 |
Born 1905 in Brooklyn, American actress Clara Bow rose to stardom in silent film during the 1920s and successfully made the transition to "talkies" after 1927. Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.
In 1931, Bow retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. Bow died of a heart attack in 1965, at the age of 60.
13. Dolores Del Rio.
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| Dolores Del Rio by Everett, ca. 1930s |
Born 1904 as María de los Dolores Asúnsolo López-Negrete in Durango City, Mexican actress Dolores del Río was the first major female Latin American crossover star in Hollywood, with a career in American films in the 1920s and 1930s. She was also considered one of the more important female figures of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s.
Del Río is remembered as one of the most beautiful faces of the cinema in her time. Her long and varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage and radio.
Del Río died from liver failure in 1978 at the age of 78, in Newport Beach, California.
14. Dorothy Sebastian.
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| Dorothy Sebastian by Margaret Chute, 1935 |
Born 1903 in Birmingham, Alabama, American film and stage actress Dorothy Sebastian performed in George White's Scandals and later co-starred with Joan Crawford and Anita Page in a popular series of MGM romantic dramas including Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Blushing Brides (1930).
By the mid-1930s, Sebastian was semi-retired from acting after marrying Hopalong Cassidy star William Boyd. After their 1936 divorce, she returned to acting appearing in mostly bit parts. Her last onscreen appearance was in the 1948 film The Miracle of the Bells.
Sebastian died of cancer in 1957, aged 54.
15. Frances Drake.
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| Frances Drake, 1935 |
Born 1912 as Frances Morgan Dean in New York City, American actress Frances Drake is best known for playing Eponine in Les Misérables (1935). She died in 2000, aged 87.
16. Greta Garbo.
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| Greta Garbo by Clarence Sinclair Bull, 1931 |
Born 1905 as Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Södermalm, Stockholm, Swedish film actress Greta Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an Academy Honorary Award in 1954 for her "luminous and unforgettable screen performances."
After the failure of Two-Faced Woman (1941), Garb retired from the screen, at the age of 35, after acting in twenty-eight films. from then on, Garbo declined all opportunities to return to the screen. She also became an art collector in her later life; her collection, including works from painters such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, and Kees van Dongen, was worth millions of dollars.
Garbo died in 1990, aged 84, in the hospital, as a result of pneumonia and renal failure.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on their list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema, after Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman.
17. Gwen Lee.
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| Gwen Lee by Clarence Sinclair Bull, 1931 |
Born 1904 as Gwendolyn Lepinski in Hastings, Nebraska, American stage and film actress Gwen Lee began her career as a model before being discovered and signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She was typically cast in supporting roles. Lee appeared in over sixty films before retiring in 1938.
Lee died in 1961 in Reno, Nevada, aged 57.
18. Jeanette MacDonald.
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| Jeanette MacDonald, 1930 |
Born 1903 in Philadelphia, American singer and actress Jeanette MacDonald is best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade, Love Me Tonight, The Merry Widow and One Hour With You) and Nelson Eddy (Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, and Maytime).
During the 1930s and 1940s, MacDonald starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars (The Love Parade, One Hour with You, Naughty Marietta and San Francisco), and recorded extensively, earning three gold records. She later appeared in opera, concerts, radio, and television.
MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing opera to film-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers. She died in 1965, aged 61, with her husband Gene Raymond at her bedside. According to press reports, MacDonald's last words to Raymond while he massaged her feet were "I love you". He replied "I love you, too"; she smiled and succumbed.
19. Joan Crawford.
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| Joan Crawford by George Hurrell, 1935 |
Born 1904 as Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas, American film and television actress Joan Crawford began her career as a dancer and stage showgirl.
Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars, and one of the highest-paid women in the United States. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress by starring in Mildred Pierce in 1945. Crawford would go on to receive Best Actress nominations for Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952). She achieved box office success with the highly successful horror film Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962), in which she starred alongside Bette Davis, her long-time rival.
After the release of the British horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life and became increasingly reclusive until her death in 1977.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
20. Josephine Baker.
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| Josephine Baker, circa 1930 |
Born 1906 as Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, American-born French entertainer, activist, and French Resistance agent Josephine Baker had her career centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France.
During her early career, Baker was renowned as a dancer, and was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in the revue Un Vent de Folie in 1927 caused a sensation in Paris. Her costume, consisting of only a girdle of bananas, became her most iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age and the 1920s.
Baker was the first person of color to become a worldwide entertainer and to star in a major motion picture, the 1934 Marc Allégret film Zouzou.
Baker died in 1975, aged 68.
21. Katharine Hepburn.
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| Katharine Hepburn, 1932 |
Born 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, American actress Katharine Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years. She appeared in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards—a record for any performer—for Best Actress.
Hepburn remained active into old age, making her final screen appearance in 1994 at the age of 87. After a period of inactivity and ill health, Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of 96.
In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
22. Lilian Bond.
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| Lilian Bond by George Hurrell, 1930s |
Born 1908 in London, British-American film actress Lilian Bond had her career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1940s.
Bond began her film career in the 1929 film No More Children. Between 1929 and 1931, she starred in nine films. Possibly her best-known film role was in the 1940 film The Westerner, in which she played Lillie Langtry. By the 1950s, her career had declined, with her having mostly TV appearances. She retired from acting at the age of 50 in 1958.
Bond died in 1991 at aged 83 from a heart attack in a care home in Reseda, California.
23. Lois Moran.
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| Lois Moran by George Hurrell, 1931 |
Born 1909 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, American film and stage actress Lois Moran made her first film in Paris at age 14. She is probably best known for her role as Laurel Dallas, daughter of the title character, in the 1925 film Stella Dallas, which was her Hollywood film debut.
Moran appeared in early sound movies such as Behind That Curtain (1929), and some musical movies, such as A Song of Kentucky (1929), Words and Music (1929), and Mammy (1930). She then moved to Broadway, where she appeared in the play This Is New York (1930), and the musicals Of Thee I Sing (1933) and Let 'Em Eat Cake (1934).
Moran died at a nursing home in Sedona, Arizona after suffering from cancer in 1990, aged 81.
24. Louise Brooks.
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| Louise Brooks by Max Autrey, 1939 |
Born 1906 in Cherryvale, Kansas, American film actress and dancer Louise Brooks was noted as an iconic symbol of the flapper, and for popularizing the bobbed haircut.
Brooks is best known as the lead in three feature films made in Europe: Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Miss Europe (1930). She starred in seventeen silent films and eight sound films before retiring in 1938.
Brooks published her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood, in 1982; three years later she died of a heart attack at the age of 78.
25. Lucille Ball.
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| Lucille Ball, 1930s |
Born 1911 in Jamestown, New York, American actress, comedian, model, film-studio executive, and producer Lucille Ball was the star of the self-produced sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, and Life with Lucy.
Ball was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning four times. In 1977, she was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award.
Ball was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1984, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986, and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
Ball appeared in film and television roles for the rest of her career until her death in 1989 from an abdominal aortic dissection at the age of 77.
26. Marlene Dietrich.
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| Marlene Dietrich by Don English, 1932 |
Born 1901 in Schöneberg, now a district of Berlin, German actress and singer Marlene Dietrich held both German and American citizenship. Throughout her long career, which spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s, she maintained popularity by continually reinventing herself.
In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel (1930) brought her international fame and a contract with Paramount Pictures. She successfully traded on her glamorous persona and "exotic" looks, and became one of the highest-paid actresses of the era.
Throughout World War II, Dietrich was a high-profile entertainer in the United States. Although she still made occasional films after the war, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a marquee live-show performer.
Dietrich died of renal failure at her flat in Paris at age 90.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema.
27. Mary Pickford.
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| Mary Pickford by George Hurrell, 1935 |
Born 1892 as Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canadian-born film actress and producer Mary Pickford was a co-founder of both the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio (along with Douglas Fairbanks) and, later, the United Artists film studio (with Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith), and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who present the yearly "Oscar" award ceremony.
Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. She was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname "Queen of the Movies". She is credited as having defined the ingénue archetype in cinema.
Pickford was awarded the second ever Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound-film role in Coquette (1929) and also received an honorary Academy Award in 1976. She died in 1979 of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage.
The American Film Institute ranked Pickford as 24th in its 1999 list of greatest female stars of classic Hollywood Cinema.
28. Nina Mae McKinney.
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| Nina Mae McKinney, 1936 |
Born 1912 in Lancaster, South Carolina, American actress Nina Mae McKinney worked internationally during the 1930s and in the postwar period in theatre, film and television, after getting her start on Broadway and in Hollywood.
Dubbed "The Black Garbo" in Europe because of her striking beauty, McKinney was one of the first African-American film stars in the United States, as well as one of the first African Americans to appear on British television.
McKinney died of a heart attack at the age of 54.
29. Pat Paterson.
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| Pat Paterson, circa 1936 |
Born in Bradford, England, Scottish film actress Pat Paterson (1910-1978) made more than 20 films, she is best known as the wife of actor Charles Boyer. The couple's only child, Michael, died by self-inflicted gunshot at the age of 21.
30. Ruby Keeler.
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| Ruby Keeler, 1930s |
Born 1909 in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canadian-born American actress, dancer and singer Ruby Keeler is most famous for her on-screen pairing with Dick Powell in a string of successful early musicals at Warner Brothers, particularly 42nd Street (1933). She retired from show business in the 1940s, but made a widely publicized comeback on Broadway in 1971.
In 1979, Keeler was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree by St. Bonaventure University. In 1992, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her. She has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6730 Hollywood Blvd.
Keeler died of kidney cancer in 1993, aged 83, in Rancho Mirage, California.
