Saturdays with the Stars Season 3 Finale

Two of our stars, Shirley & Grace

With this past week's viewing of The Seduction fo Joe Tynan, we are officially done with our third season of "Saturdays with the Stars."  I really like to find a moment before I start the new season (which, unlike past seasons, I haven't told you the theme of & will be doing so in the coming days, as we will indeed do a fourth season starting on Saturday) to discuss the season, talking about what I learned, and also focusing on some of the best of the year's movies/performances.

When I decided to do this theme, I wanted to see how it would turn out picking twelve women who had really nothing in common other than Alfred Hitchcock.  You couldn't find stars as divergent in the way that cinematic history or even contemporary audiences treated them as, say, Maureen O'Hara & Barbara Harris or Shirley MacLaine & Margaret Lockwood.  Hitchcock wasn't always successful with his leading ladies, but it does show what a versatile director he was that he continually tried new things, occasionally making masterpieces but just as often strange curiosities.

It also showed, especially in our month devoted to Tippi Hedren, how Hitchcock's legacy is at once peerless in quality but blemished by the director himself.  Hitchcock was a complicated man, one who brought the downfall of a career or two (Hedren's career, as we discussed, never flourished the way it might have with a less authoritarian mentor), but who also clearly made some of the best films ever made.  What was great about this year was not just focusing on him, but getting to see unknown chapters in these twelve women's lives (I love that I stick to the rule of seeing only films I haven't seen before, because it means every week I get to see a new facet of an actor I thought I knew well, but frequently have my perceptions changed).  As I continue to watch deeper and deeper cuts from Old Hollywood (after three seasons devoted to it on the blog, it seems like watching fresh viewings demands getting into the rafters of these icons' IMDB pages), I am reminded once again how this period of Hollywood has countless movies & careers left to explore.  Thank you so much for playing along!

Favorite Performance from Each Star

January: Madeleine Carroll-The General Died at Dawn

February: Sylvia Sidney-Sabotage

March: Margaret Lockwood-Cast a Dark Shadow

April: Maureen O'Hara-Rio Grande

May: Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

June: Anne Baxter-The Luck of the Irish

July: Ingrid Bergman-Autumn Sonata

August: Grace Kelly-Dial M for Murder

September: Shirley MacLaine-The Children's Hour

October: Julie Andrews-Thoroughly Modern Millie

November: Tippi Hedren-Marnie

December: Barbara Harris-Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

5 Favorite Actresses of the Year (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

Ingrid Bergman

Barbara Harris

Margaret Lockwood

Carole Lombard

Shirley MacLaine

5 (err-6, I couldn't corner down) Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata

Ingrid Bergman, Journey to Italy

Margaret Lockwood, Cast a Dark Shadow

Margaret Lockwood, The Wicked Lady

Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

Shirley MacLaine, The Children's Hour

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Autumn Sonata

Cast a Dark Shadow

The Children's Hour

Dead End

Dial M for Murder

Journey to Italy

The Lady Vanishes

The Trouble with Harry

Twentieth Century

The Wicked Lady

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Leading Ladies)

Diane Baker, Marnie

John Barrymore, Twentieth Century

Dirk Bogarde, Cast a Dark Shadow

Humphrey Bogart, Dead End

Sean Connery, Marnie

Audrey Hepburn, The Children's Hour

George Sanders, Journey to Italy

Claire Trevor, Dead End

Liv Ullmann, Autumn Sonata

John Williams, Dial M for Murder

The Swan (1956)

Film: The Swan (1956)

Stars: Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness, Louis Jourdan, Agnes Moorehead, Jessie Royce Landis

Director: Charles Vidor

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In April of 1955, Grace Kelly headed to Cannes as part of the US delegation for that year's festivities.  While she was there, there was an arranged meeting with Prince Rainier of nearby Monaco, which led to a courtship, which led to one of the most spectacular moments in movie history when Grace Kelly, movie star extraordinaire, became a literal Hollywood princess.  As we'll discuss below, this is where Grace Kelly's acting career ended-just weeks after winning an Oscar, the highest honor for an actress, she was basically on her way out of the industry, as Kelly would never work again as an actress in films after going royal.  She had two movies in the can before she left Hollywood which came out after she was a princess.  One was High Society, which I've seen (and which pales in comparison to the original Philadelphia Story).  The other was one I hadn't, and so I saw The Swan for this project, and as luck would have it (for both me and for MGM's publicity department) the film stars Kelly...playing a princess.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Princess Alexandra (Kelly) who is a relatively low-ranking royal living her years out with her mother Princess Beatrix (Landis), after the announcement that Crown Prince Albert (Guinness) will be visiting.  Beatrix is insistent that this is the opportunity they've been waiting for to get back their stature, marrying the Crown Prince & making Alexandra a queen.  The only problem is that Alexandra is a bit of a bore, and Albert is far more interested in music & other nerdy endeavors to give Alexandra much heed.  Beatrix comes up with a plan to have her sons' handsome tutor Nicholas (Jourdan) try to woo Alexandra in hopes of making Albert jealous, but the plan backfires spectacular when it turns out that Nicholas is already in love with Alexandra...and quickly she is in love with him.  When the Queen (Moorehead) comes to town, everything comes to a head as the love triangle must find one side to stand on.

According to what I've read, the producers of The Swan (based on a play by Molnar) considered changing the traditional ending of the film, which ends with Alexandra & Nicholas apart because she cannot marry a commoner.  However, after Princess Margaret declined to marry Peter Townsend, they decided the ending should stand, and so the movie ends with Alexandra likely to marry either no one or (more probably) Albert, knowing that neither will be particularly happy together but they've fulfilled their duty to their country.  It might be this reason why I like it.  The Swan is not a particularly good movie (even if the sets are really fun & the supporting cast is decent), but I enjoyed it.  It's the kind of turn-off-your-brain romantic drama that you can sometimes get sucked into on a rainy afternoon, and that was the mood I was in for the picture.

Kelly is a dud in the movie, pretty blasé (though it is fun to see her acting with a leading man who is actually her age after she wooed men 10+ years older than her the rest of the month) and more ornamental.  Watching Kelly this month (and I've now seen virtually every film she ever made), I'm struck by how Hitchcock is the only director who ever really got her as a performer.  She is so much better-suited for his work, and she fits in some ways with actresses like Lizabeth Scott or January Jones, who were really good at one specific thing, but otherwise fell flat.

Her life would look like a storybook, but wouldn't exactly be one.  Reports of the marriage run from it being a good one with some problems to one that felt isolating for Kelly.  She would give Rainer an heir (and two spares), continuing on the line of the Monaco royal family, but she had to give up acting, despite attempts to get back in roles in Marnie and The Turning Point.  Kelly's life was cut short in 1982 when she suffered a stroke while driving with her daughter Stephanie-Stephanie was fine, but Kelly died due to injuries to her brain and chest at the age of just 52.  Next month we're going to take a look at an actress who was one Kelly's contemporaries, one who like Kelly would work with Alfred Hitchcock early on in her career, but while Kelly's film career was defined by Hitchcock, this actress would make him a rather dismissible chapter in an otherwise other-worldly career.

OVP: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Film: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)

Stars: William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Mickey Rooney, Earl Holliman

Director: Mark Robson

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Film Editing, Best Special Effects*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we mentioned earlier this month in our introduction about Grace Kelly, the actress-turned-princess didn't make a lot of movies (a total of 11 narrative films in her career), and almost half of those movies were made in 1954, so it makes sense that we would get a second film in the span of Kelly's career from that year.  Last week we talked about Kelly's relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, which frequently bordered on (or, let's be real, crossed into) the abusive, and an indication of the problematic troubles the director would get into with many of his upcoming leading ladies during what is considered his peak creative period (ranging from the early 1950's to the early 1960's).  This week, we're going to talk about The Bridges of Toko-Ri, but we're also going to talk about the other major moment in Grace Kelly's 1954-the Oscar win that still strikes passion in the hearts of filmgoers everywhere considering whom she beat to get that trophy.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Bridges at Toko-Ri is about Harry Brubaker (Holden), a reluctant naval officer in the middle of the Korean War.  Brubaker is not exactly a pacifist, but he also cannot relate to his fellow man, and feels like he's in a war that the American public doesn't entirely understand nor do they care about in the same way they did World War II.  He is mentored by Rear Admiral Tarrant (March), who sees a lot in Brubaker that reminds him of his late son, who was killed in World War II (and Tarrant has not been able to emotionally reckon with the death of his child).  Brubaker's wife Nancy (Kelly) shows up unexpectedly for Brubaker's leave, though their romantic rendezvous is interrupted when Brubaker's hotheaded friend Mike (Rooney) gets into a fight with a guy who has run off with Mike's "girl" (it's clear as the film goes on that she was using him for money & had no romantic inclinations to him).  While away, Tarrant tells Nancy about the horrors of war, and that her husband (whom she is angry about helping Mike rather than staying with her) might not come back.  In fact, this is the case as (I told you there was a spoiler alert here), both Holden's & Rooney's characters do die during a reconnaissance mission, making all of the prophecy about Brubaker's potential death come to pass.

Bridges at Toko-Ri could be a great movie.  The special effects are impressive (that Oscar win feels legitimate considering the combination of real-world and scale model effects during the battle sequence, which feel pretty seamless onscreen & probably why it was also cited for editing), and the story of the film is quite fascinating, and somewhat ahead-of-its-time.  World War II was the last war (to date) that was fought to any degree on American soil, and as a result all of the American wars since have been in another country's backyard, making patriotism more symbolic than something that is part of day-to-day fear.  That conversation, which runs heavily through the movie, is a conversation worth having, and it's particularly striking in 1954, when a war movie of this nature wouldn't usually be so introspective.

But the movie doesn't rely upon that narration, and the effects are secondary to the plot.  Holden doesn't give us much beyond the surface-level as Brubaker, and Kelly is bland as his wife, in a limited role considering her billing where she has little to say other than to try & be an audience surrogate (she is gone during long stretches of the movie-this is a supporting part).  March, the best actor in the cast, is also the best in show but he's not really central to the plot, and lord help me, Mickey Rooney is actively bad in this movie.  Rooney is one of my least favorite actors of the Classical Hollywood (he might honestly be the least amongst the major stars of the era), and he plays hotheaded, entitled Mike with the grace of a bulldog, totally clomping over the more delicate aspects of the story.

As I mentioned above, Kelly didn't win an Oscar for this, but she would win for The Country Girl, a movie I have seen before which is why we aren't featuring it this month for Saturdays with the Stars.  Kelly is okay in The Country Girl (I generally rag on this performance, but looking back on my notes about it at the time, I'm more middling than actively against it), but it's the sort of performance that makes sense for a win.  She'd made five films that year, was a beautiful young woman making her mark in Hollywood, and for the most part her competition was not the kind that would win: you had two recent winners in Jane Wyman & Audrey Hepburn, and Dorothy Dandridge was making history as the first Black actress to be nominated for Lead Actress, but 1954 Hollywood wasn't progressive enough to give her the trophy.  But the fifth nominee was Judy Garland in A Star is Born, generally considered to be one of the best performances in Hollywood history.  Garland is spectacular in the part, and was not only enjoying the kind of comeback only a true legend could pull off (years of drug & alcohol abuse had made the early parts of the 1950's a question mark if she could do a role like this again, or honestly if she'd even live to make it to 1954), but she had just given birth to her son Joey two days before the ceremony, which would have added a great bit of heartwarming drama to the ceremony.  Kelly's win was rough on Garland, who clearly expected the win, and perhaps knew on some level she'd never get another chance like this (despite a future nomination in 1961, she'd have been right-Judy Garland would never win a competitive Oscar).  Next week, we're going to talk about one of the last films that Grace Kelly would ever make, and how, less than two years after she was crowned the toast of Hollywood, she would leave it forever.

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Film: Dial M for Murder (1954)

Stars: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Alfred Hitchcock, our mascot of this year's Saturday with the Stars, once called Grace Kelly his favorite leading woman, and indeed she appeared in three of his most iconic movies: Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief, the former of which I saw for the first time for this series (the other two I've seen previously, in Rear Window's case, multiple times).  We've talked multiple times about Hitchcock's obsession with his leading ladies & cruelty to them, and while that had happened before Kelly (he was vicious to Ruth Roman during Strangers on a Train's shoot, Joan Fontaine basically got gaslighted by Hitchcock throughout the production of Rebecca), she became a template for most of Hitchcock's future stars.

It's hard to grasp by modern standards how to treat Kelly's relationship with Hitchcock.  It seemed to be one of some respect-she worked with him three times, and even after she became a princess she actively considered taking the offer to be his leading lady in Marnie.  But Hitchcock became obsessed with Kelly, trying to control everything about her, a trait he'd bring to his relationship with multiple women in the following pictures, which we'll talk about a bit in the coming months.  While he liked her, he also messed with her head, and like he would with several of his later leading ladies (and like he did with Madeleine Carroll in Secret Agent), Hitchcock inflicted bodily harm on Kelly during the course of shooting.  In the famous attack scene in Dial M for Murder, Kelly shot the sequence for five days straight in order to get it exactly right for the 3-D technology...by Day 4, she was covered in bruises.  Kelly's treatment by Hitchcock is one of the many factors that have tarnished his legacy, a brilliant man (we're getting there in a second, but this is a very good movie) who tore up the boundaries of common decency in his quest to finish his movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) So let's discuss the movie at hand.  Dial M for Murder is about Tony Wendice (Milland), a former tennis ace who is well past his prime and is married to the wealthy Margot (Kelly), who is having an affair with Mark (Cummings), and will likely soon leave her for him.  Tony blackmails his old friend into murdering Margot, thereby getting her inheritance, but the plan goes awry when during the attack Margot kills the would-be assassin.  The film takes a turn for the twisted when afterward, Chief Inspector Hubbard (Williams) begins to suspect that Margot killed the assassin on-purpose, rather than in self-defense, as a result of him blackmailing her about the affair (which it turns out Tony had also done to get money from Margot).  This leads to Margot's arrest, and near execution, before Inspector Hubbard, with the help of Mark, finally cracks the case and the film ends with Mark & Margot together, Tony realizing the gig is up & that he will soon go to jail.

I said at the beginning of this month that Grace Kelly is a weird actress for me because despite seeing virtually all of her movies (I'll have maybe 1-2 that I haven't seen by the end of this month, but the rest I'll have seen), the only ones that I enjoy are Hitchcock's...but I genuinely enjoy her in those movies.  That still holds true after seeing her third collaboration with the director.  Dial M for Murder, is a smart, cheeky murder mystery that unfolds with us knowing the killer the whole time, but being genuinely perplexed as to how he'll be convicted (it's 1954-there's no way he's getting away with this), and Grace Kelly is good in it.  She brings a sort of misguided confidence to the role-she's a wealthy, beautiful woman, who has no real concept of the world around her being anything other than on a platter, and as that starts to crumble, she can't really handle it.  Some criticized this role for being a bit too thin at the time, but I don't buy that-I think Kelly is servicing the character well by having her play not just a blank slate for the audience, but also someone who has never really considered the consequences of her actions before (she is, after all, having an affair from the beginning of the picture).

But the men dominate this film.  This is the most fun I've ever had with Ray Milland, an actor I usually find bland but who sinks his teeth into the vain, erudite killer.  Even better is John Williams as the wily detective, getting his best Columbo quirks on in this picture.  This is not, for the record, famed composer John Williams, but instead you'd probably know him best as Audrey Hepburn's dad in Sabrina-Hitchcock always takes such good care of his supporting characters, giving them plum parts, and this is a doozy of one, as he lights up the second half of the movie, trying (in vain) to prove that there's clearly something wrong with this case.

OVP: Mogambo (1953)

Film: Mogambo (1953)

Stars: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Donald Sinden

Director: John Ford

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Ava Gardner, Supporting Actress-Grace Kelly)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned in our kickoff to Grace Kelly Month, Kelly's story is not one of a robust amount of struggle in terms of getting into the upper echelons of Hollywood (in fact, more than almost any major star of the era, it's hard to find an actress who struggled less to make it in the industry).  A swiftly successful career in theater & television opened up doors for Kelly, first in Henry Hathaway's Fourteen Hours and then in the first of several genuine classics Kelly made, Fred Zinnemann's High Noon.  High Noon was a success, winning Kelly's costar Gary Cooper an Oscar, but her notices were middling, and she was worried she might be considered "just a pretty face" in Hollywood despite getting a lot of opportunity from the picture.  However, when Gene Tierney (who was off being wooed by Aly Khan at the time) dropped out of Mogambo, Kelly jumped at the opportunity to work with screen legends Clark Gable & John Ford in the role that would change her life.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Victor Marswell (Gable), a big-game hunter who spends much of his time trapping animals in Africa to send to zoos and circuses.  He meets Eloise "Honey Bear" Kelly (Gardner), a fortune-hunter who is trapped on their safari briefly.  Though initially they dislike one another, that animosity melts into attraction, and they clearly sleep together (despite not being married).  Honey Bear leaves, and in her place is Donald (Sinden) and Linda Nordley (Kelly), a couple that want to safari to record the gorillas, which Victor refuses to do because it's too difficult to find the gorillas.  However, slowly Linda begins to wear him down, and despite being a prim married woman, she & Victor begin to have a love affair.  This is complicated further when Honey Bear, obviously still in love with Victor, returns, and has to hide their relationship so as not to scandalize Linda.  As the film progresses, Victor clearly loves Linda, and wants to be with her, but doesn't have the guts to break up their relationship, so instead she has Linda catch him with Honey Bear, and in anger she shoots him.  The film ends with Honey Bear claiming that Linda was right to shoot him (since he'd been making advances on her, a lie only the audience and the love triangle knows), and though they have some friction, Honey Bear & Victor end up together while Linda & Donald return to domesticity.

The movie, if it sounds familiar, is somewhat based on a different Clark Gable film, Red Dust, which we reviewed for the blog a few years back for a different season of Saturdays with the Stars.  If you click that film's review, you'll see that I loved Red Dust...and if you look above, you'll see that I did not love Mogambo.  The difference here is the performances.  While Gable is in the same role, he doesn't have the same kind of chemistry with either of his leading ladies that he did with Jean Harlow.  Ava Gardner makes out the best of the two, as she's giving a decent performance (it's the only bit of light in the movie), as Honey Bear, though it's an easy part that Gardner nails thoroughly.  This was the only Oscar nomination in her long career, but it's not the best that Gardner could do-she plays a spunky, jaded lover, but they don't lean in hard enough into the sultriness that Gardner would brilliantly capture in earlier film noir.

That said, Gardner is miles ahead of Grace Kelly who, I'm sorry to say in a month devoted to her, is actively not good in Mogambo.  Kelly is given the more interesting, if also more difficult part.  Linda is a woman who has lived in a glass cage, always being asked to be perfect, and she's feeling something for the first time.  Unlike Gardner's Honey Bear, there's not a lot to like in her, and Kelly underscores that by making her seem stiff, guarded, & without any feeling.  Her romance with Gable should be steamy, a haloed saint deigning to come to life & play among the mortals, but Kelly can't get that across.  Instead she plays Linda as wooden & two-dimensional...I'm honestly flummoxed how Kelly got this Oscar nomination.  Gene Tierney, a more experienced actress, would've been a better choice.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the real story of Mogambo wasn't what was going on onscreen, but offscreen, as the filming of this movie is the stuff of Hollywood legend.  Gable & Kelly were having an affair (this is basically taken as gospel even if neither party seems to have ever officially stated that it was happening), which would be something of a pattern for Kelly during her filming (we'll talk about this in the coming weeks).  Gable, Gardner, & Donald Sinden all fought repeatedly with director John Ford, and Gardner had to be flown off location after she got stuck with a bad case of dysentery.  Of course, this might've been the least of her worries.  Gardner was in one of the rockier patches of her legendary marriage to Frank Sinatra, and determined not to have a permanent connection with her husband, got an abortion during filming (the two would divorce, childless, in 1957).  Next week we're going to move just a year into the future of Kelly's career, but with it we're going to move beyond the early whiffs in her career to the one director who knew exactly what he had when she got onscreen.

Saturdays with the Stars: Grace Kelly

Each month of 2021 we will be taking a look at the leading ladies of some of Alfred Hitchcock's many celebrated classics; we'll be doing this series chronologically to when they first entered Hitchcock's filmography.  Last month we talked about one of the biggest stars of Hollywood's Golden Age who made three films with Hitch, Ingrid Bergman.  This month, we're going to profile a woman who had a lot in common with Bergman.  She also would be appropriately name-checked as one of the biggest stars of the era.  She also made three films with Alfred Hitchcock (two of which I've seen, one of which I haven't, just like Bergman up until last month), and she was also a ravishing blonde beauty whose fame continues to this day.  However, this month's star didn't have decades of movies for us to pick from in her filmography-it is, in fact, quite short, thanks to a royal detour her career took that would define her in the public consciousness in ways even Hitchcock couldn't dream.  This month, our star is Grace Kelly.

Unlike a lot of the women we're profiling this year, Grace Kelly's childhood was not haunted by much personal tragedy or poverty.  She grew up in a wealthy Philadelphia family, her father a former Olympian who eventually worked in the Roosevelt administration during the 1930's. Her family disapproved of her move to New York City to pursue acting, but success came pretty quickly for Grace; she made her Broadway debut in 1949 when she was barely twenty, and two years later she was making her film debut opposite Paul Douglas & Barbara bel Geddes in Fourteen Hours.

Kelly's career is very different than Ingrid Bergman's.  By 1952, Kelly was getting a major role in the film classic High Noon, and would enjoy a steady string of films from 1952 to 1956, including five in 1954 alone, before her career would end.  Kelly, for those who are not familiar with the actress somehow, would be best remembered today for marrying Prince Rainer of Monaco, becoming a princess consort, the matriarch of the modern royal family of the principality, and while she flirted with the idea of making other movies (including Hitchcock's Marnie and Herbert Ross's The Turning Point) it never panned out.  Kelly died in a car accident at the age of 52.

Kelly is arguably the most important actress in Hitchcock's collective filmography, and certainly he is the most important director in her acting career.  While she'd be nominated for Oscars for working with John Ford & George Seaton, her three films with Hitchcock are considered her best, and most lasting legacy in pictures.  She got along well with Hitchcock, even though he was pretty obsessed with her (we'll talk about that as the month progresses), and would spend the next decade basically trying to replace her, never to his satisfaction (and much to the chagrin of the women who "fell short").  I have seen Rear Window and To Catch a Thief, so for Kelly this month in addition to some of her less-known work (she only made 11 movies & I've seen five of them so we're going to need to go deep into the catalog), we'll be talking about her first outing with Hitchcock: Dial M for Murder.

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 2

Yesterday we started in on the AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, chronicling my favorite performances and the biggest missing parts of their respective canons.  We'll continue on with the next eight women on the list right now (if you haven't read the first half, make sure to click here for a rundown).

9. Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

Oscar Nominations: Dietrich would only receive one Oscar nomination in her career, for Morocco, but would lose to Marie Dressler in Min and Bill.
Probably Best Known Today For: This is one of those cases where I just don't think Dietrich is known today (aside from being in the "Vogue" lyrics) to the general populace.  Dietrich's face is likely recognizable and highly distinctive, but her work and films are pretty much non-existent to today's audience, and they probably confuse her with Garbo (which is a pity, but this is the "being honest" portion of these write-ups-if you don't know her or haven't seen one of her movies, get thyself to your Netflix queue and put off watching another season of a television show and watch a movie...or better yet, share your love of her in the comments!).
My Favorite Performance: I have tragically never seen any of her work in the Josef von Sternberg films, so I will go with her wonderful extended cameo in Touch of Evil, where she gets to say those immortal words "he was some kind of man...what does it matter what you say about people?"
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: So many of the von Sternberg classics, chief amongst them would have to be The Blue Angel, which really made Dietrich into a major star.

10. Joan Crawford (1904-1977)

Oscar Nominations: Crawford would receive three Oscar nominations in her career, winning for her first in Mildred Pierce.
Probably Best Known Today For: Faye Dunaway's portrayal of her in the camp classic Mommie Dearest.  More people associate Crawford with wire hangers than anything in her extremely long cinematic career.
My Favorite Performance: Crawford was actually quite a fine actor, never better than in the classic soap opera Mildred Pierce, where she played the most devoted of mothers to the daughter from hell (a bit of an inverse to what Christina wrote about her in her infamous biography).  Deliciously, Crawford's longtime nemesis Bette Davis was originally supposed to have the part, but turned it down; Crawford went on to win her only Academy Award for the role.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen almost all of the iconic Crawford films (Grand Hotel, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane), so I'll probably go with her other two Oscar-nominated films: Possessed and Sudden Fear.

11. Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Stanwyck would receive four Oscar nominations in her career, but never actually won any of them.  She would receive an Honorary Oscar, however, in 1982 for her body of cinematic work.
Probably Best Known Today For: It depends on whom you ask.  If I'm saying my generation, Stanwyck is not a particularly well-known star, but she did have enormous success in the 1980's so the generation a bit older than me would surely say her work in The Thorn Birds.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to go cliche two times in a row here.  There's no beating Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce and there's no beating Barbara Stanwyck as the scheming femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.  Stanwyck owns the screen in this performance-frequently trading that biting wit that she shared so well in a movie like The Lady Eve in for a crackling, cruel evil.  Spellbinding for anyone who loves noir.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have never seen her work in the classic King Vidor weepie Stella Dallas, nor have I seen her in her acclaimed television performance in The Thorn Birds.

12. Claudette Colbert (1903-1996)

Oscar Nominations: Colbert would receive three Oscar nominations in her career, winning for her classic It Happened One Night in 1934.
Probably Best Known Today For: Those gams of hers.  Seriously-you'd be hard-pressed to find a more famous scene in pre-Golden Age cinema than Claudette Colbert lifting her skirt and showing her legs while hitchhiking with Clark Gable.
My Favorite Performance: Most definitely her work in It Happened One Night.  Few people can easily make chemistry look so effortless and smitten as Colbert and Gable do in this film, and this is really one of the high points in the romantic comedy genre.  If you haven't seen it, make sure to add it to the top of your To Do list.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: With all due respect to Ms. Colbert, nothing else in her filmography really compares to her work in the Frank Capra classic, at least in terms of critical acclaim. I would probably go with one of her sexually suggestive Cecil B. DeMille roles, since Colbert would always be a bit more innocent in the years that followed onscreen (perhaps 1934's Cleopatra, a Best Picture nominee).

13. Grace Kelly (1929-1982)

Oscar Nominations: Kelly would receive two Oscar nominations during her career, winning in 1954 for The Country Girl.
Probably Best Known Today For: Almost certainly best known today for her romantic relationship with Prince Rainier of Monaco, and as his consort of over 25 years.  Grace Kelly has also become incredibly well-known as the ideal of pristine beauty and poise, and is one of the most emulated stars of her era.
My Favorite Performance: I'm not wild about Grace Kelly as an actress (as a celebrity, she has few equals), but far-and-away my favorite bits of her work are in Hitchcock's films, particularly Rear Window, where she's the perfect untouchable beauty for a wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart to obsess over.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Kelly has one of (if not the) shortest filmographies of any of these 25 women, and I've seen most of the classics (High Noon, To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, The Country Girl), so I'm going to have to go with her other Oscar-nominated performance in Mogambo for my selection.

14. Ginger Rogers (1911-1995)

Oscar Nominations: Rogers would only receive one Oscar nomination in her career (for Kitty Foyle), though she had the good sense to win for it.  This was the first year that they didn't announce the winners ahead of time, and so she didn't know she was about to top Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, Numbers 1 and 2 on AFI's list.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her longtime dancing partnership with Fred Astaire, which kept the champagne flowing at RKO and made her a fortune, even if they both mildly resented the fact that the public demanded them be together (both would enjoy long careers outside of their ten films together).
My Favorite Performance: You can't really beat Top Hat or Swing Time, and I've always felt picking between the two to be a bit of a chore.  I'd probably go with a slight tip toward Swing Time for Rogers work, though I think Top Hat may be the better picture.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have stunningly never seen Rogers' 1933 classic 42nd Street, where she plays "Anytime Annie" (and which made her a star).

15. Mae West (1893-1980)

Oscar Nominations: West, much like Marilyn Monroe (who clearly borrowed a bit from her look), would never be nominated for or win an Academy Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being synonymous with sex and sexual come-ons.  Her "why don't you come up and see me sometime" is a pick-up line for the ages, and no drag queen's oeuvre is complete without donning Mae West's platinum blonde hair and bodacious plunging necklines.
My Favorite Performance: None of the Mae West pictures (which are very few, I must confess) that I have seen are particularly good, but her real triumph was always being Mae West.  Some of these women are on her because they are great actresses or because they are great movie stars.  Mae West is on here because she is one of Hollywood's best ever celebrities, which is a performance unto itself.  If I had to pick a film, it would be She Done Him Wrong (she's by far the best and only reason to see the movie, and it stars Cary Grant so that's saying something), a film at the peak of her fame and one that likely kept the lights on at Paramount.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Definitely Klondike Annie, generally considered to be her finest work and another film from her early-mid thirties period of peak fame.

16. Vivien Leigh (1913-1967)

Oscar Nominations: Leigh would receive just two Oscar nominations in her career, but boy howdy were they earned for Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire (she won for both).  It's hard to imagine an actor ever winning a pair of Oscars and being more deserving.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her role as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, one of those rare classics that keeps its luster decade-after-decade, and her role at its center keeps her permanently in the public consciousness.
My Favorite Performance: Leigh is one of my all-time favorite actors, and part of me could just sit here going on-and-on about her brilliance in Gone with the Wind or how anyone who wants to spend a couple of hours watching a forgotten masterpiece should give Waterloo Bridge (I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!!) a shot, but you cannot beat Blanche DuBois.  This is, in my opinion, a tie for the greatest performance ever captured on film (oddly enough, the other greatest performance ever captured on film is also in this movie, which is why I forgive myself for a tie).  A Streetcar Named Desire is the reason I first fell in love with the cinema, and will always be my favorite Leigh performance.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Her two Oscar-winning films are really the reasons she's on this list, but Leigh did make a number of other pictures, and probably the most notable of the ones I'm missing is The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.

And there we have our middle eight on the list.  We'll finish up the list tomorrow, including getting to the lady that inspired this countdown, Ms. Lauren Bacall (and I have a couple of other articles in mind before we close out this actress love-in), but first, there are eight brilliant women listed above-which is your favorite performer, what are your favorite performances of them, and most importantly, what film are you going to see next that stars one of them?  Share in the comments!

Top 10 Greatest Oscar Dresses

For me, the Oscars are all about the movies and the performances and the celebration of the cinema.  That being said, I'm more than aware that for some people it's a giant fashion show that somehow gets bogged down by clip shows and shiny gold men.  For those people, this is for you.  I am not a fashionista, but from my remembrance (and from photos), I have given below my Top 10 favorite Oscar dresses (year listed is the year of the ceremony).

10. Halle Berry in Elie Saab (2002)

When you know there's a good chance you're about to get a very historic Oscar and you happen to have the body and face of Helen of Troy, going outside the box is a great idea.  Only Berry could pull off a sheer floral top with the burgundy skirt, but that's who wore it so it makes the list.

9. Grace Kelly in Edith Head (1955)

The black-and-white photos have never done this elegant, subtly mint green dress justice-just the faintest hint of color pops when offset by Kelly's alabaster skin and elbow-length white gloves.

8. Uma Thurman in Prada (1995)

Thuman has only ever received one Oscar nomination, and she sure made the most of it with a spectacularly gorgeous lavender Prada dress.  Her makeup and statuesque beauty highlight it, but the thing that pulls this together is the supremely luxurious shawl.  This is a woman who knows classic movie star glamour.

7. Elizabeth Taylor in Dior (1961)

Liz had just had one helluva a year with the death of her husband Mike Todd, then she ran off with Debbie Reynolds' husband Eddie Fisher and nearly died (you can see her tracheotomy scar in this photo).  The Oscar was certain to be hers, and she owned the red carpet in her Dior (in fact, Melina Mercouri, Deborah Kerr, and Shirley MacLaine all skipped the ceremony Taylor was such a frontrunner).

6. Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy (1954)

Hepburn basically invented great Oscar fashion (and made herself a fashion icon for all-time) when she won her trophy for Roman Holiday and sported classic white Givenchy (don't you love that she totally pulls off the belt?).

5. Nicole Kidman in Dior (1997)

Joan Rivers famously hated it ("here comes Nicole Kidman in the ugliest shade of green I've ever seen"), but I cannot get enough-hyper elegant, slightly exotic, and a color no one ever rocked before (or really has rocked so well since).  The top bead work reminds me of Berry's dress in the sense that only Kidman could pull it off, and she would remain a fashion icon for the upcoming sixteen years.

4. Cate Blanchett in Armani Prive (2007)

I honestly could put ten Cate Blanchett dresses on this list and just be fine with it.  Between she, Kidman, and the woman at number two on this list, that's pretty much my entire fashion lexicon.  If in doubt, I'll always list one of them as the best-dressed of the night.  Though she didn't win for Notes on a Scandal, Blanchett clearly demanded the red carpet and looked like a goddess in this chic metallic gown.

3. Susan Sarandon in Dolce & Gabbana (1996)

I'm aware that some of you may hate this dress, but I don't care.  I have always been obsessed with the confidence of this gown (along with the sunglasses).  Copper is a color that only some people can pull off, but Sarandon surely is one of them.  An actress at the height of her fame and power.

2. Kate Winslet in Ben de Lisi (2002)

Winslet always hits a home run, in my opinion.  I even loved her dress at the 1998 Oscars.  I have to admit, though, that I'm with the consensus-this gorgeous red Ben de Lisi dress is the clear winner.  Winslet, like many before her on this list, didn't win her Oscar that night but this was a clear victor.

1. Julia Roberts in Valentino (2001)

 I honestly wasn't sure where I'd go with the number one dress, but how could it not be this?  Perfectly blending modern Hollywood with its classical roots, Roberts found elegant, simple lines with this black and white gown that brilliantly highlighted not only her beauty, but the ultimate accessory: Oscar himself.

Those are my choices-how about you?  What is your favorite Oscar dress?

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

We haven't done this in a while.  Here's some of the top stories of the past week...

Oscar Winner Goldie Hawn

In Entertainment...

Huffington Post: Easily the best entertainment news of the week, Goldie Hawn has signed with CAA, giving us hope that she's returning to show business.  Hawn hasn't made a film in twelve years (her last was her Golden Globe-nominated work in The Banger Sisters), and I've missed her perfect comic timing and sassy onscreen presence desperately.

Grantland: Mark Harris wrote this week's "must-read" piece-a fascinating look at how the larger Best Picture field has actually limited the number of films that are nominated for the Oscars.  It's truly a remarkable observation-I hadn't noticed before, but if you look at the "Big 8" (producing, acting, writing, and directing) only twelve films take up the forty slots, a mere three of which weren't Best Picture nominees.  That's absurd, and this locks out the truly little films (such as last year's Compliance with Ann Dowd's superb work in a bid for Best Supporting Actress or the excellent Short-Term 12 in a bid to gain a writing citation) that aren't playing in Best Picture but are trying to make a run at it in other categories.

CNN: Harvey Weinstein has vowed to no longer make violent pictures.  This is A) a little bit late to the conversation, Harvey and B) infuriating.  Censorship is almost never the answer, and a better rule would be for Harvey to make it more difficult for theatergoers to let children into R-rated films (such as how it is in Europe) or to make violence have the same sorts of strict criteria that sex have with the MPAA.  But at the end of the day, violent films, television, and video games are not what you should be focusing on in this debate-easy access to guns and violent weapons and lack of proper background checks are where the real issue is.  Not the movies.

The Guardian: Speaking of Harvey, have you heard that Grace of Monaco will once again disappear from the release schedule?  The film, about the late Princess Grace, starring Nicole Kidman, was at one point a threat in the Best Actress race, and had now moved to March (release dates are up-in-the-air right now).  Now the question is simply will anyone ever see it, as the delays sound to be of a pretty tumultuous nature.

In Politics...

Ezra Klein

Slate: The world's most adorable political/economics blogger, Ezra Klein, will be leaving the Washington Post to start a new project.  As someone who reads the Post daily online, this is a big disappointment, as Chris Cillizza is no Ezra Klein, and Klein actually has opinions and insights that you couldn't read on every Politico article.  Hopefully his next project (which is mired in secrecy) will be out soon.

Mediaite: Have you all seen Lawrence O'Donnell's attack ad against Chris Christie?  I am not a Christie fan at all, but I feel like this is a step too far from MSNBC.  There's being partisan, and then there's going to a place you can't come back from-is there where we're at now with the news?  Is this where we want to be with the news?  My guess is no one wants their newsmen out there writing political ads against sitting members of the government.

Just One More...

CNN: I don't have a lot to say on Justin Bieber (I'm really too old for either, but since I don't like to tie myself down with age-specific stereotyping, I'm a proud Directioner and not at all a "Belieber").  However, I do want to say that A) someone needs to get involved in this young man's life and fast before we run into another Amy Winehouse style situation and B) what's with the smiling in the mugshot?  I get that his publicist probably said right beforehand that he should smile because it will play well in the media (still one of the smartest decisions Tom DeLay ever made), but this was a bit much, and made him look...odd.  Perhaps skip the teeth next time Justin?

Naming a Princess: What Will We Call Will and Kate's Baby?

So, with the big announcement of the year (for monarchy watchers, the biggest announcement of this generation) due to happen this week (essentially any day now, so I will have to get this done quickly), I thought I’d take a look at the sources of each of the Top Ten names according to current oddsmakers.  For the record, my hunch is that it’s going to be something along the lines of Princess Alexandra Elizabeth Caroline Alice and she’ll be born on Thursday (and the media will affectionately call her Princess Alex or Princess Lexie).

Currently, according to the William Hill website, the Top 10 names for girls are:

1.     Alexandra

Source: Almost certainly Queen Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII, who happens to be the great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II.  She was well-known for her generosity.  Princess Alexandra, the Queen's first cousin (and a favorite of hers) is also a partial source of the name.

Pro: You’d be hard-pressed to find a more regal sounding name, and her fame for charity was well-known.

Con: She was also bad at managing her money (famously giving or spending more than she had) and she was not a close blood relative of the British Royal Family (her great-great-great grandfather was King George II, and that seems to be the closest connection).

2.     Charlotte

Source: There’s a few famous Queens and Princesses named Charlotte.  King George III had a wife named Charlotte (he would be the grandfather of Queen Victoria, who is the Queen’s great-great grandmother), and famously had fifteen children.  There’s also Princess Charlotte of Prussia, who was King George V’s first-cousin (and therefore a first cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth II).  In addition, there is the former Princess Royal (a title that Will and Kate’s daughter will likely inherit one day), Princess Charlotte (eldest daughter of King George III), who reigned as Queen of Wurttemberg.  However, the most famous Princess Charlotte would have to be Princess Charlotte of Wales, who was the only daughter of King George IV and was therefore Queen Victoria’s first cousin. 

Pro: Princess Charlotte of Wales was heir to the throne of England, and was wildly popular and beloved by the public.  As you can tell, the name has been around in the Royal Families of England for a number of years, but has never been bestowed on a reigning monarch.

Con: Princess Charlotte of Wales died tragically during childbirth and the nation was in deep mourning.  Hardly a great source of a name for an infant.

3.     Diana

Source: This one is most obvious-the beloved mother of Prince William is an icon of the past 30 years-tragically taken too early in a car crash, she was the People’s Princess and adored by William.

Pro: I just listed it-if they’re searching for a name that rings as beloved with the British people, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better one.

Con: The name is not really one that is steeped with tradition in the British family.  Aside from the Princess of Wales, there has been no prominent royal in recent memory with the name.  Also, being named after one of the monarchy's most beloved (and within the Royal Family, controversial) members is a lot of pressure on a child.  My hunch is this a far more likely middle name than a first.

4.     Elizabeth

Source: There are actually quite a few sources for this name, but I'll go with the four most prominent ones.  The first is of course the current monarch, Prince William's grandmother, who is beloved by the British people and would be an excellent model for the young princess.  The second would be the Prince's great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, who is cherished by the British people, and was well-regarded by the Prince's father (and lived long enough to have been a part of Prince William's life).  The third is Britain's legendary Queen Elizabeth I, who is considered one of the greatest and most important monarchs in Britain.  And the fourth would be Kate Middleton's great-grandmother, Elizabeth Temple, who is Carole Middleton's maternal grandmother, meaning that if you want to go for a strong female presence, your mother's mother's mother is not a bad way to go.

Pro: Obviously, this name is steeped in tradition and goodwill.  It's one of the few names that both sides of the family have a recent and obvious connection toward, and the British media and tabloids would be happy with it.  It's not uncommon for princesses to be named after the monarch (it happened during Queen Victoria's reign), and none of the royal great-grandchildren have taken the name yet.
Con: Elizabeth is such an expected choice, they may go with something a little less obvious for their first child and either save this as one of the middle names (the royals typically get three) or for their second child.

5.     Victoria
Source: The obvious connection for the public here is Queen Victoria, and that would likely be where we should go with the name.  Britain's longest-reigning monarch (thus far) is not the only member of the royal family to support this name.  Queen Elizabeth II's great-great aunt Victoria, the Princess Royal, also had the name, and it was the given first name of Prince Philip's mother (though she went by Alice).
Pro: This name is steeped with great tradition, and it is one of the few monarch's names that hasn't been sullied or recently used.  It would be a fitting choice, making their daughter Queen Victoria II.
Con: As has been mentioned, the title Queen Victoria is pretty much associated with one woman only, and the name is not entirely without issue.  Though she typically went as Princess Patricia, Lady Patricia Ramsey, a first-cousin of George V, was actually Princess Victoria by birth and ended up causing a major scandal in the Royal Family, when, after being pursued by a number of foreign royals (including the King of Spain and Grand Duke Michael of Russia), she married a naval commander and lost her royal title.

6.     Eleanor
Source: You actually have to go back quite a bit to find an Eleanor (or an Eleanore) in the Royal Family.  Probably the most recent and direct connection would be Queen Caroline of Ansbach's mother, Princess Eleanore of Erdmuthe of Saxe-Eisenach (Queen Caroline was the wife of George II), the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II.  Then there is Eleanor of Aquitaine, a powerful and impressive woman who, thanks to her dual marriages, was both the Queen of France and the Queen of England during her lifetime.  The only other choice I can find would be Princess Eleanor of Castile, who is a little-known fifteenth century princess who was heiress to the throne of Castile until the birth of her younger brother (she was also the great-great granddaughter of King Edward III of England).
Pro: It's an unusual name, one that is very historical, and one that hasn't been used by the Royal Family very often.  Bringing back names is a fairly proud tradition in the Royal Family, and this would be a classy and unusual choice.
Con: Eleanor has become far more associated with American "Royalty" in the past hundred years, and the young Princess Eleanor died at age two (the Royals are definitely trying to steer clear of the names mired in tragic history).  I'd say this is a possibility for a first name, deeply unlikely for a middle name.

7.     Alice
Source: The mother of Prince Philip is almost certainly the inspiration for this decision, but she's not the only one (though she is a well-regarded member of the Royal Family-defiant against the Nazis, she housed Jews during the Holocaust and was given the title Righteous Amongst the Nations posthumously).  There is also Princess Alice, the third child of Queen Victoria (she is a fairly close relative of both Queen Elizabeth's and Prince Philip's).  There is also Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, who was the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria, and Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, who is the longest-lived member of the Royal Family (ever), who was Queen Elizabeth II's aunt.
Pro: This is my dark horse pick, and considering the odds, probably the best "steal" of the Top 10 in the betting pools.  As you can tell, there's a lot of goodwill surrounding the name, and it's fairly recent goodwill.  Plus, both the Countess of Athlone and the Duchess of Gloucester lived an exceedingly long time (the Countess being the longest-lived blood member of the Royal Family and the Duchess being the longest-lived overall member of the Royal Family), which is a great tradition to bestow onto your child.
Con: Honestly, very little.  The only thing I can find that was really damning about the above women is that the Countess of Athlone had a Nazi sympathizing brother, but her specific war efforts were very anti-Nazi (her husband was governor-general of Canada at the time), so I don't think that counts.  About the only other con is that this isn't a superbly modern name, if that's where they're going, but I would definitely not count it out, particularly since whatever name they pick will be on the Top 20 baby names lists next year.

8. Mary

Source: Few names in the British royal family are steeped in as much history as Mary.  England has had two queens named Mary (the famed “Bloody” Mary, as well as Mary II, a late 17^th century monarch).  Considering the steam the Scottish independence movement has gathered in recent years, it’s worth noting that Mary Queen of Scots was a fairly close relative of the royal family (her grandmother, Queen Margaret of Scotland, was the daughter of Henry VII and the brother of King Henry VIII).  There are also a number of consorts and princesses who have been named Mary, everyone from Queen Mary Tudor of France (sister of Henry VIII) to Mary of Modena (wife of James II of England) to most recently, Mary of Teck, Queen Elizabeth’s stern grandmother and the wife of George V of England (and yes, the ships are named after her).  Kate also has a great-great grandmother named Mary (Mary Asquith).

Pro: Mary is, as you can tell, perhaps the most common female name in the Royal Family lexicon, and we oddly don’t currently have a member of the official Royal Family named Mary (the closest is Princess Michael of Kent, whose given name is Marie).  This is also a fairly easy name to pronounce, compared to Alexandra, which is considerably difficult, something that some have considered a factor in this consideration.

Con: Two of the most violent moments in English monarchical history occurred with Queen Mary’s: the reign of Bloody Mary and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.

9. Frances

Source: Considering that this has very little to do with the Royal Family (the closest that I can find is a nineteenth century Brazilian royal named Princess Francisca, who is likely an extremely distant relative of the British Royal Family, as the Royal Families of Portugal and Spain rarely crossed with England’s breeding lines), this is almost certainly stemming from Princess Diana’s middle name, which is Frances.

Pro: It’s a way to honor Diana without going full throttle with creating another “Princess Di” with all the responsibilities that come with that name.

Con: It’s probably the most old-fashioned of all of these names, and it has little to do with the British Royal Family.  I seriously doubt this would be more than a middle name, if anything.

10. Grace

Source: This is technically the tenth currently ranked name, but I have such doubts that it would be used.  The most famous Princess Grace (the only one that I could find, actually), is of course Princess Grace Kelly, the famed movie star who married Prince Rainier II of Monaco in a storybook wedding and then died tragically in a car accident in 1982.

Pro: It’s currently a very popular name.

Con: Monaco has little to do with the British Royal Family.  With one exception (I’ll get there in a second), I cannot find a single member of the Grimaldi family that is remotely related to the British Royal Family.  I’m sure a genealogist could find some way to connect them, but it would be incredibly distant (far more so than even the Brazilian Royal Family we just discussed), that it would hardly be worth mentioning.  The only member of the Monegasque Royal Family (and she’s not actually a member, she’s a daughter of a member) that is obviously related to the British Royals is Princess Alexandra of Hanover, the granddaughter of Princess Grace.  Her father is Ernst August, Prince of Hanover, who is the great-great grandson of King George V.

And finally, one more name I'm surprised isn't in the mix: Augusta

Source: Too many to count.  Everyone from Augusta, Princess of Wales (mother of King George III) to Princess Augusta Frederica of Wales (mother of Queen Caroline, wife of King George IV) to two very interesting women: Princess Augusta of Hesse-Kassel (grandmother of Queen Mary of Teck) and her daughter Grand Duchess Augusta of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Pro: Those last two women are the most recent relatives of the Duke of Cambridge.  George, the Duke of Cambridge was the tenth child of King George III, and was the last man to be bestowed the title of Duke of Cambridge, currently enjoyed by Prince William.

Con: Nothing, really.  This would be such a clever and smart choice for the baby's name, but for some reason no one's talking about it.