Richard Koper - Fifties Blondes: Sexbombs, Sirens, Bad Girls and Teen Queens

What started my fascination with fifties movie blondes? I remember watching Some Like it Hot when I was twelve years old. I was struck by the character of Sugar Kane; of course, played by blonde Marilyn Monroe. I started collecting newspaper and magazine clippings of her. Since it was exactly twenty years after her mysterious death at the time, there were a lot of publications in the press and documentaries on television. I bought my first Marilyn Monroe biography (John Kobals Marilyn Monroe) and learned from that book that she had a lot of impersonators in her time. I joined the Dutch Marilyn Monroe fan club, bought more books, and watched late night movies on the German television with Marilyn, Beverly Michaels and Mamie Van Doren (they all were synchronized with German voices!). In 1984, my collection mostly consisted of magazine clippings and videotaped films. When British blonde Diana Dors died that year, I learned she had her own copycat following in Britain during her peak of fame. Gradually, my list of American and English blonde sex-bombs grew and grew. I regularly went to the two vintage movie shops Amsterdam had and visited film fairs where I bought some great stills, magazines and lobby cards (after hours of searching piles of photos, posters, etc.). In 1990, I went to New York for a vacation, destined to come back with some nice memorabilia. And I succeeded! (I only wished I had more to spend these days!) With the coming of the Internet my collection grew dynamically. I now even have items I didnt dare to hope for in the beginning of my collecting years. My dream was to make this book, to share my collection and information with those interested all over the world. Although my photo collection was big enough to fill a book, I needed more specific information about the lives and careers of these women. Searching the Internet, browsing casting lists and star biographies, and spending a whole day at the New York library during my second New York visit, gave me a lot of information about birth dates, real names, film credits, etc. Through all these years I can now say I have some solid information for this book; any missing information about these ladies known to my readers is welcome to me (you can contact me at fiftiesblondes@hotmail.com). I do not claim to be complete in my listings of fifties blondes. Included in this book are:

Movie stars and starlets who have been called Marilyn Monroe competitors or imitators somewhere in their career.

Sexy blondes who made a career in B-movies, from Westerns to the teenage-genre.

Actresses who turned blonde during their movie career and got sexier roles because of this hair/color change.

In an appendix called Other Fifties Blondes, I have listed 46 sexy Hollywood and British blondes who were also big names, sexy starlets or glamour girls, but who are not the main focus of my collecting. But not mentioning them, though, would make this book less complete. To draw a line, I only included blondes that were born between 1922 and 1938, and had played in films in the US or UK in the 1950s and/or early 1960s. (That means, for example, that Marie McDonald and June Haver, who were born in 1923 and 1926 respectively, but starred in movies in the 1940s, are not included in this book. However, promising MGM starlet Lila Leeds, who became infamous when she was arrested smoking marihuana with Robert Mitchum and found her career over, is included because Ive ranked her among her fellow forties starlets who made somewhat of a name for themselves in the early fifties. A couple European actresses (e.g., French Mylne Demongeot) are included in the appendix, because they appeared in some sexy blonde roles in US or UK productions.

I hope you will enjoy the contents of this book as much as I do collecting these fabulous fifties blondes!

Richard Koper

Holland

April 9, 2008

Fifties Blondes: Sexbombs, Sirens, Bad Girls and Teen Queens

2015 Richard Koper. All Rights Reserved.

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