The Hollywood issue of “Vanity Fair,” as usual, features a fold-out cover of the current crop of Hollywood lovelies, all decked out in pastel satin gowns, done up in glamour makeup and hairstyles evoking past icons. Naturally, I had to go to Krista Smith’s article inside (way inside!) to identify these young women, photographed by Mario Testino. The grouping includes only two current Oscar nominees—Rooney Mara, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and Jessica Chastain from “The Help.” Otherwise, they are all somehow indistinguishable from one another. Nor do any of the names leap out, instantly. But next year any one of them could be featured solo on VF’s cover, starring in some hot new movie.
Elsewhere the issue tackles the infamous rise and fall of dermatologist to the stars, Arnie Klein…the latest age-defying injectable, H.G.H...there’s a great 12-page ad for Neiman Marcus, featuring Susan Sarandon and daughter Eva Amurri Martino, posing in everything from Tom Ford to Lanvin to Carolina Herrera to Oscar de la Renta…and Tom Wolcott ponders “The Penis In Cinema.” (Why is male movie nudity more often comic than sexual—Michael Fassbender notwithstanding.)
There’s more, more, more as there always is in the jam-packed Hollywood issue, but real movie mavens will appreciate the profiles of Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren. The Bardot interview, by Henry-Jean Servat, does not include any current photos of France’s most famous sex-symbol. She is now 77. But the pages of BB in her prime are breathtaking. The star, who retired from films in 1973, at the age of 41, says she has never regretted her decision. “I was really sick of it. Good thing I stopped, because what happened to Marilyn Monroe and Romy Schnieder would have happened to me.”
Bardot does not look back at her glorious image. “I have better things to do than study myself onscreen.” (She is famously active in animal protection, and has become more conservative in her maturity.)
Sophia Loren is also in her late 70s, but she happily and glamorously poses for Annie Leibovitz and goes over her life story once again with Sam Kashner. Loren never reveals much—it’s the same tale of a poverty-stricken childhood, Carlo Ponti mentoring her, Cary Grant wooing her and her wise decision to rebuff Grant and choose security with Ponti, who died in 2007. Sophia is rumored to be, of all the great screen beauties, to be the most normal and well-adjusted. She enjoys the little box out of which jumps the still-glorious Sophia, with her overflowing bosoms and huge eyes and famously lush mouth. Then she puts it all away and lives privately and without drama. The photo layout, which also includes many vintage shots, is another stunner.
Liz Smith is a native born Texan who used to go to the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies during the Depression and yearn for the bright lights of Broadway. She arrived in New York in 1949 with $50 to her name and no ticket home. She had finally found the center of things, and had no choice but to succeed. In 1976, as the star columnist of the then big and healthy New York "Daily News," she created an overnight sensation. Her daily column can now be read on www.wowowow.com, in “Daily Variety” and in syndication.
