What Made John Garfield a Sex Symbol? 

Mickey Rourke, too.

Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro years later.

John Garfield was and is a superior actor!

The inner strength of Hollywood's lady stars- from Garbo to Stanwyck- is reflected in the powerfully independent personae they projected. They fought the moguls for respect. Even Alice Faye and Betty Grable had that core of determination. They liked men but did not hang on them. Women, the drivers of the box office in the first 20 years of talkies, appreciated that kind of practical feminism. Their role models, such as Davis, Crawford or K Hepburn, or more ladylike ones such as Irene Dunne or Greer Garson, always ran their show, with men such as Robert Taylor or Herbert Marshall as their cavaliers. Strangely it was after many American women had experienced autonomy in WW2 that a male backlash began. Lady moviegoers stayed home minding their Boomer brats and adolescent males became the target audience for the shrinking theatrical exhibition trade, as they have been ever since. Production spiraled down through violent, sex-ridden schlock to today's vacuous comic book fantasies. In the first phase of this narrowing of taste, women on screen increasingly became wriggling sexpots such as Jane Russell and Monroe, fashion-plate child-women such as Audrey Hepburn, neurotic divas such as Garland or, later, characterless bed fodder in Swinging Sixties stuff about 'chicks'. The heroines of the Golden Age had to play post-menopausal witches and maniacs, while their successors, serious actresses such as Anne Bancroft and Joanne Woodford, were not 'bankable'. In the 1930s there was only one (lesbian) woman director in Hollywood and no senior female execs. Yet on screen ladies ruled much more of the roost than in 2022's post-MeToo, tickbox quota atmosphere. Today's women's pictures which insert feminine stars into male setups, such as the 'Ghostbusters' remake, convince neither sex. But the most popular movie ever, 'Gone with the Wind', was first and foremost a 'chick flick' of the old school.

The Original!