SUSAN HAYWARD – Here are more divas.
Tennessee Williams wondered why Susan Hayward was no diva (not called one anyway) when she was a “total turn on” – beautiful, tough, and feminine. She had the looks of a Rita Hayworth and the personality of a Bette Davis.” But then Williams surmised, “Clearly she was ahead of her time, which seldom pays.”
ELEANOR PARKER – Another underrated actress is Eleanor Parker, not considered a diva.
Stephen Boyd lamented: Beats me why Eleanor Parker was through by the time she was forty. She had everything – looks, talent, character. Oscar nominations. It’s one of those situations where the only logical answer to the question: Why didn’t she become a bigger star? Must be that she refused to sleep with some mogul or top producer. Nothing else would make sense.
(Perhaps local moviegoers remember Ms. Parker as the classy Baroness in “The Sound of Music.”)
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BACK TO DIVAS – Joan Hackett has this observation:
Diva-this, diva-that. It’s practically a new buzzword for any female star who acts eccentric. Most divas die young; who would want to be a diva? Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday – they all died before fifty!
A genuine diva is a star with or without a man, said Jill Ireland. Liz Taylor and Vivien Leigh are divas even minus Sir Richard Burton and Lord Laurence Olivier.
Luckily, I have not been called a “diva” in print. If I had been, I would take it as a suggestion that I should lose weight. When I think of “diva,” I see someone like Elizabeth Schwarzkopf or Beverly Sills. – Capucine
It’s weird that they use the word “diva” mostly for actresses now. It’s really a musical term, from grand opera. And there are divos… but no movie divos. Glamour in the movies is evidently limited to the female thespian. I say “divas” only in reference to great female singers – Peter Allen
(In which case, only the likes of Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Montserrat Caballe, Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland, Teresa Stratas, Leontyne Price, and other sopranos ought to be called divas.)
Audrey Hepburn walked out on her thriving career in the late sixties, terminated it, for her second husband. An Italian – a philandering Italian. He left her for a younger woman. You see? – Romy Schneider.
(In which case Audrey is a sad diva, but only for a while. In no time she was back in showbiz – top star and, more important, a humanitarian. Romy herself was a tragic diva. She committed suicide.)