Movie Trivia

By Hillard Allen

Prostitutes in the movies probably go back to silent films, but I don’t. My earliest film that touches on the subject is probably 1930′s Anna Christie, which is about a prostitute trying to go straight. That’s a recurring theme in movies on a par, I would suppose with the straight girl turning into a prostitute. You also have your prostitutes with hearts of gold, cheerful, happy prostitutes like Melina Mercouri in Never On Sunday, or Shirley MacLaine in Irma la Douce. These movies, understandably, are called comedies.

Prostitutes bring out the best in actresses and flawed women have often copped the golden statuette for portraying them.
The 1931-32 award for Best Actress went to Helen Hayes in The Sin Of Madelon Claudet. Madelon only hit the streets when no other profession enabled her to care for her child. The child, of course, was never to know that his momma was a hooker or even that his momma was alive, as she forsook her virtue to send him through school to become a lawyer. Of course, they meet when he is grown, and he winds up taking the sweet old lady home with him, unaware at film’s end that she is his momma. handkerchief, please.

When Streetcar Named Desire was filmed, the role of the neurotic Blanche DuBois, failed genteel lady reduced to living on “the kindness of strangers” went to British star Vivien Leigh. She got to trade words with Marlon Brando for a couple of hours, before he raped her and sent her off to the loony bin. Prostitute and crazy? A sure Oscar.

Donna Reed in From Here To Eternity was a “dance hall hostess”, 1950s euphemism for a whore. Donna was Miss sweetness in every movie before that and every movie after that, winding up as a sweet TV mom, her Oscar shenanigans never repeated.

Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry was a prostitute, plain and simple. She, too, was miss sweetness in virtually every other movie in her career. She also wound up playing a mother on a TV. But her one walk on the wild side got her an Oscar in 1960.

1960 was the year the Academy lost me. They voted Liz Taylor’s call girl performance the best when it was barely worth a nomination. But Liz almost died that year and sentiment outweighed common sense with the Academy voters.
When Jane Fonda’s turn to whore came about, euphemisms were all gone and sex was beginning to be very explicit in mainstream movies. Jane got naked, got down, talked very frankly about her job and her physical approach to it. “I never come”, she said in a movie world now free to speak of orgasms.

One of the best prostitute performances was by Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy. Mark him down as a failed prostitute, actually, since his vision of nailing New York women never materialized and his cowboy boots and hats only raised the desires of male homosexuals. In desperation, he went along with them. All this got him was an Oscar nomination, an honor he shared with co-star Dustin Hoffman. But this was the year of John Wayne’s one-eyed fat marshall and John Wayne’s colorful character role after about 40 years in the business assured him of the Oscar gold, deserved or not. (see my letter called Oscar Sucks, or something like that).

Other memorable pros include Greta Garbo in Anna Christie, who finds love and redemption at the end, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, which is a fairytale of the whore who charms a rich and handsome man into happily ever after, Vivien Leigh again in Waterloo Bridge. She turns whore and must die for her sins since it is a 1940s film. Then there is Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face, Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (juvenile division), Myrna Loy in Penthouse (goodie two-shoes prostitute helps solve a crime) and Bette Davis in Marked Woman (dance hall hostesses again). There’s a whole flock of B-Girls and western type saloon girls, but none stir my imagination right now.

For more whores in film, you have to go to the IMDB. This is off the top of my head, inspired by a request to do a week’s worth of Prostitutes in my Buffery game.