Bombshells and goddesses of the big screen still have important lessons to teach us

Throughout August, the British Film Institute is hosting a season of films marking 75 years since a teenage Sofia Scicolone entered the Italian film industry. She may have agreed to change her name to Sophia Loren at her manager/future husband Carlo Ponti’s behest, but she refused directors’ requests to alter her facial features, specifically her “nose and mouth – too big and didn’t go together” as she recalled. She told them, “I like my face,” and promptly became Italy’s first female global box office star and the first non-English performer to win an Oscar for her role in Two Women. The moral of this tale: to thine own, reportedly imperfect, self be true.

This comes on the back of two recent TV documentaries charting the fortunes of two other women who built huge careers on their sex appeal. I Am Raquel Welch shows how Raquel Tejada also changed her name, airbrushing her Bolivian roots to conquer Hollywood. In the programme she scoffs when asked if she would have made it otherwise: “If I was Raquel Tajeda? Not a chance in hell.”

Donning a fur bikini in One Million Years BC, she became a visual shorthand for glamour with her poster on millions of teenagers’ walls, and proved bombshells needn’t be blonde. But she was also a single mother who had to leave her children constantly, and on set struggled to prove her worth. She told one director, “I’ve been thinking…” His reply: “Well, don’t.”

Later footage reveals her discomfort on chat shows, as one male host after another appraises her like an object. When she was later replaced by a younger actress on a film, she sued MGM for ageism and won. She also made a fortune with her line of wigs, including the iconic “Raquel”.

The moral of this tale: just as smart women want to be thought of as beautiful, beautiful women need to be recognised for their smarts. Meanwhile, footage of her son Damon turning the pages of a photo album reminds us that, like Loren, Welch was a mother first.

Then in My Mom Jayne, TV actress Mariska Hargitay struggles with the legacy of her mother Jayne Mansfield. Like Welch, Mansfield’s skills – she spoke four languages and played the violin and piano – confounded her image, and Hargitay’s brother admits to being repelled by the little-girl voice her mother used in public and on screen. In her more honest moments, Mansfield explained of her persona: “I use it as a means to an end.”

No doubt there are big-name actresses out there now, navigating the same pathways between expectation and personal agency, but there won’t be the same charm and revelation in later unravelling their experiences. With a tireless press, social media populated by amateur sleuths, and everyone a walking camera, a modern star can’t put their coffee cup in the wrong recycling bin let alone live a life of secrets and struggles that we come to learn about decades down the line. This, plus the fact that public figures now get to control their own images and narratives, no doubt makes for a far healthier cultural landscape. But it also makes me nostalgic for an era when, as Welch’s friend Dyan Cannon, described it: “We look at others and we dream our dreams through them.”

When Mansfield was killed in a car accident in 1967, three of her children were in the back where she’d put them down to sleep. Three passengers, all in the front, died. Baby Mariska was only discovered when her brother woke up in hospital and asked where she was. Some stories are simply shocking and moving, with or without an A-list name attached.

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