Original Sins

by Kim Krizan

  “Mrs. Robinson,” played with soigné perfection by Ann Bancroft in “The Graduate,” has created a lovely home and dutifully raised a daughter, the product of a college rendezvous. Having given up her original passion of art she has become middle-aged and, though still beautiful, is also clearly lost and facing a slow tumble into the grave. With the life-drive of the quietly desperate she decides she’s ready—not for a part-time job, a spell at the shrink’s, a prescription for good meds, or volunteerism at the Junior League—but to rumble. She cougars her way into her best friends’ son’s life and they have a rather empty affair. There’s nothing to talk about, nothing to discuss, just the temporary forgetting that an illicit rendezvous brings. Mrs. Robinson is a classic melancholy existentialist.

  The Fatale simply doesn’t subscribe to insipid theories that dumb happiness is possible or even desirable. The most intelligent, talented, and innovative among us are often prone to melancholy. The bravest aren’t inclined to rely on childish fantasies of caring gods and cloud-strewn after-lives and justice for all. It takes cajones, or in her case ovarios, to face life without a numbing fog of denial and this is an important element of Fatale psychology. As Dietrich said in her book Marlene Dietrich’s ABC, “Being in the depths of sadness is just as important an experience as being exuberantly happy.”

  Her Uncontrollable Passion

  But on the other hand Fatales display passion, the strong and intense emotions that respectable people keep under wraps … or perhaps never feel at all. Fatales throw drinks, turn over tables, storm out of meetings, dance on table tops, run down the street naked, yell at the top of their lungs, cry, crash their cars, laugh until they can’t breathe, tell off their bosses, throw things out of eighth story windows, make obscene propositions, and generally have a damn good time. The rest of the time they are perfect ladies. Since they aren’t big on heaven and hell, Fatales tend to live fully now. Instead of storing the exquisite dress in their closet and saving it for a special day, they wear it now. Instead of hiding a gorgeous set of silver flatware in a box, they used it today at breakfast. Time’s a wastin’, Baby. The Fatale knows she may be dead tomorrow.

  Having been bitterly disappointed in both relationships and career, Ava Gardner surfed a wave of passion that made her a legend, eventually having a go at one of the richest men in the world: Howard Hughes. It seems Hughes did his level best to wine and dine Ava into bed by trying to ply her with jewels and offering her the world. But it was all a big no go because Ava drew the line at anything beyond friendship. One night Ava had had dinner with her ex-husband Mickey Rooney, then drove home and went to bed. A bit later the light in her bedroom switched on to reveal Hughes, hoping, it seemed, to catch her in flagrante delicto.

  “Why … Howard,” she said, “Why don’t you go downstairs? I’ll put on a robe and join you there.”

  She met him downstairs, but in his jealousy and embarrassment he lost his temper and hit Ava across the face. Did our Fatale cry? Did she cower and whimper? No. Here’s how Ava describes the ensuing scene in her autobiography, Ava: My Story:

  … I was going to kill the bastard—stone dead! I groped around the bar for something to throw at him, the lamp, anything, and my hand closed around the handle of a large heavy bronze bell—the sort town criers use in England—and threw it at him with all my strength. He had just half-turned back toward me when it hit him, bang, between the temple and cheek. He went over backward, with the blood pouring out. And I was right after him. He wasn’t dead yet, and I was going to kill him. I grabbed a big hardwood chair—God knows how I lifted it—and lurched over to smash him to death… . All this must’ve made a lot of noise … . Because as I was poised with the chair above my head, ready to smash it down on Howard, the maid banged open the door, saw me there, and yelled ‘Ava! Ava! Drop it! Drop it!’ Her loud voice and the fact that she called me ‘Ava’ instead of ‘Miss Gardner’ stopped me … . ‘Quick, Charlie,’ Bappie [Ava’s sister] said. ‘Get an ambulance, get a doctor. Poor Howard, poor Howard!’ I said, ‘Fuck poor Howard,’ and went off to the bathroom … .

  The Fatale is a cauldron of feeling. She has only so much tolerance and to cross her is unwise because every so often she blows like Yellowstone Park’s Old Faithful geyser—without warning and with terrifying force and velocity. This will come as a shock to those who’ve only known her cooler self. Fatales love, they hate, and what lies in the middle is usually iced out, existing in a frozen void.

  Garbo was thought to be cold and aloof, but when she did a love scene she grabbed her co-star’s face and kissed him with such intensity of feeling that she betrayed the emotions lying beneath her cool exterior. She single-handedly changed Hollywood’s notion of the vamp. She wasn’t just a lustful, ravenously dangerous woman, a la Theda Bara, but a woman of complex feeling. And though Garbo never married and even stood up lover John Gilbert at the alter, when she heard that he had married Ina Claire she became so hysterical that she had to quit working for the day. Such are the passionate complexities of the femme fatale.

  She’s Alienated and Unknowable

  The Fatale is not part of the group. In fact, she doesn’t trust groups. She is an independent agent, even a loner, and prefers to live outside of the social mainstream. As Garbo said, “I’m different inside,” and the Fatale is different. Bureaucracies irritate the crap out of her, she hates being dependent on anyone, and she will do anything to attain and maintain her ability to exercise her free will. Since no one thinks a sexy girl can have any brains she probably plays dumb to disarm the smugly stupid with whom she comes in contact—something that is ever so easy to do.

  Garbo lived in seclusion, as did Marlene in her final years. But even if she does live with people they will probably never really understand her, as was expressed by Leslie’s (played by Bette Davis) lawyer Howard in “The Letter,” who said, “Strange that a man can live with a woman for ten years and not know the first thing about her.” This subterfuge is rather easy for any woman to accomplish, but for a Fatale it is child’s play.

  The femme fatale, her real feelings, thoughts, and past are often a mystery. Rumors quickly swirl about her supposed questionable history. Sightings of her behaving outrageously, whispered secrets regarding her illicit love life, gossip about her voracious appetites, testimony about her unforgivable sins, accounts of her wild parties, and sensational stories about how she got where she is in life will entertain a rapt public. Garbo believed that to tell people her innermost dreams, her “private joys and sorrows,” would cheapen her.

  Fatales are not open books, even when they’re pretending to be open books, because they really don’t care if they’re known by most people. Most people are a pain in the ass and Fatales like their privacy. They may not even totally understand themselves. Dietrich said, “The truth about me is that nothing written about me is true,” and yet she perpetuated the myths by radically editing her life story so as to never be fully known.

  She’s Amoral

  The Fatale has a disregard for society’s conventions and has her own brand of morality. She doesn’t adhere on a deep level to society’s rules and is sometimes seen as unrepressed, “liberated,” or—more likely—“bad” and on her way to hell in a hand basket. Mother Gin Sling declared that she “lived by [her] own ordinances for a long time … and [she intended] to disregard all others.” She knows that society’s main power is that it controls its members by means of mental restraints: the taboos, mores, laws, and rules that hold people in check and prevent them from running amok. And yet these rules are sometimes created by some individual or group for their own selfish benefit and convenience. They inflict a tyranny of learned helplessness, a morality of weakness, while those dictating the game enjoy unrestrained power.

  Lana Turner was described by a studio exec thusly: “She was amoral.” It’s an established fact that many if not most Fatales, fictional and non, had and have affairs while married and/or with married men. Lana, Louise Brooks, Ava, Dietrich, Mamie Va
n Doren, Cleopatra, Messalina, Hester Prynne, Lily Langtry, Anaïs Nin, even Rose McGowan. The list is long. Hell, even sweet Marilyn Monroe messed around with a married playwright and a married Kennedy or two.

  But the Fatale isn’t totally immune to qualms of conscience. In “Desire,” jewel-and car-thief Madeleine, played by Dietrich, experiences a kind of guilt. It seems that Maddy was forced into badness by a bad world, but she has a fear of being caught—and that, friends, is the Fatale’s version of “conscience.” Fortunately, though, she gets good things by being bad, notably Gary Cooper. (Though as cosmic punishment she must live out her days as a housewife in Detroit.) Even malevolently duplicitous Phyllis Dietrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck in “Double Indemnity,” has qualms in the end—right after she shoots Walter Neff and right before he shoots her.

  Fatale Loves and Hates

  We all know what Fatales really want. They really want love and understanding. But since Fatales don’t believe love and understanding exist, they’ll have to find something else to live for. They’ll take:

  •The loot

  •Freedom

  •Hot music

  •A cool drink

  •Being on a plane or train en route to somewhere else

  •People who aren’t full of shit

  •Nightlife that involves a rain-slicked street, a dark drinking establishment, and questionable company

  •Slinky black with nice jewelry

  •A good fight

  •Rain, snow, and fog

  •Driving through the desert at night with the radio on

  •Sitting in a cold movie theater on a hot day

  •Sweet revenge

  •A quest for something better

  Her “hates” would naturally be pretty strong. Here are just a few:

  •People who get in her way

  •Inane rules

  •Team spirit

  •Being someone’s better half

  •Insipid small talk

  •A night out with the girls

  •Aggressive sales people

  •Potluck dinner parties

  •Crowds

  •Square dancing

  •Television game shows and sit-coms

  •Camping

  •Personal ads (unless she’s in prison)

  •Mobs of screaming children

  •Tailgaters

  •Tupperware parties

  •People who are too literal

  •Wimps of all stripe

  The Secret Lives of Femme Fatales

  The Fatale is secretive. In fact, she may be a lady in disguise, hiding her true self and operating incognito (like a spy) because she has a secret agenda and the eye of Moscow may be upon her. As the femme fatale guards her feelings and persona, she may have a few secrets she keeps hidden from the general public. Nevertheless, she is probably playing the role of a normal woman, perhaps while leading a life of abject wickedness.

  Kathryn, the high school femme fatale played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in “Cruel Intentions,” is an example of a bad girl concealing her real nature with the Good Girl Routine. Kathryn’s charming and oh-so-perfect exterior, her supposed good works as a scholastic leader, and her warm example to younger girls contribute to her reputation as a paragon of virtue for she is heaped with praise and accolades from all and sundry. The truth, of course, is that Kathryn leads a double life, one in which she has her cake and eats it too.

  Exotic Marlene Dietrich seemed to drip with danger as she arrived at glamorous events in a chauffeured luxury car, her legs slowly emerging from its fur-carpeted back seat, then swanned about before a rapt public in strange, dramatic costumes. In private, Dietrich was actually quite the hausfrau. She had cleaning fits and actually packed cans of scouring powder in her expensive suitcases so she could disinfect every hotel bathroom she used. She was forever bringing soups and strudels to her co-workers and sung the praises of apron-clad housewives. These secrets of the real Dietrich are hardly in keeping with her public persona or the fact that she made the maintenance of her image her life’s work. They were a part of her private life—the one the Fatale holds on to to keep her ship upright. Meanwhile, though married all of her adult life to a respectable German, Dietrich had secret affairs with all and sundry. Oh what a complex web that woman wove.

  In private moments, every femme fatale indulges in feelings and habits she would think unseemly to share with the general public. For one, she doesn’t particularly want to reveal her origins. She would prefer to forget the awful past (and she usually does have an awful past to forget). For another, she does not feel compelled to share her true nature and true desires. Evelyn Mulray, the seemingly cool and polished fallen woman played by Faye Dunaway in “Chinatown,” was in reality the moral heart of the film. Evelyn artfully concealed her secret (that of victimization at the hand of her father), which stirred up the suspicions of a detective who believed she wasn’t sufficiently upset by her husband’s death. In fact, Evelyn Mulray was trying to protect another player in her world. The moral of that story is that a beautiful woman who plays her cards close to the vest, even for the most moral of reasons, will be ascribed evil intent. To be misunderstood in this way is the birthright of all Fatales.

  Ava Gardner, widely considered to be one of the most bold and beautiful women in the world, was petrified to appear before people. The stunningly desirable Lana Turner ripped through seven marriages, unmasking her total lack of success with men. Anaïs Nin had two husbands she needed to hide from one another. While masquerading as a glamorous international star, Mata Hari had to conceal the holes in her stockings, as well as her European ethnicity. Garbo, who was the queen of all Hollywood, was described as a “deer” by writer Clare Booth Luce. She even created an alternate identity she called “Harriet Brown,” a secret self that allowed her to move about more freely than the universally-recognized “Garbo” ever would.

  Do the Wrong Thing

  A girl’s gotta work. She’s gotta keep busy, bring home the bacon, and have some kind of occupation. When in doubt, the modern Fatale can ask herself this simple question: “What would Barbara Payton do?”

  Career Opportunities for the Fatale

  •Exploit men

  •Be gun moll

  •Perform as a world-weary nightclub chanteuse

  •Shoot guns in a circus act

  •Gamble (where playing dumb really counts)

  •Spy

  •Turn state’s evidence

  •Be a showgirl

  •Waitress at a roadside diner

  •Work as a counter girl for a fine department store

  •Run an international casino

  •Take part in underworld crime

  •Lie, cheat, and/or steal to get her mitts on the money

  •Rule the world

  But the Fatale also has to have a hobby.

  •Traveling (particularly the kind that’s on the lam)

  •A little dancing and singing

  •Studying astrology

  •Writing incriminating letters or a juicy diary

  •Making long-distance phone calls to old lovers

  •Distilling perfumes and poisons

  •Having a nice, distracting affair with a mechanic named “Blackie”

  •Taking long walks (to work out the holes in the plan)

  •Penning a book called My Struggle while in the clink

  •Drinking in a piano bar

  •Swimming in the nude

  Appropriate Ensembles for Every Occasion

  Pick-pocketing Jewels from a Dinner Guest

  Slim black gown festooned with a feather on the shoulders

  and a long, filmy black cape.

  (As worn by Madeleine de Beaupre,

  played by Marlene Dietrich in “Desire.”)

  Overseeing Her Gambling Establishment in Shanghai

  Transparent black Chinese robe covered

  in dramatic jeweled designs,

  under which is a long gown made out
of metallic fabric.

  Elaborate, sculpturally braided hairstyle with a huge

  ornament jutting from either side of the head.

  Huge rings. Long talon-like fingernails.

  Extra points: Eyebrows like flying wings.

  (As seen on Mother Gin Sling, played by Ona Munson

  in “Shanghai Gesture.”)

  Robbing a Bank

  Two-tone cowboy shirt tucked into form-fitting black pants.

  Belt holster and guns slung around hips.

  Cowboy hat with a string tie around the chin.

  Cowboy boots almost to the knees.

  (As worn by Laurie, played by Peggy Cummins in “Gun Crazy.”)

  Man-Eating Made Simple

  The Femme Fatale’s Purpose-Driven Life

  “You better kiss me good-bye, Bart, because I won’t be here when you get back.”

  —Laurie, played by Peggy Cummins in “Gun Crazy”