(4 of 5)
Long-Term Investment. Claire could obviously get along without Hollywood, but could Hollywood get along without her? So far, both parties seem to feel that the answer is yes. Of the two, however, Hollywood is perhaps the more willing to reconsider. Moviemakers do, after all, need talented actresses, besides pretty faces, clotheshorses and sex-bearers. Such "personality" stars as Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Crawford tend to last longer at the box office than such sexy beauties as Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
The sexy girls win enormous short-term popularity, but for the long financial pull a girl like Claire, who works singlemindedly at her acting, is an excellent bet. Hollywood sex, compared to the earthy realism of such Italian stars as Silvana Mangano and Anna Magnani, is, moreover, a strictly synthetic article. Most of the excitement is generated by the barkers outside the tent—the still photographs used in advertisements. In the stills, a battery of retouch artists sees to it that every line is more lushly beautiful than life, and the cuties can also be exhibited in titillating poses that would never be permitted on the screen. Sometimes the private life of a star is more exciting than her film performances (e.g., Zsa Zsa Gabor is still probably better known as a gossip-column personality than as an actress).
Hollywood, currently in the shivers of a transitional period, is not making full use of such "prestige" stars as Greer Garson, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy McGuire and Ginger Rogers. Some of the upcoming stars are specialty comediennes (e.g., Judy Holliday) or musical stars (Leslie Caron, Jane Powell). Even a sexy star like Marilyn Monroe, who heretofore has needed to do nothing but move into camera range, is finding it necessary to learn to sing and dance.
If a Hollywood success is what Claire Bloom really wants, her aloof attitude—and her continuing success on the stage—might be just the way to bring it about. So far, Claire is keeping her distance—and her balance. Though she has made another film since Limelight (the soon-to-be-released Innocents of Paris, with Claude Dauphin), she has turned down two long-term movie contracts. And she has refused an offer to star in a revival of Pinero's Trelawney of the Wells, on the ground that she was not right for the part. She was trying to decide between a part in Graham Greene's new play, Living Room, and a project with Laurence Olivier when Producer Hugh Hunt asked her to play Juliet for the Old Vic, the Shakespearean Olympus of the British actor. Though the Old Vic was in danger of losing its Arts Council subsidy because of a succession of failures, Claire jumped at the chance. She can take most of the credit for giving the Old Vic its first moneymaking hit in years.