Movies "resurrect the beautiful dead"

 I was reading an article in last weeks Spectator about Marlene Dietrich and came across this statement of Susan Sontag: "Movies...resurrect the beautiful dead". As a light-hearted end to this annus horribilis, I thought I would try and list my Top Ten of 'beauties' from the cinema/T.V./artistic world. As Alexander Pope wrote (in 'The Rape of the Lock'), 

                                                    Fair Tresses man's imperial race insnare,                                                    And beauty draws us with a single hair.

Looking at my tentative list, it is clear that I prefer brunette and red-heads to blondes and am not that keen on the "busto provocante" type (once said of Gina Lollobrigida). Anyway, here goes - in no particular order!

                                    Elizabeth Taylor                               Ingrid Bergman

                                  Audrey Hepburn                               Greer Garson

                           Katharine Hepburn                                 Maureen O'Hara

                                   Olivia de Havilland                      Imogen Stubbs

                                    Lilian Hall-Davis                   Sissel Kyrkjebǿ

                                               

The Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Sisi)

So, three English (de Havilland; Hall-Davis; Stubbs); two Irish (Garson and O'Hara); an English-American (Taylor); one English-Dutch (Audrey Hepburn), one Swedish (Bergman); one American (Katharine Hepburn); one Norwegian (Kyrkjebǿ); and, as my Number Eleven special guest, one Bavarian (Empress Elisabeth). Nine actresses, a singer and an Empress. All gone, bar two.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria       24 December 1837-10 September 1898 assass.

Lillian Hall-Davis       23 June 1898 - 25 October 1933

Greer Garson       26 September 1904 - 6 April 1996

Katharine Hepburn       12 May 1907 - 29 June 2003

Ingrid Bergman       29 August 1915 - 29 August 1982

Olivia de Havilland       1 July 1916 - 26 July 2020

Maureen O'Hara       17 August 1920 - 24 October 2015

Audrey Hepburn       4 May 1929 - 20 January 1993

Elizabeth Taylor       27 February 1932 - 23 March 2011

Imogen Stubbs      20 February 1961 -

Sissel Kyrkjebǿ      24 June 1969 -

A few bon mots to end with:

The flowers anew, returning seasons bring!

But beauty faded has no second spring.

Ambrose Philips (1675?-1749)

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; 

However rare - rare it be...

(Walter de la Mare 1873-1956)

...thou who hast

The fatal gift of beauty.

Lord Byron 1788-1824

Above all

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder !