Though we've left out some sentimental choices — cry us a river over "Brian's Song" another time — we're confident that you'll discover some new favorites
In his 56 years of movies (beginning with the 1955 Revenge of the Creature), Clint Eastwood has taken a beating and usually come out on top. In 2004, at 74, he was too old to fight in the ring, but as Frankie Dunn he could help young boxers realize their potential. Screenwriter Paul Haggis based his script on the stories of F.X. Toole, a former ringside cutman. That was Frankie’s trade in his prime. Now, with his pal Eddie (Morgan Freeman), he runs a gym for boxing hopefuls, most of them with no hope at all. The longest shot is Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), who hasn’t a prayer or a clue but is determined to be the champ. Can you guess what happens? Maybe not. The story has a sucker punch that reveals both the importance of family and the ways loyalty can trump official morality.
One of three Best Picture Academy Award winners with boxing scenes (after From Here to Eternity, for Montgomery Clift’s sideline as a fighter, and Rocky), the film won Oscars for Best Director (Eastwood), Best Actress (Swank) and Best Supporting Actor (Freeman). Million Dollar Baby works up a decent sweat in the gym, lands a surprise haymaker in the ring and ends up in a hospital, where Eastwood connects with his richest, sneakiest punch of all. Like Frankie, the movie is a tough creature with a heart. Like Eastwood, it’s a relic that dazzles you with its footwork, daring and class.
Holder of a national record for the 100-m freestyle in 1939, Esther Williams didn’t get to compete in the 1940 Olympics — they were called off because of World War II — so she took the short trip from her Los Angeles home to Hollywood. After 20th Century Fox made some hit films starring Olympic figure skater Sonja Henie, MGM boss Louis B. Mayer told his minions, “Melt the ice, get a swimmer, make it pretty.” Olympic gold medalists Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe had played Tarzan in movies, but neither starred in films built around their specialty sport. Williams did, with a popular series of Technicolor swimming musicals, a genre never duplicated or even imitated. She cheerfully acknowledged that she couldn’t act, dance or sing, yet she anchored such watery wonders as Fiesta, On an Island with You and Neptune’s Daughter (in which she did sing the Oscar-winning hit “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”). Whatever Williams’ limitations, her attractions were obvious. Sleek as a seal, with gorgeously toned arms, a beachcomber’s tan and a lustrous smile, she exemplified the athletic young dazzler to a country weary of war. She was Doris Day underwater.
In Million Dollar Mermaid, a biopic of Annette Kellerman, the American swim star met the Australian swim star. A crippled 6-year-old in New South Wales, Kellerman wore steel braces and took swimming lessons as a corrective. At 15 she won the local mile and 100-yd. championships; by 20 she was an international stage star, giving exhibitions of high diving and water ballet (a genre she invented, which presaged the synchronized swimming of Williams and later Olympians). Kellerman’s status as a fashion icon stoked two scandals: she popularized the one-piece bathing suit — no more pantaloons on the beach! — and was the first movie star to appear nude, in the 1914 Daughter of the Gods.
In Williams’ all-talking, all-color, all-wet version, the leading lady doesn’t show enough skin to cause a blush at the Hays Office; otherwise, she’s the perfect embodiment of Kellerman’s all-around allure. But beauty comes at a price: while executing a 50-ft. dive in a gold swimsuit, Williams broke her neck, and director Mervyn LeRoy had to call a six-month delay to the production. The movie came out, was a hit and gave Williams the title for her chattily R-rated autobiography. She’s still around today, at 90, telling her fans, “I was just a swimmer who got lucky.”
As we prepare for the Game of Thrones finale, we recognize Joffrey and nine other baddies who showed us that terrible, horrible things can come in small packages
