Gone with the...Brow

The other day we looked at Janet Leigh. Here's another Leigh for our enjoyment: Vivien Leigh.

Best known as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, Leigh is (as far as I know) no relation to Janet. But they have one thing in common: interesting eyebrows.

Vivien was quite appealing. This production still from GwtW is one of my favorite Hollywood portraits of all time:


What's interesting about Vivien is that her brows were assymetrical: the right brow was arched and the left one was flatter and straighter. This gave her the look of always being either quizzically questioning, or archly scheming.

When they produced the poster for the movie, they took the image of Scarlett more or less directly from the photo above. They didn't even "fix" her eyebrows for the poster. Thank goodness!

Scroll-down marriage quiz: If you count being married to famous actors as another thing, Janet and Viv have that in common too. Janet married Tony Curtis; Vivien hooked up with Sir Laurence Olivier.

Psycho Brows: Janet Leigh & Vera Miles

The other day I happened to catch Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho on television. Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, idiot embezzler, and after 45 minutes she meets a bloody demise. You probably have seen it.

I got to Googling, because in the film Ms. Leigh has some attractive eyebrows. Turns out there's a reason for that: she was really a brunette!

Later in her career, the strawberry blonde thing worked for her, and that's fine.



Scroll-down Tinseltown bonuses:

Here's a detail from the Saul Bass storyboards for the infamous shower scene in Psycho. I don't know whether Bass realized Janet Leigh was the actress cast for this role, but in any case it's fun to see his close up:


Here's Vera Miles (she played Marion's sister, Lila), the guy who played Loomis, and Janet Leigh in a publicity still. Hey, Vera Miles had some great eyebrows too!


Scream Vera! Mrs. Bates is dead!!! Oops, I gave it all away.