When I was a girl, I loved watching how women were portrayed in old movies on TV. Unlike my wonderful mother and her friends, these gals went to war, fought invading armies, investigated corruption, discovered radium, outshot men in rifle competitions, operated cattle ranches, published magazines, taught recalcitrant children in one-room school houses, fought communism. Or, like Mrs. Miniver in the movie of the same name, captured Nazis lurking in her kitchen before breakfast.

The ladies in these films – many based on real people – were beyond heroic … but still women in every sense of the word. Off the top of my head, some favorites were: Three Came Home (starring Claudette Colbert. About nurses surviving torture in Japanese internment camps during WW II); Casablanca (Ingrid Bergman. About Ilsa – caught between her love of her resistance-fighter husband and her embittered but ultimately valiant – ex-lover, Rick); Marie Curie (Greer Garson. About the discovery of radium), and two Barbara Stanwyck movies: Golden Boy, where she plays a cynical and manipulative gangster’s moll out to seduce an innocent boxer, and Meet John Doe where she plays a cynical and manipulative newspaperwoman out to seduce an innocent tramp.

There were so many more.

Not all were war movies, but almost all of the women portrayed were strong, fierce, and uncompromising. Even when they were hopelessly flawed – like Stanwyck as Stella Dallas or Bette Davis in All About Eve – they projected an indistinguishable nobility.

Now this might sound silly, but, one thing about those ladies that inspired me was their posture. They didn’t slink or creep into a room, they STRODE. Shoulders back, chin up, and even if the characters they played were scared to death … bold. Another that impressed me was that they didn’t carry handbags. Their purses had straps that they slung over their shoulders so their hands remained free to shoot Nazis, steal encrypted documents, or clutch the neck of the man that they wanted (passionately) to kiss.

That most of these ladies were beautiful was an added benefit. That they were fearless, proud, purposeful, and – when engaged in a romantic relationship – irrefutably female and/or feminine was essential to the plot. Even those of disputable sexual affiliation, like Marlene Deitrich or Tallulah Bankhead, were 100% women.

They had flair. They had dare. They were actresses.

ACTRESS. Oxford Dictionary definition: “A woman whose profession is acting on the stage, in movies, or on television.”

Now, it’s time to talk terminology.

Over the past few decades, waitresses have been forced to become wait-staff; stewardesses to become flight attendants; prostitutes to sex workers; ballerinas to women-ballet-dancers (I guess that began when men started to dance the female roles in Swan Lake); firemen to firefighters; salesmen to sales associates; chairmen to chairpersons; and on and on and on.

Actresses, too – alas! – have become subjected to this malady, and now are being called (and call themselves) ACTORS, which is so obliterating of their femaleness and femininity, it’s a downright sacrilege.

WHY has this happened? Why such a frantic push to de-feminize (and de-masculinize) certain professional titles? Why can’t waiters and waitresses still be those who welcome us to our favorite tables? What, in the nature of reality, demands that such jobs morph into something as flat-footed and lackluster as “server” or “waitstaff?”

And now, after years of parents naming their children Madison, Emery, Ellis, and Nova, when a cast member is being introduced as a character in a new movie or tv show, we don’t know if Logan, Cameron, or Carter is a man, a woman, or … and I don’t want to even get into THAT.

End result: No definition of roles and no role models. No exquisite and formidable women to venerate. No manly and swashbuckling men to hero-worship.

Just an amorphous muddle of People Soup.

But … I have hopes that this won’t go on forever. Getting men out of women’s sports is a start. Getting boys out of girl’s bathrooms is a step in the right direction. Getting girls out of Boy Scouts would help. Allowing Men to once again have Men’s Clubs would be a nice consequence.

Never mind that, though.

I want to get back to movies and movie stars. Think Gary Cooper in High Noon. James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Sidney Poitier in To Sir with Love.

Think Joan Fontaine in Jane Eyre. Margaret Sullavan in The Mortal Storm. Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind.

When I call to mind the ultimate actress, though, it isn’t of Golden Age stars like Barbara Stanyck, Hedy Lamarr, or Myrna Loy that I think.

It is Audrey Hepburn, starring in the 1954 movie Sabrina. Storyline: Sabrina, the chauffeur’s daughter, is invited to a dance. She arrives wearing a dress so exquisite that Cinderella would blush with envy. Like a fairy princess, she swirls, twirls, and floats through scenes in gardens and ballrooms. She is larger-than-life, but petite. Enchanting. Elegant. And just the right size to fit into a fantasy or a dream.

She is, in fact, Movie Star Perfect. And trying to squash all of that beauty and femininity into the term “actor” is like trying to squeeze stardust into a sweat sock.

As to the future? Maybe … just maybe … if we stick to our guns and keep reminding ourselves that there are two sexes and that both are really rather marvelous … someday (hopefully sooner than later), we will have actors and actresses back again.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2025. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com.