And now, advice for women everywhere who yearn for a more beautiful them:
Whatever your height, Stand Tall.
Like Geena Davis, or for that matter, like Roma Downey.
NBC is down in this hot, old Southern capital this summer filming its hot, new fall mini-series called, ”A Woman Called Jackie,” and featuring as the legendary Onassis its hot new and endearingly diminutive star, Roma Downey.
Raven-haired Roma and I were having a couple of frosty cold ones the other afternoon in a Richmond bar, talking, not about a woman called Jackie, but one called Geena Davis, whom Roma greatly looks up to, much as we men look up to Michael Jordan.
Geena, Roma said, is ”a wonderful actress-always charming on screen.”
Also, as the world now knows after ”Thelma and Louise,” Geena is very tall (described as 5 foot 10 in the movie; 6 actual feet in real life).
Roma, at 5 foot 4, is not tall-is, in fact, several inches shorter than the legendary Jackie she plays. But diminutive actresses have always done quite splendidly in Hollywood. One of the greatest film stars of all time, Marilyn Monroe, didn`t reach all of 5 foot 6.
When inconvenienced by having to play opposite very tall leading men, they have always been able to rely on Hollywood`s artifices, such as the
”apple,” which Roma, a Broadway stage actress before hitting Hollywood, discovered is not a fruit but a box, as in apple crate, to stand on.
No apples for Ms. Davis
Of course ”apples” do nothing for 6-footers like Geena. If you placed
”apples” on their heads, they might scrunch down a little, but it would wreck their hairdos.
But, as Geena so terrifically demonstrated in ”Thelma,” she doesn`t need anything done for her or to scrunch down. As we all saw on Oscar night, when she sailed across the stage with all the sleek dignity of a clipper ship, here is an actress-and a woman-who stands on her own two feet, erect, proud and fantastically sexy.
That scene in ”Thelma,” when Geena strides away from the just-robbed grocery store-a lean, tanned, slim-hipped vision of tight-jeaned splendor-and hops over the door into Susan Sarandon`s Thunderbird, has to be one of the sexiest bits of footage in all cinemadom, easily equaling any in which Monroe shifted into full RPMs for that famous ”walk” of hers.
Indeed, thanks to Geena and ”Thelma,” I think it`s safe to make a proclamation: the tall actress (woman) has finally come into her own.
P.G. (or Pre-Geena)
Consider the role models that tall actresses have had in previous generations. There was Paula Prentiss, who played stereotypical gawky, klutzy giantesses so neurotic you wanted to keep her away from sharp objects; ”5 foot 12” Margaux Hemingway, whose big moment in her brief, untalented screen career was blasting a villain in his nethers with a 30 ought 6 in
”Lipstick”; and Brooke Shields, who would have had to find work as a department store dummy if it hadn`t been for Bob Hope.
Geena could have been on that now legendary 1984 American Olympic women`s volleyball team, but wow.
Reading through the zillions of interviews she`s done because of
”Thelma,” I`ve wondered if Geena herself hasn`t only just now come into her own-if her slightly kooky past persona hasn`t had something to do with the same gawky, klutzy neurosis from which too many tall women allow themselves to suffer.
As she told one interviewer: ”I think I`ve spent a lot of my life thinking that it`s more important what other people think than what I think of myself. … I could really identify with that aspect of Thelma. But my journey has been finding my strength and taking responsibility for my life and being in charge of it. In four days, Thelma goes through a pretty accelerated version of what I`ve been working on for much longer.”
Geena, we note, is just now breaking off her marriage with actor Jeff Goldblum, her co-star in the kooky and not terribly entertaining ”Earth Girls Are Easy.” Now, I`m sure he`s a fine fellow and probably much more entertaining than he was in ”Earth Girls,” but what does he customarily play? Goofs, as in ”The Tall Guy.”
One is perhaps tempted to ask, what did she see in him? Well, for one thing, he`s taller than she is. I think that won`t matter quite so much now. A towering fan club
One woman who`s been immensely cheered by Geena`s success is my friend Dangerously Strawberry Blond Jan Strimple the Super Model, who is also 6 feet tall and rather resembles Geena.
”Geena shows us that she`s not afraid to be glamorous,” Jan said, by telephone from her home in Texas, where tall women are highly prized indeed.
”It`s something very soft and feminine, and yet authoritative. I think she represents the beauty of the `90s.”
Jan said that, whereas top models used to run (or walk) about 5 foot 8 or 9, the hot new models now start at 5 foot 11 or taller, 5` 8” or 9”, the hot new models now start at 5` 10”, and most are 5` 11” or taller.
One of the most admired female role models in the world-Princess Di-is 5 feet 11 inches tall.
Jan found herself 5 foot 10 when she was all of 13.
”I was lucky to be brought up by a 5-foot-10 1/2 blond Danish mother, who taught me to use the advantages of my height,” she said.
One of these, she said, is that height bestows authority. A successful department store model at age 16, Jan was amazed to find that store executives tended to defer to her in meetings as a person far more commanding and consequential than her few years would admit, mostly because of her height.
Tall troubles
Jan regularly makes trips to Girls Town U.S.A. in Texas, where she advises teenage girls from abused or otherwise troubled backgrounds on beauty and self-image.
One very tall girl said that, because of her height, her friends tended to be much older than she was and, consequently, in a high school context, that meant that they were always graduating and moving on. Jan replied that there was an advantage in this because she would get to know a lot more people than most girls her age and would be better able to deal with humanity in general when she reached womanhood.
Jan did concede that many men find very tall women intimidating.
”Tall women are approached mostly by men who are either the curious type or very self-assured,” she said.
It`s interesting to note that Napoleon, hardly a shrinking violet, went after the much taller Josephine, and that Napoleon-sized Wall Street takeover king Henry Kravis seems quite assuredly content married to head-taller fashion designer Carolyn Roehm.
The short and long of it
Self-assured men are also quite content with endearingly diminutive women. Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln married women more than a foot shorter than they were.
At 6 feet tall, I find I tower over raven-haired Roma while, in heels, Dangerous Jan towers over me. I`ve made entrances on public occasions (the Helen Hayes Awards, Kitty Kelley`s book party) with one or the other on my arm, and the bedazzling effect on my male ego has been equally as elevating.
Maybe now, after ”Thelma,” Hollywood can dispense with ”apples” and goofs altogether.
