One of the commonly used cliches to describe Grace Kelly is that she was "the quintessential icy, Hitchcock blonde," referring to the feminine model that Hitchcock forged in many of his films during the fifties and early sixties. Kelly, in addition to playing the blond lead in Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief, the film I chose to watch for Battle of the Blondes, also filled that role in his Dial M for Murder and Rear Window, and I do not dispute the widely-accepted allegation that Kelly was Hitchcock's favorite leading lady, or that others, like Hitchcock himself, found her to be ideal expression of his vision; what I have always disputed is the notion that Kelly is in any way "icy." Grace Kelly, to me, is not icy. She has a coolness about her, yes; a pristine quality; occasionally even a closed-off aura that puts her on a pedestal; but to call her icy? Or cold? No. I just don't see it. Gene Tierney is icy. Katharine Hepburn is icy, except when she's around Spencer Tracy. Joan Crawford can be icy, albeit in a different way. But Grace Kelly is not icy.
I don't say this in some misguided attempt to "defend" Grace Kelly. The truth is, I don't particularly like Kelly, and if I did find her icy, I might be more inclined to find her interesting. As she is, I find her rather bland. I've liked her well enough in some roles, like The Country Girl, and I've hated her in others, like Mogambo, where she both pales in comparison to her costar Ava Gardner and to Mary Astor, who played her part in the original version of the film. As for her projects with Hitchcock, I've been fairly ambivalent: she's good in Dial M for Murder, and she's an appropriate puzzle piece in the masterwork that is Rear Window, but I thoroughly disliked her in To Catch a Thief the first time I saw it, which is part of why I chose to rewatch it for Battle of the Blondes; the other reason is because I sort of disliked the movie itself, and as it has such a good reputation among film critics, I thought I ought to give it a second chance. Well, I did like it better the second go round, although I still wouldn't rate it among my favorite Hitchcock films, and I liked Kelly better in it as well, but I was also struck by how... unimportant Kelly's character is to the development of the film, which only reinforced my impression of her as very pretty window dressing. Yes, her fireworks scene with Cary Grant is probably the most famous from the film, but when you actually look at the story itself, all it would take is moving a few things around and you don't need her character at all; the same could be said for her character in Rear Window. This is not Marion Crane in Psycho, or even Carol Fisher in Foreign Correspondent. Frances Stevens in To Catch a Thief is only essential if you're impressed by Kelly's on-screen magic, and because I'm not, well, you can see my difficulty.
To me, Kim Novak is a much better example of an icy blonde, not because she lacks warmth but because she always seems to be holding something back, both as the characters she plays and as an actress, to the point that I agree with Hitchcock's post-Vertigo assessment wherein he said something to the effect of, "You feel like you're getting a lot [from her]... but you're not." Novak is beautiful, obviously -- even more beautiful, I would argue, than Kelly -- and she has a captivating screen presence, and in her first major film role in the 1954 noir Pushover, playing a gangster's girlfriend who seduces the detective (Fred MacMurray) assigned to keep an eye on her, I didn't have any trouble accepting her as the sort of woman who would tempt a man into throwing away his life. The problem is that if you scratch the surface of Novak's characterization, I'm not sure there's enough there to merit a man actually ruining his life, especially when you compare Pushover to the film that clearly inspired it, Billy Wilder's classic Double Indemnity, which also stars Fred MacMurray and has Barbara Stanwyck in the femme fatale role. Stanwyck was an actress who always delved deeply into her roles, and (in addition to the fact that she was working with a superior script) she makes you believe that she could lead a man to ruin, even if she's not as glamorous as Novak and sports one of the worst hairstyles in movie history.
All the same, I like Novak in movies like Bell, Book and Candle and The Man with the Golden Arm, and between Kelly and her, I'm always more excited to see her, although I know I'm probably in the minority with that opinion. And, regardless of my feelings on Grace Kelly, I think ending the Battle of the Blondes showdowns with her was a good idea, just as I think starting with Marilyn Monroe was a good idea; more than anybody else, they are the two quintessential blondes of the classic movie era, and any consideration of blondes on film would be incomplete without them.
To Catch a Thief: B+
Pushover: B
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