This past year, I've been watching the films on theAFI Top 100 Listto follow along with afun and informative podcast calledUnspooled. I love to listen along with the hosts, film criticAmy Nicholsonand comedianPaul Scheer, as a kind of film club that asks me to revisit some of Hollywood's finest films and watch several that I've avoided for a majority of my life on movie-watching Earth for one reason or another. One thing that I have noticed,as a fan of movies and movie nudity, is the way that these iconic films also have some of the most famous nudity in movie history. I'm going to look at the nudity in the most recent films I watched - again,inspiredby the podcastUnspooled- Some Like It Hot, Chinatown, and Tootsie. Keep reading to see how nudity makes these movies even better!
Let's talk about Some Like It Hot starring the incomparable Marilyn Monroe. I could write about Marilyn for days and days. I, like everyone else, am a huge fan of the blonde bombshell who set the standard for beauty. No one holds a candle to her, but she wasn't just a hot piece of ass. Marilyn was truly a wonderful comedic actress and she delivered a knockout performance in Some Like It Hot. This 1959 comedy from Billy Wilder starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as two guys who go undercover as women while they hide from the mob is filled with gags, but everyone is agogwhen Marilyn hits the screen in her tight clothes. She plays Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, a singer with big dreams and big boobs. We don't get to ogle her nude boobs because it was 1959 and the Hays Code was still in effect, but that didn't stop costume designers from putting her in skincredibly suggestive clothes.
While it is now legendary that this film was a nightmare to make because of Marilyn's constant tardiness and insecurity, there's no doubt that she turned out one of the best performances of her career. Tony Curtis is famouslymisquoted for saying"kissing Marilyn is like kissing Hitler" referring to how much havoc she caused onset, buthe told EWthat hs actually said "kissing Marilyn is like fucking her" because she would grind against him. Lucky man!
Next up, let's talk about one of my other favorite famous actresses of yore: Faye Dunaway. Faye Dunaway graces the AFI Top 100 several times and for good reason: she is an amazing actress. In the Roman Polanski neo-noir Chinatown, she puts on one of my favorite performances of all time for exuding sexual energy as a classic femme fatale, but also clearly has a dark side. Faye's performance as Evelyn Mulwray goes from seductive to downright dark when Jack Nicholson's investigator gets down to the truth of what's really going on un Mulwray's life which leads to the famous slapping scene. As a femme fatale, Faye does show her breasts when she's in bed with Jack Nicholson which put a spin on classic noirs made in the Hays era that couldn't show tit.
Finally, let's go from Some Like It Hot to Tootsie. There are two crossdressing films on the AFI Top 100 list which is pretty interesting as an aside. While struggling actor Dustin Hoffman dresses as a woman to get work on a soap opera, Geena Davis undresses in a dressing room scene to show off who the real woman is in the film. It's not necessarily pivotal to the plot, but all of the clashes between "real women" and Dustin's Dorothy Michaels character are all still pretty funny. Plus, we'll never turn away from seeing Geena Davis in her underwear!
