But it was this immense fame that hurt her most when she tried to branch out into more mature movie roles in the mid-sixties. For most of them there was a sharp dichotomy between their careers in the first half of the sixties still riding the coat tails of the fifties’ Eisenhower years to the second half of the decade as the Age of Aquarius was dawning.Īrguably, the most popular actress from this group was Sandra Dee, a petite blonde with penetrating brown eyes. However, these teenage blondes eventually had to grow up and when they did surprisingly none of them became super stars as poor choices, typecasting, and just sheer bad luck hampered their careers.
From 1959 to 1965 they were the “It” girls of the time, especially with younger audiences as they essayed the virginal teenager, the knocked up good girl, or the innocent looking nymphet who could be naughty or nice in such glossy overwrought melodramatic motion pictures such as Imitation of Life, Because They’re Young, A Summer Place, Where the Boys Are, Parrish, Claudelle Inglish, Return to Peyton Place, Susan Slade, Palm Springs Weekend, Diamond Head, The Pleasure Seekers, That Funny Feeling that have pop cinema appeal today. With Baker holding steadfast to her convictions and abandoning her sex kittenish persona, she gave “cinematic birth to a litter” of Baby Dolls who all resembled her-Sandra Dee, Tuesday Weld, Yvette Mimieux, Carol Lynley, Connie Stevens, Diane McBain, and Sue Lyon. I wanted to be thought of as an actress who created the part, not as a weird character who portrayed herself on the screen.” But the role had its downside typecasting Baker who bemoaned, “That part caused so much hoopla that I couldn’t walk around without people treating me as if I were Baby Doll. In the days of the busty platinum blonde sexpots, Baker represented a new more attainable male fantasy come to life. And she was greeted as a newfound sex symbol. Vowing revenge, the tempestuous Sicilian focuses his charms on Baby Doll hoping to seduce the nubile girl and get her to confess her husband’s crime.Īn overnight sensation due to Baby Doll, Carroll Baker won raves from the critics with her natural ease in the part culminating with a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer – Female and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
A newly arrived competitor, Eli Wallach forces Malden out of business and in a fit of desperation he burns down his rival’s cotton gin. Though married, he can’t lay a hand on her until she is “marriage ready” as he vowed to her father. Baby Doll sleeps scantily-clad in a crib-like bed and sucks her thumb driving her lecherous husband into a sexual frenzy. Based on an original screenplay by Tennessee Williams, Baker was simply scintillating as Baby Doll Meighan, the childish nineteen-year-old bride of much older Karl Malden, a cotton gin owner. In 1956 the sex-filled Baby Doll (1956) made the blonde actress a star. The shift in popularity between these two distinct types of actresses began with Carroll Baker. But that was soon to change though Marilyn would remain at the top until her death in 1962. During the mid to late fifties buxom platinum blonde beauties led by Marilyn Monroe and her counterparts Jayne Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren, Barbara Nichols, Sheree North, Joi Lansing, and others were the flavor of the moment as they oozed sex on the screen.
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