Back When They Were Blonde

So I'm watching Flying Down to Rio -- pre-code Hollywood and the first movie that paired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It's an interesting document of the time.

Of course, for us Astaire and Rogers mean something, but in this 1933 film they were just secondary players. (In fact, this film was Astaire's first.) The real name in the movie back then was Delores Del Rio. RKO made the picture as a vehicle for her, the first Mexican movie star in the U.S. She started in silent pictures and apparently had a bang up career. One thing I read said she was once considered a female Valentino -- dark, exotic, seductive; with huge, expressive eyes and a wide mouth -- perfect for those silent movie gazes ... which unfortunately for her (and for so many) others didn't stay. When the talkies came her career wound down. She never recovered her level of success in the U.S. (However it seems that in the 40s she became part of a new age of Mexican cinema. So her story is not totally sad.)

Anyway, her leading man is Gene Raymond, hunky, randy, musical, and blonde, blonde, blonde. It's very weird. I mean this guy is sooo blonde -- gelled up, wavy hair, cut close ... blonde! And maybe it's just me but I'm looking at him and thinking, "Jesus, he looks like a fucking Nazi." And it makes me think "Of course, the blonde haired adonis wasn't just a Nazi fixation." Hitler (who had just been elected chancellor at this point) picked up on an image of beauty that was prominent throughout the West, an image that will be stigmatized (I think, at least for men) in the following 10-15 years.

Or, again, maybe that's just me.