Who was the most beautiful star in the 1930s?

I think you mean who had the best photographer or knew how to light themselves the best. Each one of these women was known for their knowledge of lighting and camera angles.

Betty Bacall

Norma Shearer.

OP, your choices have been over done. How about Hedy Lamarr?

Gene Tierney?

It’s Hedley!

Crawford was attractive, but she didn't have the charisma Garbo & Dietrich did. Granted, we're talking about physical appearance, but charisma goes a long way where that's concerned.

Bacall was a schoolgirl in the '30s, R2?.

The most naturally beautiful of those three was Greta Garbo. All three photographed extraordinarily well, and went to great lengths to make the most of their looks (Crawford supposedly extracted some teeth to make her cheekbones sharper). But I think Garbo was the one with the most classically beautiful face.

Joan Crawford for me. Her silents/early 30s look before she overdid her eyebrows...wow!

And of course I got a bit too excited with the link

Barbara Stanwyck

R5, Gene Tierney didn't make her movie debut until 1940.

Vivien Leogh, however, was making films since the mid-30s.

Marie Dressler

R13 I know you're being sarcastic but I loved Marie Dressler!

Lauren Bacall and Gene Tierney did not make film debuts until the 1940s (although Gene was supposed to debut earlier than 1940 but there were no suitable film projects for her). Bacall in particular would have been a child in the 1930s.

I wouldn't call them necessarily beautiful, but Carole Lombard and Joan Blondell are certainly adorable. Barbara Stanwyck could be beautiful when made up correctly, but wasn't naturally pretty. Kay Francis was certainly the most glamorous. Merle Oberon exotically beautiful. Myrna Loy a sophisticated beauty. Of the three, Crawford (up until about 1937) was the most beautiful. "The Bride Wore Red" shows her at her best. Garbo, Dietrich, Tallulah, all beauties as well. Judith Anderson was only in one film ("Blood Money"), but stills from that and pictures of her in her early 30's Broadway plays have her surprisingly more attractive then I imagined her to be.

I know she isn't very popular here but Loretta Young was really gorgeous, especially in the early 1930s.

Kay Fwancis.

Heady Lamarr and Vivian Leigh

[quote] Merle Oberon exotically beautiful.

How fascinating that a girl from Tasmania could become exotically beautiful.

Greta Garbo was breathtakingly beautiful and may been the most beautiful female star of all time - but considering that she lived and made films so long ago, and judging by today's standards many people may not be able to see her true beauty.

Constance Bennett

Lillian Gish

[quote] Heady Lamarr

Ugh. Do I have to repeat myself?

[quote] Lillian Gish

The discussion is about the 1930s not the 1830s.

Sorry, but I will never understand the fuss about Garbo. She was attractive but also kind of a plain Jane. Crawford had those big soulful eyes.

Angela Lansbury

R16, Carole Lombard was, indeed, beautiful.

Dear, dear gentlemen,

It's not a competition - they were all beautiful in their own way.

Some men just don't care for that big dykey Swedish look - it's all just a matter of personal preference.

Blessings,

I see that OP is a Garbologist, just like me.

Marie Dressler--Dinner at Eight! The priceless double take she does when, as they're going into dinner, Kitty Packard (Jean Harlow) says, "I was reading a book the other day..." And Jean Harlow, speaking of beauties. But to me the great 30s beauty was Carole Lombard.

For you, R31.

Oh please Garbo was beyond mannish , a total transvestite.

R31 If beautiful is meant to mean spirited, then I do call Marie Dressler beautiful. How a woman her size and age allowed herself to get into so many pratfalls that could have truly injured her shows her indomitable spirit, referring to her face as the jawbone of an ass in "Tugboat Annie" and ending up in some flying contraption in "Emma".

She's great in the comedy "Reducing" where she tells a train conductor after he tells her that she has to go by Buffalo that she says no I want to go by train. Nobody could kill someone with a line like her. She truly is beautiful. She has another great exchange in "Dinner at Eight", indignant over the fact that Elizabeth Patterson claims to have seen her on stage when she was a little girl.

Mrs.Norman.Maine.

Connie Bennett had pretty features but her head was cube-shaped.

R32 Thank you!

Errol Flynn

Garbo- no contest.

Did you ever meet or see her, Charlie?

.,.,

R27 Angela Lansbury's first film was "Gaslight" in 1944.

Kay Francis was gorgeous and sexy. Trouble in Paradise is a great movie.

Dietrich thought Dolores del Rio was the mot beautiful woman in Hollywood.

Dolores del Rio is completely forgotten today.

Ma(n)e West

R44, Dolores del Río was labeled box office poison along with Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Kay Francis, etc., and returned to her native Mexico to become a beloved star of Mexican cinema. George Bernard Shaw once commented "the two most beautiful things in the world are the Taj Mahal and Dolores del Río."

I know I be ridiculed for suggesting it here - but she's my choice. He's not bad either.

[quote] Crawford supposedly extracted some teeth to make her cheekbones sharper.

That's been debunked. I don't know why Ryan Murphy further perpetuated that myth in Feud.

It was Dietrich who supposedly had her back molars removed to emphasize the hollows of her cheeks.

R49 It wasn’t for vanity purposes. More like time management needs. She could suck three times as much cock in half as much time. The bitch was always trying to squeeze more into her day and orifices than the average person.

Joan and Marlene have the look. But they are not beautiful.

[quote]I wouldn't call them necessarily beautiful, but Carole Lombard and Joan Blondell are certainly adorable.

R10 I'd put Ann Sothern in that group, too. She was a cutey.

garbo

R11 You are a comedian.

How much plastic surgery did this boy get? His plastic surgeon and makeup artist was the real talent.

I can't stand Joan, but at least she was attractive. Marlene doesn't belong on a list of beauties. Look at many pics of her face. NOT a pretty, cute or pleasing face. Paint that pickle and it'll still be just an lumpy plain pickle.

Garbo was beautiful. Jean Harlow was very cute, with a sweet, baby face. Lombarde was too thin and her nose stood out too much, imho. Lauren Bacall was NOT acting in the thirties. Loretta Young was beautiful. Katherine Hepburn, too. Vivian Leigh was gorgeously beautiful. Bette Davis was prettier than Dietrich ever was.

What about me?

R19, R56

[quote] Vivian Leigh

Vivien Leigh

1. Garbo 2. Crawford 3. Dietrich

Garbo was smart to hid herself away from the 1940's onwards;

Crawford grew more masculine as she became older;

Dietrich looked great for years and wisely hid herself away in the last couple of decades of her life.

Dolores del Rio was beautiful but I wouldn't rank her in even the top ten. I wonder if her physical allure was more obvious in person than these b&w photos? Hedy Lamarr, a similar type, was much more beautiful.

R56 I agree, Dietrich was not beautiful. She always looked old.

I posted a lengthy list of a few actresses that I thought were beautiful, and for some reason, I forgot to add Joan Bennett. She had several different looks throughout the 30s, but looked best in dark hair, and had a great speaking voice. By the time she got around to playing mother's and matriarchs rather than femme fatales, she was quite stunning. Perfect casting to play Elizabeth Taylor's mother, and even in her gloomy gowns on "Dark Shadows", they couldn't hide how beautiful Elizabeth Collins Stoddard would have been as a young woman.

Loretta Young.

Excuse me? There is only one!

Harpo Marx

R64 Tallulah Bankhead was unique in more ways than one but she wasn't beautiful. In fact, she appeared in very few movies.

R65 Harpo Marx was actually quite handsome back in the day. A cutie!!

Harpo's hair styles were always way ahead of the curve.

R48 I read that she deliberately had her jaw broken. In any case, if it's true that she didn't have some kind procedure, why does she look so different after her very young period? Her whole facial structure is different.

Lucille le Seur simply lost her baby fat in becoming Joan Crawford. All that Charlestoning.

R70 And a lot of sex.

Merle Oberon and Carole Lombard. In different ways.

Hattie McDaniel

Franklin Pangborn

My vote is for Garbo, but since I don't think anyone has mentioned them: Madeleine Carroll, Frances Farmer, Frances Dee, Virginia Bruce, Gloria Stuart, Alice Faye, Myrna Loy, and Tarzan's mate Maureen O'Sullivan.

R75 Frances Farmer could be pretty/beautiful when they really made her up.

She was prettier (a little younger) without much makeup.

Frances Farmer was definitely a beauty, but there are some photographs where she looks like a wholesome milk maiden (i.e. pretty but bland).

Frances Farmer, Hollywood. Frances Farmer after Hollywood. Yikes!!!

[quote] Madeleine Carroll

She frequently looked too masculine for her leading man.