What diva from yesteryear needs a biopic?

Was Barbara Payton a diva? From Hollywood bombshell to bloated, alcoholic street hooker in under two decades. She was Lindsay Lohan before Lindsay.

[quote]When Barbara Payton died in 1967, aged just 39, her body was in such a terrible state it took the police two days to make an accurate identification. She weighed over 200 lbs, had a red, blotchy complexion, and most of her teeth had been punched out. She was a street prostitute and an alcoholic. Twenty years previously she had started out as a glamorous starlet in Hollywood. She had co-starred in movies with stars like James Cagney, Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck, but she let it all slip through her fingers.

Anita O'Day

Madonna

Little Richard.

Mistinoquette and her arch-rival Josephine Baker. It is said they would spit at each other during sidewalk encounters (among other ladylike manner of behavior).

The "Well, I never in all my life!" diva.

R5, do you mean Mistinguett?

Well, Mistinguett was paid to be a coquette.

I'm not quite sure they were divas, but I'd love to see biopics of Vivien Leigh, Ava Gardner, or Rita Hayworth. They led rich, complicated lives and were beset with many personal problems. Their stories would make great critiques of beauty, talent, fame, illness, and the pressures on women in Hollywood in the mid-twentieth century.

Lynda as Rita

R2, I’d love to see Lady Gaga play her in a biopic. Gaga looks like her.

Only one performer could do justice to Ethel Merman: Mario Cantone!

Judy Holliday (laughter and tragedy)

Sarah Vaughan (surprisingly hard partier!)

Juliette Gréco (WWII intrigue, left bank lovers, doomed affair with Miles Davis, 9+ decades to cover wrapping up in 2020)

Eartha Kitt (hardscrabble childhood, ultra glamour adulthood, feud w/Lady Bird Johnson, Catwoman, cabaret)

Yma Sumac (outlandishness from start to finish plus alternate reality storyline possibilities with Amy Camus myth)

Florence Lawrence, if only for the final scene where she eats ant paste and dies.

@r9 there need to be an HBO miniseries on MGM and their stars.

Liza played by Gaga

Gertrude Lawrence and how her last husband was controlling and how she pleaded with Rodgers and Hammerstein to write a musical for someone with almost no singing ability.

Maria Callas

Dinah Washington.

Veronica Lake

Donna Summer

Gaga.

I'd love to see a good biopic of Vivien Leigh, a genuine diva. So much talent and so much craziness. Plus she was hilariously funny-bitchy in her personal life.

[quote] Donna Summer

Didn't they already make one, called "Adam and Steve"?

Patty Duke

Laura Branigan

Jeanne Eagels.

Phyllis Hyman

Theda Bara. Obviously it would be called "Vamp." This one could be interesting on film because of the incredible way the studio built up such a false exotic image of her.

Maria Ouspenskaya

Pola Negri

Clara Bow

"So Excited: The Elizabeth Berkeley Story"

Starring Dakota Johnson as Elizabeth Berkeley

Diego Tinoco as Mario Lopez

KJ Apa as Mark-Paul Gosselaer

Keke Palmer as Lark Voorhees

Finn Wolfhard as Dustin Diamond

Guest starring Paz de La Huerta as Gina Gershon

Not a diva but I've always been fascinated by Ida Lupino.

Louise Brooks

R4, Ho please.

Beanie Feldstein

Helen Lawson, of course!

Biopics don't really ever work, especially of female stars.

Even 'Love me or leave me' (Ruth Etting) was only a minor hit movie because of Doris Day and James Cagney.

[quote]Biopics don't really ever work, especially of female stars.

What a shame.

'My week with Marilyn' worked better than most because it was about one movie shoot, not her whole life.

Nina Simone. A good one, not a shitty one with Zoe Saldana.

R40 More people remember 'Mommie Dearest' than 'A coalminers Daughter'

Zsa Zsa Gabor. And her sisters to some extent, of course, but it would be tough to cram all those marriages into one film.

R39, they’re always a little weird, but they can be tremendously affecting.

Susan Cabot

[quote]Biopics don't really ever work, especially of female stars.

I beg your pardon. ~ Miss Diana Ross, Oscar nominee for Lady Sings The Blues

Come again? ~ Jessica Lange, Oscar nominee for Sweet Dreams

Huh? ~ Renée Zellweger, Oscar winner for Judy

What's this now? ~ Angela Bassett, Oscar nominee for What's Love Got To Do With It?

Qu'est-ce que tu as dit? ~ Marion Cotillard, Oscar winner for La Vie en Rose

Hello, Gorgeous! ~ Barbra Streisand, Oscar winner for Funny Girl

Seriously, darlin'? ~ Sissy Spacek, Oscar winner for Cole Miner's Daughter

Coal, damn it.

Luise Rainer won for playing Anna Held.

Lmao DRAG HIM @R47

Kate won for Cate

R47 The problem is that you can name the movies that worked. About 1 in 10 are fairly successful and interesting.

'What's love got to do with it' doesn't deserve to be on that list.

One seems to work OK every decade or so.

[quote] [R40] More people remember 'Mommie Dearest' than 'A coalminers Daughter'

Probably because they get the title wrong.

Lana Turner

@r39 I never thought about it that way but agree now that I think about it. Why do you say especially with women? It's like you can never get both the full biography and more intimate zoom in. It's either one or the other but then I always want the other, etc.

The Iron Lady comes to mind. I loved him and feel it was an intimate portrayal as well. Now that I think of it I think it can be done with the right actor - someone who can have audiences feel they know the person even if just for a small amount of time but then I guess that becomes camp and caricature very quick which I guess I see more often than not.

The Iron Lady was pretty camp I thought. Lady Sings the Blues does not.

Jackie Hoffman would be great in The Edith Head Story.

Pamelyn Ferdin

Debbie Harry

I am slapping r57.

More biopic performances of female entertainers, performers, writers, or artists that won Academy Award nominations for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress:

"The Great Ziegfeld (Anna Held [in addition to Florenz Ziegfeld]), 1936

"With a Song in My Heart" (Jane Froman), 1952

"I'll Cry Tomorrow" (Lillian Roth), 1955

"Isadora" (Isadora Duncan), 1968

"Frances" (Frances Farmer), 1982

"Camille Claudel" (Camille Claudel), 1988

"Hilary and Jackie" (Hilary and Jacqueline du Pres), 1998

"Walk the Line" (June Carter Cash), 2005--won Best Actress Oscar

"Julie & Julia" (Julia Child), 2009

"My Week with Marilyn" (Marilyn Monroe), 2011

"Florence Foster Jenkins" (Florence Foster Jenkins), 2016

"Bombshell" (Megyn Melly), 2019

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" (Ma Rainey),. 2020

"The United States vs. Billie Holliday" (Billie Holliday), 2021

And I left out the AA nominations for famous woman writers:

"The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (Elizabeth Barrett Browning), 1934

"Out of Africa" (Isak Dinesen), 1984

"The Hours" (Virginia Woolf), 2003 (winner)

The Hours really sucked, though, trophy or not.

Jennifer Lopez

The Hours does not meet the definition of a biopic.

It's listed as one in wikipedia, r64. And the incidents it describes from Virginia Woolf's life in the section about her are pretty accurate.

R63 = Mariah Carey.

Steven Spielberg's THE STACEY Q STORY.

Liz Renay

Susan Richardson is certainly overdue for the biopic treatment.

[quote]Liz Renay

That's a good choice. I believe Todd Oldham optioned her autobiography many years ago.

Here's Liz with the daughter whom she coaxed into joining the strip act. The kid later killed herself.

I'd love one of Divine. I guess she defined herself as a drag queen rather than as trans, but I would love to see one about her anyway.

A Renay classic...

[quote] the incidents it describes from Virginia Woolf's life in the section about her are pretty accurate.

R65 This silly tearjerker woman's movie omitted the most crucial aspect of this genius-writer taking her life.

The German planes were flying over her house in Southern England preparing for invasion. Her husband was a Jew and therefore marked for extermination when the Germans invaded.

[quote] Phyllis Hyman

This would be fantastic, but only if they were able to dig into the complexities of Phyllis and her mental illness. And her bisexuality/lesbianism.

I would love to see the long rumored Dusty Springfield biopic happen, but I fear that (a) it will never happen and (b) if it does, it will be an over-commercialized hagiography (see Rocket Man, Bohemian Rhapsody) and not a nuanced portrait of a complicated person.

It is true that Leonard Woolf (as a well-known Jewish writer and publisher on politics) and Virginia Woolf (as his even more famous wife) on the Nazis' official list of people to be captured and imprisoned quickly if Germany successfully invaded the UK. But although the Woolfs knew they were likely to be targeted, they had no confirmation of this at the time.

Almost all of her biographers (including the author of her standard biography, Hermione Lee) have largely discounted the idea that Virginia Woolf committed suicide because she was afraid of being captured by the Nazis. (The popular idea that accumulated that she did--which was suggested in newspaper editorials at the time--was one of the major reasons her reputation went into severe decline in the UK for fifty years after her death: there was a widespread idea at the time she had killed herself because she "couldn't take it," which went against the stoic ideal of Britons during WWII.) In actuality, as her suicide note to Leonard shows, what she was much more afraid of was the enormous emotional collapse that often happened when she finished writing a novel. After having finished previous novels she had suffered major psychotic breaks (which caused her to hallucinate that the birds were singing to her in Greek and that the King--Edward VII--was hiding outside in the bushes mumbling obscenities to her) and had attempted suicide, and she was starting to have another such episode again in January of 1941 after finishing "Between the Acts" when she decided to dorwn herself in the river Ouse in Sussex.

Virginia Woolf had actually been fine when the Woolfs' home in London's Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury had been bombed the previous year, so, as Hermione Lee and her other biographers have pointed out, it was very unlikely her suicide would have been caused primarily by her fears of a German invasion. it was much more likely to have been caused by the psychic stress that always accompanied finishing a major novel. (She was always terrified of bad reviews and the chance that critics would not understand what she was trying to do with her fiction, which was experimental in nature.)

[quote] her suicide would have been caused primarily by her fears of a German invasion.

Sure, R75, I agree with Hermione that it was one of a few factors that led to her decision. I just like to mention it to the fools who watched this annoyingly stupid movie and Edward Albee's unhelpful play and who blindly point to her suicide as the only talking point or gimmick about Virginia Woolf.

Woolf was a genius who achieved a lot in her long, successful life and career.

High Points: The Lauren Bacall Story

[quote] Eartha Kitt (hardscrabble childhood, ultra glamour adulthood, feud w/Lady Bird Johnson, Catwoman, cabaret)

10 years ago, Zoe Saldana would have been PERFECT as Eartha Kitt.

[quote]I'd love one of Divine. I guess she defined herself as a drag queen rather than as trans, but I would love to see one about her anyway.

Not kidding when I say Brendan Fraser could launch himself back into relevance in a Divine biopic.

I'd love to see a Laura Nyro or Eva Cassidy biopic. I don't think either one was a "diva", but I'd still like to see both of those films.

I'd like to see a Janis Joplin biopic. She wasn't a diva, but was an immensely talented and powerful woman. There have been many planned/developed, but none of them have come to fruition. I'm not sure who would be ideal to cast (hopefully not Michelle Williams, who was one of the potentials. Nina Arianda was another potential who would be more interesting)

Mae West

Jean Harlow

Jean Harlow has been done.

I know this is DL so my reply will seem tongue-in-cheek, but Vivian Vance's life would make a great biopic. A crazy, abusive mother, nervous breakdown, bad marriages, a USO tour in north Africa and Italy during WWII, jealousy, resentment ... and then relative happiness with a gay husband and advocacy work for mental illness that she didn't want publicized. Not to mention it could be shot on location in lovely New Mexico.

[quote]Liza played by Gaga

Courtney Love played by Liza

None. ENOUGH of this diva shit.

Mae West was done. A television movie starring Ann Jillian.

A movie about Joan and Olivia would be nice.

R81, they’ve done a Janis Joplin biopic as well. But for legal reasons, they had to call her Jackie Jormp-Jomp.

Roz Russell

I thought The Rose starring Bleat Middle was about Janis Joplin.

Gypsy Rose Lee -- but an accurate version, which "Gypsy" most certainly is not.

[quote]but an accurate version

There is literally no such thing as an accurate version when it comes to biopics. .

@r92 I wish there was more of her talk show on YouTube she seems so exciting.

Mama Cass Elliot

Barbra Streisand

OP while I would like to see a film adaptation, I've always thought it would be most appropriate for Ethel Merman to receive the bio-musical treatment like Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, Gypsy Rose Lee in Gypsy, Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun, etc...

I'm shocked that some composer and a female actress/singer wanting to make a name for herself haven't developed one yet.

for some reason her era seems a bit past the others you've mentioned. There's a mystique about the vaudeville days. I think a bio-musical would be a tricky medium for Ethel's story. For someone who was always on stage, I think a film could give audiences that more intimate look of Ethel's life.

Yvonne Eliman?

Connie Francis

Tammy Wynette the kidnapping incident

Lady Gaga could play Courtney Love. She would just have to pretend to be a junkie.

R98 Maybe if they just focused on a particular episode in her life it would be better, if they want a starring role for two established middle aged stars write a musical that tells the story of Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine's ill-fated almost four month marriage. Plus, DL should like this we can have both Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance as characters, her "hen do" was the three of them getting drunk and giving each other makeovers in Lucy's personal beauty salon. Also, most of the marriage took place aboard ship as they sailed around Asia which would harken back to one of EM's most iconic early roles in "Anything Goes." I'm sure they had some sort of younger assistants or crew members who could give the show some youth appeal and generation gap commentary.

Hedy Lamarr had a truly fascinating life from start to finish.

Yeah what kind of mess was the Merman-Borgnine union? Was he a bruiser? Tons of alcohol? What was it?

[quote] fascinating life from start to finish.

No. We have decreed it must just be an episode in the life, NOT the full life.

Vaughn De Leath

Once a famous voice of radio....

which even back then left many people asking why.

Umm Kalthoum

Borgnine . . . Was he a bruiser?

No, he was a masturbator

I am imagining the songs coalescing around the Ethel Merman/Ernest Borgnine whirlwind romance.

DUTCH OVEN HONEYMOON

Marie Dressler, considered the best comedienne and actress in Hollywood in the late 20s and early 30s.

But, she was definitely not a diva.

What about Spring Byington! I think there should be a musical revue based solely on excellent names rather than divaness. Pola Negri, Theda Bara and Rula Lenska!

Zarah Leander

Vera Hruba Ralston.

Dixie Dunbar and Mitzi Mayfair

ZaSu Pitts

Simone Simon

Anna Maria Alberghetti

I would actually love to see a black comedy about the career of Theda Bara, a.k.a. Theodosia Goodman, who in real life was a nice Jewish girl from Cincinnati, who got fed up with Hollywood and went to live quietly in Nova Scotia after she'd made her pile.

I think that a comedy about ridiculously false public personas might strike a chord with people, in the era of Instagram filters...

Sheena Easton

Bring The Vamp back to Broadway!

[quote] Simone Simon

Simone Signoret, for whom fame came too late in her career.

Simone Signoret, cast aside because her face became too fat.

Simone Signoret-- a slightly thicker and French version of Grace Kelly.

Diana Ross

Please don't let Aaron Sorkin direct the Vivian Vance biopic.

Barbara Stanwyck…

Who is that divine young man in R121? I'd bring comfort to his ass after she finishes stepping on it...

Steve Reeves, r126.

Merle Oberon - a better one than that boring QUEENIE miniseries.

With so many of these people listed above, I wonder just who posters think are going to watch these biopics.

"Hey, weren't you kids going out with your friends to party tonight? It's Saturday night!"

"We were going to, Mom, but we'd much rather stay home and watch the Marie Dressler biopic miniseries on Netflix! Tonight's episode covers the Oscar win for 'Min and Bill'!"

Debbie Reynolds

From Burbank to Vegas, Hollywood Golden Age Diva to Casino owner. The persona triumphs and scandals.The movies!

So much material that a writer would have to gloss over.

Shirley MacLaine - covering all of her lives, not just the present one

R129, DATALOUNGE would watch!

I ain't no yesteryear, YET, hussies!

Sinead O'Connor. That woman's career needs a reevaluation after how badly she was punished for ripping the Pope's picture. She was just too ahead of her time.

R134, the fact that O'Connor was right about the pope doesn't make the overall story of her life anything but depressing. She has raging bipolar disorder and reportedly refuses to take mood-stabilizing meds, so she's spent most of her adult life being batshit crazy in public. And that's how the story is going to end, with the crazy winning.

Fun movie, huh?

Frances Faye, lesbian pioneer

Grace Jones

R135, that would make the perfect biopic!

R137 - who would play Dolph?

[Quote]Zsa Zsa Gabor. And her sisters

Great idea. With focus on the relations between them. Zsa Zsa and Eva often referred to each other as that "bitch" in different TV interviews. "Oh, that bitch Eva" Zsa Zsa would say, but I do think she meant it affectionately.

An old guy now deceased who used to drive for Mama Jolie said all the Gabors were in a bowling league. I gasped. He said "oh, yes, they all had their own bags, balls and shoes."

[quote]who would play Dolph?

Never mind that, who the hell would play Grace??

I’d like to see an Ethel Mertz biopic, too, OP!

Renee Zellweger stars in the new original Lifetime TV-Movie:

"Playing to the Back Rows: The Grayson Hall Story."

R139, Timothee, of course.

I'd love to see a Gracie Allen biopic. She deserves to be remembered more than many who are.

DALIDA!

Joan Crawford needs a full miniseries treatment. Bette Davis, too.

R141, Lupita

Dinah Washington.

I forgot how to quote. Oh well.

QUOTE...

Not even Aretha Franklin, a true disciple, could replicate Washington's carnal delight when singing about men. For Franklin, the preacher's daughter, desire was a beguiling but potentially soul-crushing thing. And yet for Washington, the losses sounded more like split decisions. She had her share — seven to nine marriages meant at least six to eight divorces. But she was an aggressive fighter. After all, Washington chastised her duet partner Brook Benton — on record — when he made a mistake during the 1960 R&B smash Baby, You've Got What it Takes. She also reportedly beat up hecklers after her concerts.

...UNQUOTE

She is a diva who sang behind the beat oftentimes just to screw with the musicians and keep them on their toes. Stayed married, divorced, legally separated- all while committing adultery hither thither and yon. The trajectory of her sex life alone is worth a film for goodness sakes.

Wasn’t DW a drunk to boot? Alcoholism adds the touch of pathos every biopic demands.

LOVE Dinah!! Died at 39. Her death was big news in Detroit, where I lived as a teen, because her then-husband Night Train Lane played for the Lions. She was a helluva singer. Can't think of a current one who could match her.

While we're at it, why not the legendary Sarah Vaughan? Sassy kept her private life private, but she had her share of man troubles, such as an abusive 2nd husband who gambled away her savings, and an abusive and controlling 3rd husband. She was also into her cigarettes and cocaine.

I heard that Sassy Vaughan was bi. That she and Carmen (definitely leaning toward lesbianism) partook of the tasty delights of Della Reese.

I second Grace Jones and would also like to see Siouxsie Sioux.

[quote]'My week with Marilyn' worked better than most because it was about one movie shoot, not her whole life.

As long as you forget that Michelle Williams was completely miscast as Marilyn Monroe.

The Catherine Hicks movie is still hands down the best portrayal of Monroe.

I read that ages ago Stephanie Mills was in talks to portray Dinah Washington. Similar voices.

I love Debbie Harry, love her music, basically, I worship her.

But in interviews, she comes across as slightly boring. Her autobiography was a snooze. Can't see a biopic of her generating much interest. There's also no one who could play her.

Lynda Day George

[Quote]DALIDA

It already exists and it's fabulous. Available to stream on Amazon.

Kate Bush. All I ask is no actrresses with septum piercings/covered in tats.

@r157 what do you like about her other than her aesthetic?

Eve Plumb

.Arde Madrid is a very good Spanish series (8 episodes) of Ava Gardner's time in Spain that focuses on the lives of her live-in help and their interactions with her. Very good Funny as well

Exiled Juan Peron lived under Ava in her building and Ava drove him crazy. You can watch at this link if you know Spanish.

Rex Harrison. Married six times including the tragedy of Kay Kendall…and Lilli Palmer agreeing to divorce him so he could marry Kay to make Kay happy while Kay was dying…although no one bothered to tell Kay she was dying.

Then after Kay died he went to remarry Lilli…but she had married Argentine hunk Carlos Thompson in the interim. Then there’s the Carole Landis affair. She was a suicide because of him. Same with Rachel Roberts.

Rex makes most other male stars seem dull by comparison. I don’t know what he had, but he evidently had a lot of it.

Acted against most of them including Vivian Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, and Audrey Hepburn. He always had diva tendencies, but after two Tonys and an Oscar and My Fair Lady stage and screen he became impossible.

Trailer for the new María Félix biography mini-series.

Shari Lewis

That Maria Felix miniseries looks very promising. I wonder when it will stream on more platforms.

We had a great thread on MF a few years ago.

[quote] I want to see Ethel memorialized on the silver screen.

Ethel Merman?

Ethel Waters?

Ethel Barrymore?

Ethel Hotchkiss!

Barbara Walters

R163 here FYI I should say that one doesn't have to create an account at that link to watch the series. Just enlarge the screen and go. I've been watching films at the site for years without any problems

BTW there's full male frontal nudity in the Ava series.. Big Spanish pingas.

I hope the Maria Felix bio series doesn't tamp down her outrageousness.

Here's a very good documentary. Personal and DIVAESQUE.

r168 Ethel Toffelmier, the pianola player

R17 There's already been a big budget flop musical about Gertrude Lawrence and if Julie Andrews couldn't make Gertie even remotely likeable then no one can.

Celia Cruz.

R173 - There’s a HUGE series on Celia Cruz.

Not a diva per se, but I'd love to see a documentary or biopic about Helen Wood, the Broadway actress and Hollywood starlet who ended up co-starring in [italic]Deep Throat.[/italic] and then working as a waitress.

R105 It was a union of two dominating hard-hatted people. Doomed from the start. Indeed, at the time they wed the popular opinion was, "It'll never last."

Anne He he.

I think it would be interesting if they focused on somebody that might be largely forgotten today, but who was very successful. If you want to tell a feel good feminist type story, you couldn't go wrong with an Irna Phillips, Gertrude Berg, or Minnie Pearl biopic, each found success in very male dominated fields and never let their sex hold them back.

Or, the younger crowd still remembers George Burns because he stayed active in entertainment almost until his death, so how about a Gracie Allen biopic. There would never have been a George Burns without Gracie Allen.

I can't believe there hasn't been a Hattie McDaniel one, which is a fucking disgrace.

[quote]I can't believe there hasn't been a Hattie McDaniel one, which is a fucking disgrace

I'm available!

She's not a diva but I would like a biopic on folk singer Judee Sill. She was a prostitute who robbed convenience stores before she got her big break. Her music didn't sell well, so she called David Geffen gay on stage and then he ended her career, so she wound up dying in obscurity due to a heroin overdose.

Dinah's goddaughter, r151...

^Sorry, r151...

Some of these would have audiences in the tens!

R183 That is one advantage of the age of streaming, there is money to be made in niches.

Dinah Shore, lesbian icon.

Jennifer Lopez

I don't think Doris Day or Cher were divas, so not them.

Roseanne Barr? I don't know if she was divaish. She was a queen bee.

Mel Gibson

Oprah Winfrey

Do we all have to be dead and our bones turned to dust before somebody makes a legit Cary Grant biopic?

Roddy McDowell would be a great biopic with Old Hollywood Divas sashaying in and out of nearly every scene. Access to his memoirs is required for this

To R41, I agree with you!! "My Week with Marilyn" worked because it was 1 week of her life. Michelle Williams was genius in that role, as well as Eddie Redmayne. My weekend supper cohorts re-watched My Week with Marilyn yesterday. They were like, "how did I never see this movie before".

Dietrich, of course, bitch. And give me Cate Blanchette to play her!

How about a Carole Lombard one, it would have a hell of an ending.

Typically American made biopics are timid unfortunately.

For instance in the spanish made Ava series mentioned above in one scene the maid comes into Ava's bedroom and picks up something on the floor. She grimaces as she realizes it's Ava's diaphragm and jizz is dripping from it. I can't imagine this scene in an American production.

Also there's a scene with a nude guy spread on his stomach on the bed. His fine ass and nutsac are shown quite naturally. And this series was shown on TV.

Americans should have more courage.

I don't think Cher was a diva either!

R190, there was that "Gable and Lombard" flop with James Brolin and Jill Clayburgh, which concentrated more on the star-crossed lovers' romance than being an actual biopic on Lombard.

The acting is so bad, that I can't tell if this was for real or some SNL sketch.

Alas, Patti Austin is 71, decades older than Dinah was when she died.

I would like to see a biopic of Doris Day, never read anything on her (I know it would be good)

Carole Lombard (before Gable), marriage to William Powell (they both cheated on each other-best divorce ever), her Lover Russ Colombo (how he died) & Carole's honest blunt answers to reporters. She was asked "Who was the best Lover in Hollywood, she answered "George Brent"; the reporter looked shocked, and Carole responds " Oh you on the movie screen". There is a great biography called Screwball that is brutally honest book on Carole Lombard.

Dietrich would be great biopic...an honest one!!

Judith Lowry

[quote]Roddy McDowell would be a great biopic with Old Hollywood Divas sashaying in and out of nearly every scene. Access to his memoirs is required for this

So is spelling his name correctly.

Paul Lynne

r199 Oh, dear.

Dale Bozzio, played by Lady Gaga

Courtney Love

To R202...that story is still writing itself!!

That drugged-out murdering Bitch has to DIE!!

Then the biopic.

Delilah-Judith

R180, I’d only heard mention of Jude Sills before. Listening to her now - interesting voice and tumultuous life. Thanks!

Judee, please.

Some folks are not getting the topic.

How about Alla Nazimova? Russian Jew who became a theater star in Russia and the US, who took Hollywood by storm, who became a writer and director in a male-dominated business... and who was openly bi, and who made LGBT-themed films in a homophobic and sexist era, the straight male Hollywood suits were horrified by her, and eventually shafted her career.

A gay and/or feminist director could do something amazing with her story!

[quote] Alla ... made LGBT-themed films

Of which we know nothing.

Kay Francis

Diana Wynyard.

R210 - you mean Kay Fwancis

A biopic on Kay, focusing on how Jack Warner & Co. conspired to destroy her career.

Paul Lynde got canceled before getting canceled was a thing.

Rex Harrison and Paul Lynde don’t qualify as divas, do they? The definition is getting overly broad here.

Rex was the perfect diva.

He was playing cads and adulterers right from the beginning.

I was thinking this morning that Jacques Brel would make for a good biopic. Unsure of his "diva" status, though.

Billy DeWolfe

Dietrich for sure, there are so many different eras in her life and she is part of history Joan Crawford just to erase the lies of that bitch Christina

And Brigitte Bardot, Veronica Lake, Romy Schneider, Diana Dors, Lupe Velez

IT DEPENDS - The June Allyson Story.

And who can forget beautiful Francesca Fiorre

Ruth Etting

Gorgeous Tammy

[quote]What diva from yesteryear needs a biopic? I want to see Ethel memorialized on the silver screen.

One must assume you mean Merman and not Viv, who has her own name.

A comedic take on the fabulous Merman's life done by someone who can interpret her vocal style without sounding like something from a drag review would be great. The scenes of her yelling a dirty joke across a formal event at Jose Ferrer, screaming at Ernie Borgnine about his love of Dutch ovens, raising her children like a normal mom eager for privacy, being married to the CEO of Continental Airlines (who later married Audrey Meadows), ditching that first husband, ditching ALL her husbands, doing hit after hit after hit (with a dry spell or two), doing Mad, Mad World.

Bring! ETHEL MERMAN! Back to the TOP!

R225 EVERYTHING IS COMING UP ROOOOOOOOSESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Ethel was all hard work and focused on her career. She mentioned that she lived like a nun offstage so she could give 200% onstage. Ethel's marriage to Ernest Borgnine was represented by a blank page in her autobiography but Ethel kept a private diary that didn't pull the punches. The diary ended up in the hands of a friend called Tony Cointreau who shared some of the details including the 38 day marriage to Borgnine which unraveled during the honeymoon in Asia.

"Ever since Kim Kardashian dumped Kris Humphries after 72 days of marriage, Oscar-winning actor Ernest Borgnine has been talking about his own short-lived nuptials to the great Ethel Merman.

Borgnine and Merman were married in 1964 for just 38 days. On “Access Hollywood” last week, Borgnine said the marriage unraveled during their honeymoon in the Far East. Merman, he said, was furious that, while everybody recognized him, nobody knew her. She had her revenge by refusing to give him some of her Kaopectate when he had diarrhea.

Tony Cointreau, one of Merman’s closest pals, caught the interview and rang me up in a cold fury. “He’s at it again!” Cointreau, heir to the French liquor company, said. “He’s been saying this for years, and it’s not true.”

In Merman’s memoir, there’s a chapter titled “My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine.” It’s followed by a blank page.

But she kept a diary, which contains all the gory details. And Cointreau has it. He wouldn’t show me the entry about the marriage. “It’s just very, very yucky,” he says. “It would demean her, as well as him.” But he sketched in what happened from Merman’s point of view.

Their honeymoon, it turned out, was a “freebie.” American Express picked up the tab in exchange for personal appearances Borgnine made on the company’s behalf. Merman was appalled. On the flight to Tokyo, Borgnine told her he was broke and needed money -- her money. “She couldn’t understand why a man couldn’t love her for herself and not for having a large bank account,” Cointreau says."

Better candidates:

The tragic Susan Cabot.

The tragic Barbara LaMarr the "Girl who was too Beautiful".

The tragic Alma Rubens, drug addict.

The scandalous death of Olive Thomas in Paris - the first "dead blonde sex symbol" tragedy in Hollywood.

German diva Sybille Schmitz and her horrible death. Already covered in Fassbinder's "Veronika Voss".

The tragic Lupe Velez.

Charlene Tilton, there's a story there...

[quote]What diva from yesteryear needs a biopic? I want to see Ethel memorialized on the silver screen.

Ether Waters? Or Ethel Barrymore?

Or Ethel Thayer, it thounth like lithping

Why not just combine several and make the Hollywood Babylon movie I’ve been wanting since I discovered that book in my high school library freshman year.

Another vote for ME!

[quote]Ether Waters? Or Ethel Barrymore?

Ethel Shutta, of course.

Sophia Loren has had quite a life.

And Sophia Loren has already had a biopic.

The great and powerful Oz has spoken! No biopic for you!