DEBRA PAGET

Being beautiful is not the same as having a rapport with the movie camera.

In her films of the early 1950s, Elizabeth Taylor was so beautiful that it seemed the movie camera loved her, but when her looks deteriorated it was clear the camera would do her no favours. On the other hand, Marilyn Monroe was so adored by the movie camera that even when she was considerably overweight, - as in "Let's Make Love" - she still epitomised gloriously healthy femininity.

Debra Paget was under contract to 20th Century Fox at the same time as Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe became a super-star. Debra Paget did not. Debra Paget was far more beautiful than Marilyn Monroe.

Debra Paget had one of the most exquisitely shaped faces in movies, with high cheekbones, an unusually clean jaw-line, deep-set eyes and a perfectly rounded chin. It was a face for photographers, and many were inspired to light it decoratively. Debra also had good legs and an attractive figure, which were often highlighted in her pin-up photographs.

She was born as Debralee Griffin in Colorado in 1933 into a family enthused by show business. By all accounts, Debra's mother was determined that her various off-spring should all be in show-biz, and she was certainly successful in her ambition. Two of Debra's sisters and a brother also appeared in films and television. Debra studied dance and drama, until in 1948 when she was only fifteen years old, she was given a contract by 20th Century Fox.

Debra started well at Fox in a tiny but noticeable part in a really good film, "Cry Of The City". The movie opens in a hospital where cop-killer Martin Rome (Richard Conte) lies on the verge of death. His family are gathered around while two police officers wait impatiently. As the family move out, from the far shadows emerges Tina Riconti (Debra Paget). Tearfully she tells Rome she loves him, then disappears. For the rest of the movie the cops try to find her, a corrupt lawyer threatens to harm her, a nurse shields her - but the audience does not see her again, until the end when she refuses to run off with Rome. It was the perfect part for a beginner, in only two scenes but constantly being talked about by the other characters. (It is rumoured that there are clearance problems with "Cry Of The City" which prevent it being issued on DVD.)

The following year Debra was in "House Of Strangers", a film that borrowed from "King Lear" and starred Edward G. Robinson, as a businessman whose sons turn against him. In 1950, Debra was in "Broken Arrow", a western that was sympathetic to the Apaches. James Stewart would later say that he believed "Broken Arrow" was the film that re-established his career after the Second World War. The film was a major box-office success. Debra's career was making good progress.

While she was still in her teens, Debra's personal publicity emphasised her innocence and insisted that she was a sweet family girl. Magazines informed their readers that Debra still lived with her family and shared a bedroom with her sister. Debra confided that she was a "Mama's girl" and had never been kissed by a man in real life.

During her years with 20th Century Fox, Debra was kept busy in low-brow mainstream entertainment movies. Possibly because they found the shape of her face exotic, Fox often cast her as native Americans in westerns, as Arab princesses and the like in "middle-easterns", and as tribal maidens in South Sea islands adventures. Being so cast allowed Debra to graduate quickly to adult roles. It also allowed her to wear provocative costumes and perform sexy dance routines. In "Stars And Stripes Forever", a biopic of John Philip Sousa, Debra startled the audience by performing one number in white tights. In "Princess Of The Nile", wearing transparent veils, she had another lively routine that was rumoured to have been trimmed by USA censors. (The movie poster was dominated by an image of Debra in these veils.)

Although she certainly made an impact during such routines, at other times Debra was not a strong screen presence, even though highly photogenic. This was the big difference between Marilyn Monroe and Debra. In "Demetrius And The Gladiators", a pseudo-Biblical saga that was a box-office success, her cheek bones and sculptured profile were highlighted by cinematographer Milton Krasner. Nevertheless, as Lucia, she made little impression on the audience, despite falling into a coma when about to be ravished by a gladiator (Richard Egan), and only awakening when Demetrius (Victor Mature) returns to the fold.

By the mid-fifties Hollywood regarded Debra as an actress who could not carry a film on her own, and her contract with Fox came to an end. Debra seems to have freelanced. However she was now type-cast, and played for other studios the same kind of roles that Fox had given her: an Indian squaw in "The Last Hunt", Lilia in "The Ten Commandments", and a harem slave in "Omar Khayam". Debra also appeared in cabaret in Las Vegas. Reputedly this too was an energetically sexy performance.

Throughout the fifties, Debra's photographs and publicity changed in accordance with the roles she was playing, and no longer was she packaged as a mama's girl. Her pictures showed her in conventional pin-up poses, some of which were aggressively inelegant. Debra's publicity releases also conformed to the pattern of the times, and provided utterly useless trivia instead of interesting facts about her future projects and aspirations. One hot press release told how she preferred a special bed made in India to one available from a normal furniture store. The world was informed that Debra had had crystals encrusted into the bodywork of her Cadillac(!), and was later advised that, predictably, the crystals had been removed by thieves.

The change in Debra's publicity from what it had been in the 'forties brought a sharp reaction from show business columnists. Sidney Skolsky was fairly mild: "To me, Debra Paget is a sweet little girl who should not try to be a sex bundle". Other writers were much harsher. Her Las Vegas costumes in particular came in for criticism, and "Picturegoer" (January 26th, 1957), describing Debra as one of "the silliest girls in Hollywood", declared that she had too many publicity angles for her own good. 

Debra married twice in the late 1950s, both times for only short periods, and gradually her film career ran out of energy. She worked with Fritz Lang on a double movie project, and for some film cultists this would give her far more prestige than any of her previous films. (What Debra made of working with Lang, notorious for being a tyrant, a bully and possibly a sadist, is not known. Patrick McGilligan seems to have written his biography of Lang without talking to Debra.) Debra went from Fritz Lang, a prestige director to Roger Corman, a zero prestige director, for three cheap horror movies which ended her film career. In the early '60s Debra married again, this time to a rich man, and retired.

The unpretentious films Debra made while at 20th Century Fox remain popular with many who saw them when they first came out, and Debra still has loyal fans. However, because the movie camera was uninspired by Debra, she will always be a minority enthusiasm.

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