Addie


Am I the only one or is there anyone else out there that would have LOVED to see what Addie looked like! NO WHERE IS SHE SEEN!!!!!

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Absolutely! That's the whole point of her remaining 'unseen'. Everyone wants to see her, but we only hear her sing-song voice.

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Never bothered me, since I know what Celeste Holm looks like.

"You're too short for that gesture."
http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=5642503

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[deleted]


I think the point of Addie not being seen is that she was supposed to be the "ideal" of the men in the movie. Everyone has their own idea of what "perfection" is, so I think they deliberately left it to everyone's individual imagination.

exactly, it was a character study in comparison with the Three wives and how they "saw" Addie too.
If we had actually seen Addie, we would have brought our own perceptions of beauty against the other actresses, that might have overshadowed the importance of the personal traits, because visual image does that a lot in human perceptions, anyone that says it doesn't is fooling them shelves.

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Yes, and the brilliant thing is that because you never see her, it makes the movie timeless. You could watch this movie a 100 years later, and the men watching it will have still an 'anima' in their imagination of what a perfect woman is, which could be entirely different from what it was in the 1940's. In other words, in a certain way this movie will never age!

"The willow sees the heron's image upside down" from 'Sans Soleil'

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Possibly in 1949 everyone pretty much recognised Celeste Holm's voice, so there was no need to ever show her. I think it was a brilliant move.

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I don't know, I wouldn't have known it was her if I hadn't read it somewhere. Celeste Holm wasn't considered a beauty like Linda Darnell and Jeanne Crain. She usually did character parts, as in Oklahoma on stage (where she was the original Ado Annie) and in Gentlemen's Agreement. In fact in that movie the whole point of her character is that she's not beautiful.

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not necessarily i recall reading somewhere that when the movie came out there was a competition to guess the voice of Addie.



The only Abnormality is the incapacity to love

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bUT celeste Holm was not beautiful. Certainly not a femme fatale.

I pictured a blond woman with short beautiful wavy hair a little off a lovely forehead.
Gorgeous green eyes and a figure to die for.

Good personality and smart, someone who knows how to use all of her assets.

I am thinking Arlene Dahl is a good one.

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I had to rewind to see the restaurant scene to make sure she couldn't be sighted - when Kirk Douglas says 'she just passed before me' ...

I never think about the future, it comes soon enough

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I beg to differ...If you don'tsee her, you can "see" whatever you want her to be... Either stunning, and your own fantasy woman, or some aweful stereotype of a "town floozy".
It would also be a bit like wanting Hitchcock to show us Rebecca...

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I don't believe Addie necessarily has to be drop-dead gorgeous (after all, it would be pretty hard to beat Darnell in the looks department). Addie has to be the type of woman who can attract any man with her wit, charm, sophistication, etc. I think of Wallis Warfield Simpson, definitely Not a beauty, but she had that certain something that caught the fascination of Edward VIII) not to mention her two previous husbands!

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I don't believe Addie necessarily has to be drop-dead gorgeous (after all, it would be pretty hard to beat Darnell in the looks department). Addie has to be the type of woman who can attract any man with her wit, charm, sophistication, etc. I think of Wallis Warfield Simpson, definitely Not a beauty, but she had that certain something that caught the fascination of Edward VIII) not to mention her two previous husbands!


That's my view, too. Maybe Addie wasn't a beauty like Lora Mae was, but she certainly had qualities that all three other women envied, whether it was wit, intelligence, charm, etc. All three of the husbands saw Addie as something of a goddess, which certainly made the others jealous.

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FYI, I just finished watching on TCM and Robert Osborne went back to the original book. Addy actually left, briefly, with Kirk Douglas's character and nobody else. I wonder why they changed it.

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They show her back shoulder as she smokes and talks with K Douglas on the veranda in the club. So we know she is slim.

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