The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF HOLLYWOOD with the purely dimensional aspects of the female, a large measure of it must go to Hollywood. For it was there that the bust really came into its own — and acquired the status of a gimmick. After years of over-emphasising legs, the master-minds of Hollywood decided they had to give the public something new. After a thorough, but necessarily limited search, they discovered the bust. They then proceeded to evolve various different ways of presenting their find to the public. They experimented. They tried tighterfitting sweaters, water-soaked shirts, lace blouses, brassieres, bikinis, plunging necklines, dresses that split down the middle, V-lines, O-lines, Y-lines. They used chiffons and nylons and silks and gauze, flesh-coloured materials and diaphanous materials. They raised their cameras and shot downwards; they made historical dramas and, in the sacred cause of authenticity, gave the public a glimpse of cleavage ; they made the permissible most of stays and decolletage. When occasion demanded, even a nun's habit was designed to cling; and I seem to recall that Ingrid Bergman played Joan of Arc in armour that somehow failed to conceal that she was a woman. The Italians, quick to exploit a trend that might bring them dollars, gave to the world such buxom ladies as Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Silvana Mangano, who, so to speak, undercut their American competitors by giving a few centimetres more value for money. France, a little puzzled that so much fuss should be caused by the partial exposure of something which had always been totally exposed in most of their nightclubs, gave us its own brand of physiological warfare. Under the firm and dedicated direction of her husband, Christian Jaque, Miss Martine Carol burst upon the world in a state of almost complete deshabille. Naturally, the world was not allowed to see more than the regulation amount of Miss Carol but the fact that there had been 152