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Actresses, models, singers and personalities of the fifties and sixties, skewed towards Europe.

I started this blog 5.5 years ago after I found online a photo of a young Elke Sommer looking alluring in a red sweater. I wanted to keep the image handy and share it with collaborators on a film project underway at the time, so I created 24 Femmes Per Second. The title nods to Jean-Luc Godard, “cinema is truth at 24 frames per second.” (The Guardian)

I already had a large cache of downloaded Natalie Wood photos, plus a few scans, from that time I worked on a Natalie Wood telemovie, plus folders of digital images of Claudine Auger and other Bond Girls from a sixties spy movie parody, and Hammer Horror heroines from a lesbian vampire project. I worked out the focus and scope of the blog: actresses in their prime in the 1950s and 1960s or born between 1927 and and 1952.

1950s and 1960s are the decades of my favourite films. I watch many movies – award winners, blockbusters, arthouse, B-grade and worse – and add actresses to the blog after discovering them on screen. I’ve been squeezing in a few actresses in movies either side of 1950 and 1970. Constant favorites include the femmes of 1938 ~ Claudia Cardinale, Romy Schneider, and Natalie Wood ~ and of 1943 ~ Catherine Deneuve and Sharon Tate.

I post in groups of three, sometimes frequently and sometimes not, depending on family life and film work. Generally each post has 5 tags, including the actress’ name, and two categories: year and country of birth. I recently added another category: Tragic Actress. Before the Tumblr purge of December 17, 2018, there was an autopost to a Tumblr account – now deactivated.

My WordPress media library is 95% full. I don’t want to delete old images or posts. I don’t own a single image, so there’s no point upgrading to a paid account with more storage. This means the end is nigh.

I have biographical information to add to some earlier Tragic Actress posts. I’m updating the alphabetical list of names, adding birth and death years, and relevant country. Due to work commitments, I will only post very sporadically in 2019, until my WordPress storage reaches capacity. I will continue to welcome comments, corrections and, when I’ve expressed an opinion or interpretation, contradictions.

With any spare time, I will post to Beach Party Movies (WordPress and Tumblr). Check it out.

Merci beaucoup, Hillard