A different kind of blonde: Melina Mercouri in Stella (Michael Cacoyannis, 1955)

Abstract

This article discusses the blondness of Melina Mercouri: the first Greek blond star and Greece’s most popular cinematic export. Taking as a case study her breakthrough role as Stella in the 1955 film of the same title, the article examines the aesthetic and political significance of Mercouri’s blondness within the historical context from which her star image emerged, namely post-war Greece, and wherein it circulated, that is Euro-American culture. The main aim of the analysis is to shed light on the bold and unconventional kind of blondness Mercouri embodied and promoted.

Keywords:

• Melina Mercouri
• blondness
• female sexuality
• beauty
• post-war Greek culture

Notes

1. In Marked Women: Prostitutes and Prostitution in the Cinema, Russell Campbell (2006) analyses the various cinematic manifestations of the prostitute in those films that have been instrumental in the construction of a particular type. Campbell notes that the prostitute is a role that every major female star has played and discusses Mercouri’s Illya as the prototypical ‘Happy Hooker’, using this typology to describe films, which, following Never on Sunday, feature prostitutes who take pleasure in their profession. Campbell’s analysis focuses on the contradictions embodied by the ‘Happy Hooker’ who, as a male fantasy speaking to the sexual revolution of the 1960s propagated by Playboy, at once celebrates and suppresses female sexuality.

2. The Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, are a collection of ancient marble sculptures that originally formed part of the Parthenon and the Acropolis in Greece. They were illegally removed in the nineteenth century, while Greece was under Ottoman rule, by the British Lord Elgin, who added them to his private collection before selling them to the British Museum. In 1983 Mercouri launched an international campaign for their restitution.

3. Stella won the 1956 Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film and was nominated for the 1955 Golden Palm award. At Cannes, Mercouri too was considered for a Best Actress award but that year the jury decided not to include this prize.

4. Olympiakos is based in Piraeus, the working-class port city near Athens.

5. Here I borrow the term ‘problematic fit’, coined by Richard Dyer in Stars (1998, pp. 129–131), to describe one of the ways in which a star image is used in the construction of a film character.

6. Copywriter Shirley Polykoff came up with playful lines such as ‘Is it true blondes have more fun?’ that made advertising history not only for the impact they had in popularising home hair dyes, leading to massive sales, but also for their influence in shifting public notions of blondes as wanton women. (see Conrad 1999, pp. 41–43, Pitman 2004, pp. 234–235).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olga Kourelou

Olga Kourelou holds a PhD in Film Studies from King’s College London. She has taught at various UK universities, including King’s College London and Roehampton University. More recently, she was Teaching Fellow in Film Studies at the University of Sussex for two years. Olga’s research interests are in star studies and European cinema. She has contributed articles on various aspects of these to publications including The Femme Fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film (2014). Currently she is researching a project on Mediterranean cinema.