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In Reply to: Tom Cruise's height posted by Rob Doorack on February 22, 2005 at 07:29:14:
Rob Doorack,Thanks for the information and your comment on proportions obscuring the shorter actor makes sense and is true. It's inevitable that a long period in Los Angles puts you in contact with actors. Over the years, I've met as clients or socially:
George C. Scott
Bo Derek
Micheal Douglas
Charles Bronson
Barbra Streisand
Diana Ross
Suzanne Summers
Nancy Walker
Sylvester Stallone
Vanna White
Dick van Dykeand seen many others in restaurants, the street, in cars:
Tom Cruise
James Wood
Paul Simon
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Martin Landau
Vincent Schiavelli
Walter Mathau
Mel Brooks
Carl Reiner
Micheal Moore- (eating of course)
Dolly Parton
Karl Malden
Raquel Welch
..and more I can't think of nowThe common thing I notice in almost all the above is their height, as there is almost all those in the list that are above average and most are bordering on the short category- Vanna White, Nancy Walker, Diana Ross and Bo Derek you could put in one briefcase. Dick van Dyke is possibly the tallest of all those people. James Wood is at least average or more. Raquel Welch, who I saw walking across the plaza of the Music Center looked fantastic for her age (born 1940!) but very petite- (5'4'-5'5?). It's difficult to forget her little smile from that encounter too! Dolly Parton is quite petite too -in height. Martin Landau and Walter Mathau were/are both tall.
I was shocked when I met Stallone as he was sitting on a horse for most of the conversation while I was sitting in an open car, but when I got out of the car and he off his horse, he was several inches shorter than I and did not have any of the Rambo presence or sense of power. I was in director James Cammeron's office once and there is the "Termminator" android metal skeleton which is life size to Schwarzenegger and to me it looked quite small- scaled down. We're told Arnie is over 6' but I don't believe it. I would've met Schawzenegger too, but Maria is very private and visitors were discouraged. I only wanted to see the landscaping around his house to eveluate the designer.
I remember "Boy on a Dolphin" from the mid 50's This has Sophia Loren- often attractively wet from being a sponge diver!, Clifton Webb, and Alan Ladd. Ladd was famous for being extra short- 5'2 or 3 and Loren and Webb were both taller than average. There is a scene in which Ladd has been standing behind a desk, Webb enters and quite obviously steps up onto and over some kind of platform where Ladd had been and I though it was some kind of joke Webb was playing -he had revelaed the box Ladd uded to appear normal height. I don't know anyone else who ever noticed this, but even if not the case, it still points up the odd coincidence (9?) of how short most of the stars are.
In "The Hudsucker Proxy", notice the disparity between Paul Newmann and Tim Robbins- Robbins is 6'5, and this makes Newmann look like a dwarf.
Cheers,
Bambi B
Follow Ups:
> > Ladd was famous for being extra short < <Which is why sub - 5 foot Veronica Lake was cast as his leading lady a couple of times.
I remember reading somewhere that humans have been getting taller through the ages thanks to better nutrition and medicine. The Egyptian mummies I've seen are sometimes startlingly small, well under 5'. The typical adult male of Jesus' time was about 5 feet tall. The Vikings who were seen as giants by their Europeans contemporaries were around 6 feet tall. One wonders what they would made of one of today's 6 1/2 feet tall, 350 pound NFL linemen.
Rob Doorack,Intereesting re: Veronica Lake. If I were to forced to rank movie women actors by sheer, perfect beauty, I would have to say Veronica Lake first and the young Elizabeth Taylor a close second. Lake was just ravishing. The fact that she was sub 5' makes those perfect proportions even more astounding. It's a terrible pity Lake's life was so very short, I'm sorry, I mean to say "brief".
There was a long article in "The New Yorker" as few months ago that you would probably enjoy. This concerns the subject of people's height historically. The results of these studies surprised me and this is a subject that I, as a tall person, have followed a long time.
[Some of the figures below may not be exact since I'm quoting from memory:]
The greatest increase in average height are the Dutch. Since 1945 the average has groen 5" for men and women and they have beceome the tallest people in the world. I'm 3/4 Dutch, 1/4 English and 6'2"- while 5'-10 is the average for a women and 6'2 the average height of an adult male in Holland. The Scandanavians are all tall- mostly I think 6'1 and 5'10. And taller than Americans who are 5'10 and 5'8 I think. Another surprise are the Japanese, who, due to nutritional changes since WWII, are today only 1/2" shorter than American males- another "most improved" award there. US males have grown only 1/2" on average since WWII, one of the lesser improvements. The dramatic rise of junk- starch and sugar-based and processed foods, with a consequential malnutrition, are blamed for the poor showing.
In summary, there have been noticeable increases worldwide in average height by nationality and these changes to physical characteristics are influenced predominantly by nutrition.
Cheers,
Bambi B
> > It's a terrible pity Lake's life was so very short, I'm sorry, I mean to say "brief" < <It wasn't that brief - she died at age 54. Her life was quite tragic though, and her long out - of - print autobiography is worth reading if you can find it.
> > If I were to forced to rank movie women actors by sheer, perfect beauty, I would have to say Veronica Lake first and the young Elizabeth Taylor a close second < <
I think I'd put Louise Brooks and the silent era Gloria Swanson above either of those ladies, but those are just my preferences. Brooks probably wins the title of the smartest film actress ever, judging by the writing she did in her later years.
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