Bombshells: Hold the (Virginia) Mayo

This was written for my old blog years ago, but never actually published. It was in my drafts folder for a month or so before I shut that blog down in April 2020. Recently, I revised and expanded it. Why Virginia Mayo, you ask? Well, in the final days of my old blog I had grandiose plans to write more profiles of classic films stars. I had also just seen the comedy The Princess and the Pirate, starring Mayo as Bob Hope’s comedy partner and crush. That era of Hollywood is one I haven’t written about nearly enough, even though I’m a huge fan. Earlier this year, I did feature Mayo and a slew of other Bombshells in this post.

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Born Virginia Clara Jones in St. Louis, Missouri in 1920, the talented and leggy beauty known as Virginia Mayo had a long and successful career as an actress and a dancer. Out of her seventy acting credits, some of her most beloved work occurred in films with Danny Kaye, including Wonder Man (1944) and The Kid From Brooklyn (1945), and of course her critically lauded turn in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

Mayo rose to stardom in the 1940s, during which she costarred in several comedies alongside the talented Kaye, plus one with funny man Bob Hope, and as mentioned above drew praise for her terrific dramatic work in The Best Years of Our Lives and then White Heat (1949). In each of those last two she played characters that would seem unlikable at first glance, but Mayo made us feel for them as complex, three-dimensional women. Despite doing excellent work when given meaty dramatic roles to sink her teeth into, she seems to have been dismissed as an average actress, at best. Maybe she wasn’t one of the master thespians of her time, but she had a certain charm and magnetism that helped overcome any perceived shortcomings.

In fact, by the late forties Mayo was Warner Brother’s biggest box office moneymaker. For much of her career though, her voluptuous body was the first thing people mentioned about her. Mayo’s hourglass figure became known as the ideal body type for Hollywood starlets during her heyday. The unattributed quote you see everywhere about her is that she “looked like a pinup painting come to life.” Even the Sultan of Morocco was a fan, reportedly saying that the actress was “tangible proof of the existence of God.” High praise indeed! For a period of time, Mayo was the poster girl for Hollywood Bombshells.

The reality is that Mayo brought so much more to the screen than just long legs and 34-24-35 measurements—although she brought all of that, too. She’s a delight as Bob Hope’s sweet, eye-rolling straight woman in The Princess and the Pirate (1944), and their chemistry is a big reason the satirical film is so fun. At the other end of the spectrum, she dominates as the disgruntled wife of a psychotic gangster (James Cagney) in one of the best noirs ever made, White Heat. It’s a searing performance. Mayo brings all of her sultry allure to the role, while also revealing the pain behind her character’s contradictory emotions for her dangerously unhinged husband.

Virginia Mayo lived to be 84, dying of pneumonia and congestive heart failure in 2005. While her prime acting days were in the 1940s and 1950s, she still acted after that, mostly onstage and in television guest spots on shows like Police Story, The Love Boat, and Murder, She Wrote. Looking back on her career, she once noted, “I was a better actress than I was given credit for. I know that for a fact. But you get stamped … categorized as pretty, a beauty, shapely … and you’re just stamped for life.”

Like a lot of people my age, I discovered Virginia Mayo thanks to Turner Classic Movies back in the 1990s, and what I saw made me an instant fan. Yes, it was nearly impossible to miss her jaw-dropping sex appeal, but beneath that was an actress who delivered some funny, some sexy, and some deeply touching performances. Sometimes, she even delivered all three at once. Not too shabby, if you ask me.