[Glamour Fights]

Gina Lollobrigida	Kim Novak
29 years old	23 years old
5'5" 127 pounds	5'6" 122 pounds
36C-22-36	37C-22-36

Esther Williams	Martha Hyer
35 years old	32 years old
5'8" 133 pounds	5'6"125 pounds
36C-22-36	37C-22-36

Jeanne Crain	Barbara Eden
31 years old	22 years old
5'4" 118 pounds	5''3¾” 117 pounds
36½B-24-36	36C-24-36

Angie Dickinson	Sophia Loren
25 years old	22 years old
5'5" 120 pounds	5'8½" 138 pounds
35C-23-36	38D-24-39

Joan Collins	Brigitte Bardot
23 years old	22 years old
5'6" 125 pounds	5'7" 120 pounds
38½C-23½-37	35½B-19-36

Ava Gardner	Anita Ekberg
34 years old	25 years old
5'5½" 128 pounds	5'5½" 128 pounds
36C-23½-37	40D-22½-36½

Elizabeth Taylor	Joi Lansing
24 years old	27 years old
5'3" 120 pounds	5'3" 120 pounds
36D-23-37	38½D-23½-35

Jane Russell	Jane Fonda
35 years old	19 years old
5'7" 135 pounds	5'8" 118 pounds
39D-25-39	33B-24-35

[petelv]

I voted again

pete

[Glamour Fights]

I will talk about the other fights this round but I thought I would give a special comment to this fight requested by Fandango.

Years ago there was a celebrity boxing tournament with round by round fight descriptions. I believe it was on a site by Kim and Ginny or Stone Rage but have lost the link to the tournament. I am not sure but I believe Kim and Gina met twice. The first one (of which I am unsure of) was in the US and Kim won. What I remember for sure was that Kim was undefeated when she met Gina in a boxing match in Italy. That was a hard fought boxing match with both women winning rounds. At the onset Kim threw the harder punches. But in the end Gina worked Kim over and Kim's legs got heavy. She wasn't able to move like she could at the start and Gina ended up knocking her out for Kim's only loss. Clearly a tie breaker is in order. Fandango arrange a third match on neutral ground in Japan as both fighters claimed they loss due to 'home town' favoritism. So this fight in the tournament is the determining boxing match between these two powerful punchers. Who will win? Will it stay a boxing match or will one of them throw off the gloves and resort to a catfight, especially if she thinks she is losing?

[Glamour Fights]

Thanks so much for such great comments. Always happy for more comparison pictures. I used to show more but when  I started have eight fights in one topic I limited the pictures to one apiece. I try to show more of the whole body for a good comparison. But I think that sometimes the portraits may indicate more of the person's personality and beauty.

I am also a big fan of contrasts as you noted: blonde vs brunette; cool sophisticate vs hot wildcat; calculating fighter vs free-lance intuitive fighter, etc. Certainly it is easy to believe of Gina as a hot-blooded almost Gypsy like woman looking for a fight. However I think you have Kim pegged wrong. Certainly the studio presented her as the cool beauty and that was the way Alfred Hitchcock liked his blondes. But when you look at the list of men she was liked with she have been pretty hot blooded herself. hot. She also stuck up for herself as evident in that she kept her surname over the studio's objections. She also didn't like to be told what to do as evident in her 'romance' with Sammy Davis Jr. who (Sammy) wrote in an interview that their romance started because the studio ordered her not to see him. Finally, when she started being responsible for her own movies, and no longer controlled by the studio, she made movies in which she was very physical - including this fight with a huge woman in The Notorious Landlady.

So I think Kim would would not back down from a fight and would do well in one. What would have limited her fighting abilities was that she was an avid horseback rider and got thrown at least a couple of times. This injured her back and back injuries never seem to go away completely. A nasty opponent like Gina (she probably really isn't nasty but nice for the story) would go after that back and have Kim in tears. Of course this tournament takes place before the back injuries. So I see this turning into a real wildcat brawl with both women in peak form.

Thank you also for the other comments. Most of these fights are close so far. The biggest disagreement with you from the voters seems to be Brigitte vs Joan. Brigitte seems to be a favourtie among many people.

[Glamour Fights]

By the way this grouping seems to have most of the closest fights that could go either way. Set 1 has just Yvonne Craig vs Honor Blackman as close. That is a pure accident of scheduling as I randomize the order of the fights to try and present them neutrally.

[Glamour Fights]

Thank you for your comments, goldenerafan. The more people comment the more I enjoy it and the more positive feedback I get. The schedule is set and I am not going to rearrange as it is too hard to make sure all sex symbols met all others and do it only once. In fact as much as I checked, double checked and triple checked, I already have one mistake with Joi Lansing meeting Diana Rigg twice. This means that both Joi Lansing and Dina Rigg will not meet some other woman since all women have only f31 matches. I need to go through my schedule again and see who they are missing. I may recover this error by removing the 1stmatch (Joi won both so it doesn't make a difference and I will chose the second because ti has a lot more votes. I will probably schedule a 'make up' fight for the missing opponents.

For your information here are when the fights of your interest will be fought:
Ester Williams vs Jane Russell: Round 25
Jayne Mansfield vs Marilyn Monroe: Round 10 (just two away).

Hopefully the most part consistent winners like you mentioned will meet in the last few rounds when they are close to leading the tournament. For those you mentioned these fights will occur as follows:
Andress vs Ekberg: Round 30 (next to last round)
Andress vs Loren: Round 28
Ekberg vs Loren: Round 17 (I would have liked this to be later, in fact I wanted it to occur in the last round 31 but because of scheduling conflicts I had to make it earlier. I made some single fight 'out of normal schedule' near the start to please some people and that is why I have scheduling problems now.

I had guessed that Andress, Ekberg, Loren would be consistent winners and thus seeded them high so they would meet late in the tournament. Unfortunately by some of my top seeds have lost more than I expected (but not those three) and also the messing with the schedule early on disturbed the algorithm used to ensure high seeds meet in the last few fights.

[Glamour Fights]

I just discovered why Diana Rigg and Joi Lansing faced each other twice. It turns out some of the fights I had for Round 4 turned out to be wrong. I had reworked the schedule but somehow the original round 4 didn't get replaced..

Round 4 Was	Round 4 Should Have Been
Rita Hayworth vs Ursula Andress	Jayne Mansfield vs Ursula Andress
Jane Russell vs Sophia Loren	Bettie Page vs Sophia Loren
Jayne Mansfield vs Anita Ekberg	Rita Hayworth vs Anita Ekberg
Ava Gardner  vs Claudia Cardinale	Angie Dickinson vs Claudia Cardinale
Bettie Page vs Kim Novak	Jane Russell vs Kim Novak
Tina Louise vs Jane Fonda	Gina Lollobrigida vs Jane Fonda
Angie Dickinson vs Stella Stevens	Ava Gardner  vs Stella Stevens
Gina Lollobrigida vs Rhonda Fleming	Tina Louise vs Rhonda Fleming
Jeanne Crain vs Barbara Eden	Esther Williams vs Barbara Eden
Joan Collins vs Brigitte Bardot	Elizabeth Taylor vs Brigitte Bardot
Esther Williams vs Marilyn Monroe	Jeanne Crain vs Marilyn Monroe
Elizabeth Taylor vs Mitzi Gaynor	Yvonne Craig vs Mitzi Gaynor
Lisa Gaye vs Honor Blackman	Diana Dors vs Honor Blackman
Diana Rigg vs Joi Lansing	Joan Collins vs Joi Lansing
Diana Dors vs Mamie Van Doren	Lisa Gaye vs Mamie Van Doren
Yvonne Craig vs Martha Hyer	Diana Rigg vs Martha Hyer

I am going to throw out the results of the previous round 4 and replace them with the results of the correct round4. This round will be done after round 8 ends. If I don't do this there will be many  scheduling conflicts in the future.

[CrashCorrigan]

It's great to be reminded how gorgeous these classic glamour queens were in their heyday.  Thanks for performing a great service, glamour_fights!

About Kim Novak.  Please remember that she grew up in Chicago, one of the most dangerous cities on the face of the earth.  I'm sure she can hold her own against Gina, but damn, what a fight that would've been!

When I was a kid, I remember hearing on a talk show about a fight at an airport between Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.  I've never been able to turn up any corroborating info, but maybe you or someone else here heard about it? 

[Glamour Fights]

Hi CrashCorrigan. I never hard anything about a possible fight between Gina and Sophia at an airport. What I did read was that Gina was considering the leading hot blooded Italian sex symbol after Anna Magnani aged. Then Sophia came along and stole the show which didn't please Gina all that much. I think the tabloids had them exchanged barbs back and forth but who knows what the truth was. But it was clearly a case of two women vying for the same attention and fame.

As for Kim growing up in Chicago.... Chicago has a wide range of neighborhoods. In the 30s and 40s when Kim would have been growing up,, Chicago was a city of neighborhoods, mainly ethnic. I don't know where she was located in the city but wouldn't be surprised if it was a  quiet central European area since her parents were of Czech extraction. Her bio indicates that she was considered somewhat rebellious at school if I remember correctly. This would be consistent with her independent nature when it came to taking orders from the studio as to how to live her life. I have no idea but I would bet she was a bit of a tomboy growing up.

Although from a different generation, Anna Magnani looked like she would have been great in a fight.



(Perhaps having just punched Joanne Woodward on the nose?)

Along with Silvana Mangano:


Lots of tough looking Italian beauties who didn't seem to mind having a little meat on their bones.. Hmmm, maybe two teams of Italians against big, tough blondes. Sorry Verna Lisa, you are blonde and too skinny for the Italian team:

[djcrash]

Looking at how close all of the matches are, there are no runaway winners in this round. The way i figure it the most one sided fight has Jane Russel easily over Jane Fonda, best fight Ava Gardner winning against Anita Ekberg.  As for Vera Lisa, she most definitely belongs in one of these.

[Glamour Fights]

Looking at how close all of the matches are, there are no runaway winners in this round. The way i figure it the most one sided fight has Jane Russel easily over Jane Fonda, best fight Ava Gardner winning against Anita Ekberg.  As for Vera Lisa, she most definitely belongs in one of these.

Strange how most of the fights in this grouping are close and most in group 1 are not with the exception of Yvonne Craig vs Honor Blackman. Virna Lisa is one of those actresses that was some how missed. No explanation, just a screw up on my part. She was born in 1937. However I don't think she is as much of a fighter as her Italian counterparts who did make it to the polls.