HUSTLER’s Many Faces of Beauty series gets a Hollywood ending as we commemorate screendom’s most alluring sirens. From Liz’s violet eyes to Marilyn’s lips to Bardot’s derriere to Raquel’s rack, here’s a cavalcade of silver-screen icons who continue to leave viewers breathless.

JEAN HARLOW

JEAN HARLOW played wisecracking, unabashedly
sexual women. Howard Hughes discovered the blond
bombshell for 1930’s aerial drama Hell’s Angels. A year
later she was a mobster’s moll opposite James Cagney
in Public Enemy and a socialite in Platinum Blonde. In
1932’s Red Dust, Harlow’s prostitute has a suggestive
bathtub scene with Clark Gable at an Indochina rubber
plantation. In 1933’s Dinner at Eight, Harlow tells matronly Marie Dressler about an author’s claim that
“machinery is going to take the place of every profession.” Dressler retorts: “That’s something you need never worry about.” Harlow’s husband of two months—Paul Bern, an MGM executive twice her age—ostensibly shot himself. Only 26, Harlow succumbed to kidney failure in 1937 and was interred wearing a negligee in a crypt at Glendale, California’s Forest Lawn Memorial
Park.

RITA HAYWORTH

The daughter of a Ziegfeld Girl and a Spanish dancer, RITA HAYWORTH attained stardom after she anglicized herself, going on to costar in 1941’s Strawberry Blonde. Voluptuous Rita specialized in playing fallen women, such as opera’s Carmen and (in 3-D!) Pago Pago prostitute Sadie Thompson. Gilda (1946) was highlighted by her sizzling rendition of “Put the Blame on Mame.” Hayworth costarred with then-husband Orson Welles in
1947’s The Lady From Shanghai. Two years later she eloped with Prince Aly Khan. Stricken with Alzheimer’s, Hayworth died in 1987.

LANA TURNER

According to legend, while frequenting Schwab’s drugstore on L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard, 15-year-old LANA TURNER wore a clinging sweater that accentuated her ample bosom— and a star was born. In 1946’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Turner personified film noir’s femme fatales as an adulteress who schemes with drifter John Garfield to murder her husband. The pinup’s résumé includes 1941’s Honky Tonk and Ziegfeld Girl, 1952’s The Bad and the
Beautiful and The Merry Widow and 1955’s The Sea Chase. Lana was Oscar-nominated for 1957’s gossipy Peyton Place and costarred in 1959’s Imitation of Life. Until her death in 1995, the “Sweater Girl” enjoyed a sensational offscreen life. She married seven times and had one child, a daughter who in her early teens killed Turner’s abusive lover, gangster Johnny
Stompanato.

AVA GARDNER

Possessing an exotic allure, AVA GARDNER appeared in Singapore (1947), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), Mogambo (1953), Bhowani
Junction (1956), The Naked Maja (1958) and 55 Days at Peking
(1963). When Robert Walker kisses a statue of the Greek goddess
of beauty in 1948’s One Touch of Venus, the marble figure
comes alive as Ava. Gardner—who married actor Mickey
Rooney, musician Artie Shaw and crooner/actor Frank Sinatra—died in 1990.