If the eyes are truly the windows into the soul, the souls of these actors may be the most carnal and suggestive Hollywood has ever had the pleasure of knowing.
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RUDOLPH VALENTINO
If looks could kill, Valentino absolutely slayed. A scorching romantic leading man of the '20s, the cinema's first--and greatest--Latin lover was a roaring fireball of id. His presence on the marquee caused box-office stampedes whether he was stealing into the heroine's tent with eyes burning in The Sheik or dancing an erotic tango with pouting lips in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His unexpected death at age 31 sparked suicides. His funeral caused pandemonium.
ROBERT MITCHUM
One of Hollywood's truly great bad boys, Mitchum had a lazily orgasmic look in his hooded eyes that spelled trouble. His insinuating swagger, those Novocained lips and that rough-trade machismo only added to the appeal. He was superb (and easy to underestimate) from the early '40s straight through the '90s, and under that beefcake image were intelligence, humor and melancholy that only augmented his sexual voltage.
PAUL NEWMAN
Newman's baby blues have blowtorched the screen for nearly 50 years now. At his peak, playing insolent, irreverent heels, Newman--who early in his career was hailed as another Brando or Dean--fast set himself apart from comparisons with two of the greatest male actors and sex symbols of his generation. His golden-boy looks, wiry boxer's build, coiled tiger's walk and eyes that begged for trouble, not forgiveness, helped make him an Oscar favorite, international star and erotic lightning rod in such classics as Somebody Up There Likes Me, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. Still gracing films in his late 70s, Newman deserves at least one more great role that will remind us what a powerhouse he is, and has always been.
MARLON BRANDO
Brando's gaze--as unabashedly carnal as it is mockingly ironic--was just one of the arrows in his quiver when he stormed Broadway in the late '40s as a twentysomething hunk with erotic mojo equal to his unearthly acting gifts. His feral talent jolted movie audiences in such '50s classics as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Wild One and On the Waterfront. But what cemented his icon status were the tight T-shirts and jeans, mumbling, naturalistic delivery, wounded animal magnetism, erratic behavior, ineffable mystery--and, yes, the sexual challenge in that stare. Though he packed a wallop in The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris in the '70s, since then, well--let's just say that perhaps no one else in the annals of Hollywood tossed away so much genius or beauty.
CHARLES BOYER
Throughout the '30s and '40s, Boyer was the screen's consummate Continental seducer, typically wreathed in a haze of cigarette smoke, exuding steamy exoticism with his insolent stare, pouting lower lip and thick Gallic inflections. Armed with strong acting talent to back up that bracing sexual energy, the flawless Frenchman played characters who believably romanced and held strong against such erotic luminaries as Ingrid Bergman, Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall and Hedy Lamarr. Indeed, his amorous reputation was so entrenched in the cultural consciousness that he was the inspiration for Pepe Le Pew, the sexually predatory skunk in the Looney Tunes cartoons.
GARY COOPER
Big, strapping, straight-up heroic and as androgynously beautiful as Marlene Dietrich, Cooper, a genuine star for four decades, radiated erotic intent from eyes that made mincemeat out of even the most jaded ticket-buyers. Movie heroines from Dietrich and Claudette Colbert to Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn succumbed to that unabashedly erotic stare--as impish as it was commanding.
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