Illustration by A.J. Garces

Issue: Winter 2005

The Last Word

Timeless Beauty “Thy eternal summer shall not fade,” Shakespeare promised in Sonnet 18 – and he delivered. Though the identities of his “two loves ... of comfort and despair” be lost, the “man right fair” and “woman colored ill” of Sonnet 144 have defied death: their beauty, the stuff of legend. See if you can identify these other immortal incomparables of fact and fancy.

1. Google her name and you get 2.5 million hits and 42,000 images. Even in posterity, this paragon of peroxide pulchritude makes headlines. She got front-page attention on the 43rd anniversary of her “probable suicide” by drug overdose. New transcripts of “secret tapes,” the Los Angeles Times reported in August, reveal a calm and hopeful state of mind just days before her naked body was found facedown in her Brentwood home.

2. In the Regency period, this dapper captain of the 10th Hussars was deemed Britain’s oracle of exquisite dress and etiquette. Though he died a pauper in an insane asylum, his nickname lives on, a synonym for masculine chic. It turns up in the handle of a 1960s Beatles-imitation band and the lyrics of songwriters Stephen Sondheim and Billy Joel.

3. Living proof that brains and beauty aren’t mutually exclusive, this bright brunette didn’t stop at entertaining Allied troops on the silver screen. She patented a torpedo guidance system, which later became a key ingredient in wireless communication. For her efforts, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, in 1997, one of the highest honors for pioneers in the world of electronics.

4. Great beauty can be a liability in the realm of Once Upon a Time. The first charmer to top the “fairest one of all” chart had to contend with her wicked stepmother’s homicidal rage. Another fairest damsel, depicted in both film and satirical novel, fled her would-be assassins through a fire swamp inhabited by enormous man-eating rats.

5. Hitchcock’s most famous “cool blonde” was so flawlessly lovely that a real-life prince wooed her for his bride. They lived happily ever after in a fairy-tale principality by the sea.

6. Born in the same year that motion picture was invented, this Hollywood immortal made women swoon the world over. The untimely death of the “Great Lover” in 1926 is said to have prompted a flurry of fan suicides. Riots erupted as 100,000 mourners packed New York to view his coffin.

7. Disenchanted with women, a sculptor hews from stone the absolute feminine ideal, only to become utterly besotted with his creation. In a late-Victorian spin on Ovid’s fable, the beloved object takes the form of a “deliciously low” flower girl.

8. On a scale of one to 10, she’s perfection.

9. The most beautiful woman in the world, she was the judge’s bribe offered up by Aphrodite in a bid to win the golden apple of Discord. Millennia later, a Renaissance poet ascribed to her kiss the power to grant immortality.

10. An extraordinarily handsome youth barters his soul for eternal beauty in this Victorian parable on the corrosive nature of vanity. As time passes, a hidden portrait keeps grotesque record of the hero’s escalating moral depravity while his face remains incorruptibly pure.

11. It was for talent as much as beauty that le monde entier called her “The Divine _____.” A sumptuous, flamboyant style set this mother of all divas apart from other thespians. In 1899, she famously donned doublet and hose in the title role of Hamlet, a performance she reprised in a pioneering motion picture.

12. This hero of Greek mythology – whom Shakespeare styled “thrice fairer” than Aphrodite – was probably a Syrian import. The Semitic origins of his name (a cognate of the Hebrew “lord”) is manifest in the ancient river near Byblos that bore his name. Here, Phoenician women venerated his cult of death-rebirth.

Contest Rules

1. Give the names of the immortal incomparables described in the vignettes. Clues 4 and 7 call for two answers each.

2. Up to five $30 gift certificates from Borders Books and Music will be awarded to the “beauty” contestants who correctly complete the puzzle. If more than five perfect entries are received, winners will be drawn by lot.

3. Send your answers by no later than December 15 to:

The Last Word
c/o USC Trojan Family Magazine
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-7790

Submissions by fax (213-821-1100) and e-mail <magazines@usc.edu> are welcome.