Gene Tierney
When Paramount Pictures fumbled Gene Tierney's proposed film debut in its aborted adaptation of "National Velvet," 20th Century Fox saw promise in the gimlet-eyed beauty with the regal cheekbones and curiously beguiling overbite. Tierney emerged as a leading lady of equal beauty and depth. Gliding seamlessly from smoldering sensuality in Preminger's "Laura" (1944), to sang froid psychopathy in John M. Stahl's "Leave Her to Heaven" (1945), to a maturity and grace far beyond her years in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1947), Tierney attained a strata of celebrity that put her on par with fellow sirens Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner.