Profiles in Femme Courage

The Woman Up crew has been discussing Meryl Streep bravely flaunting her age in her new film "It's Complicated."

Prior to that, we took note of a more visceral kind of courage put forward in the film "Precious," covered by my Woman Up colleagues Michelle, Mia and Mary.

As a diehard wait-till-HBO-or-Netflix type, I have seen neither "It's Complicated" nor "Precious." But all this talk got me thinking about women and heroism. I constructed my own list of profiles in feminine courage. In reverse order of the date in which they premiered:

Sophie Scholl

Julia Jentsch in "Sophie Scholl -- The Final Days" (2005) gives a brilliant performance in a brilliant film.

The name Sophie Scholl is familiar to every German schoolchild, but hardly recognized in America. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, scholars finally had access to Third Reich interrogation records. Scholl, a Christian, was not personally at risk in Nazi Germany, but at the tender age of 21, she joined her brother and his friends in the German resistance group known as The White Rose. Sophie was arrested in 1943 and guillotined five days later.

Today "Sophie Scholl -- The Final Days" seems more relevant than ever, given the daily footage of Iranians risking their lives to protest a brutal regime.


Ruby Lee Gissing

Ashley Judd in her breakthrough role in the independent film "Ruby in Paradise" (1993). Almost no one I know has seen this little gem made by writer-director Victor Nunez. The film won awards and made the top-10 lists of critics, but it remains an obscurity.

In the film, Ruby manages to escape Tennessee "without getting pregnant or beat up," but her timing couldn't be worse. She arrives in Panama City, Fla., at the start of the off-season, when jobs are scarce. Even so, Ruby finds a way to stand on her own two feet, and later turns down a new boyfriend's offer to take care of her. Judd once said the role of Ruby was all she ever dreamed of as an actress.

Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan

Double award to Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke for "The Miracle Worker" (1962). It's sad, sad, sad that today we think of "The Graduate," "Valley of the Dolls" and "The Patty Duke Show" when we hear the names of the actors who portrayed the blind, deaf Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan in this remarkable film. The contest between ignorance and enlightenment, between apathy and devotion is one for the ages.


Sister Luke

Audrey Hepburn as Sister Luke in "The Nun's Story" (1959), based on the life of a woman who spent 17 years as a Belgian nun. Hepburn is charming in "Roman Holiday." She's simultaneously elegant and waifish in "Breakfast at Tiffany's." However, once you've seen her struggle with moral questions that have engaged people since the beginning of time, "The Nun's Story" will be the film that comes to mind when you hear the name Audrey Hepburn.

For Sister Luke, it took courage to leave behind the path she'd walked for half her life, and courage to embrace the world as it is rather than how she wished it was.


Amy Kane and Helen Ramirez

Double award to Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for "High Noon" (1952). One could argue that Amy and Helen are two halves of the same woman. Amy must decide if her Quaker faith is more important than the life of her new husband, a sheriff played by Gary Cooper. Deserted by his deputies and the townspeople he protects, the sheriff stands alone against four gunman set on revenge.

Katy Jurado plays Helen, the sheriff's former lover. It is she who chides Amy into fighting for the man she loves.

"I don't understand you," Helen says. "If Kane was my man, I'd never leave him like this. I'd get a gun. I'd fight."

"Why don't you?" Amy asks.

"He is not my man," Helen replies, with a touch of passion and pride. "He's yours."

Jurado, born in Guadalajara, was the first Mexican actress to be nominated for an Academy Award. I love Grace Kelly, but when it comes to the women in this film, it's Jurado who runs away with every scene she's in.


Mammy

So sue me! Hattie McDaniel in "Gone With the Wind" (1939). Mammy was the head, heart, soul and conscience in this film. She talked back to the people who allegedly owned her, and by movie's end, the audience had no doubt who was doing the owning in that family. McDaniel turned in a performance a hundred times better than Vivien Leigh's. By comparison, even Clark Gable was phoning it in. Not so Ms. McDaniel, who won the first Oscar awarded to an African American.

Unfortunately, none of the black actors in "Gone With the Wind" were allowed to attend the movie premiere in segregated Atlanta. And to add insult to injury, McDaniel's Academy Award acceptance speech was written by the studio. Still, the tears in her eyes and emotion in her voice that night spoke for itself.

Little-known fact: McDaniel could sing too. In 1943, Time magazine threw a spotlight on McDaniel, "whose bubbling, blaring good humor more than redeems the roaring bad taste of a Harlem number" in the forgotten film "Thank Your Lucky Stars." Check your political correctness at the door and allow yourself to enjoy one of the most talented performers ever to grace our screens -- the glorious Hattie McDaniel singing Schwartz & Loesser's "Ice Cold Katie."

Uppity women indeed.