Their majesties: Great movie queens

And the crown goes to…
Silent film presence Lucille La Verne isn’t a name most people remember today, but she was the voice of the most fearsome queen in a movie that almost everyone has seen, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” In fact, if you were going to pass out awards for this sort of thing, she’d win the one for the sheer staggering number of small children she made cry for the first time in a movie theater. And those small children grew up to bring their own small children to see the movie, and so on and so on, fresh traumas all around. This is how parents haze their toddlers.

A different sort of hazing can be had at the hands of the late great Edith Massey in John Waters’ 1977 “Desperate Living.” The loveable and toothless Massey played Queen Carlotta, ruler of an insane cardboard kingdom called Mortville, built on a garbage dump.

Massey leaves an indelible mark on the screen as she awkwardly bellows lines like, “Every word I utter shall be considered a royal proclamation!” And, after she declares Backwards Day in the land, she yells, “Look at those dummies! Hey, moron! You got your clothes on backwards! Hi, stupid! Hi, ugly!”

Of all the women listed here, it’s Massey who delivers the great quotes to share around the office. She also may be the first person in film history to use the expression “Hollywood loaf” to refer to male genitalia. In other words, if there were going to be a queen of the queens, Massey would take the prize. By force, if necessary. Sorry, Garbo.

Dave White is the film critic for Movies.com and the author of “Exile in Guyville.” Find him at www.imdavewhite.com.

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