Lil' Blonde Darling: Honey West!

Blonde Beauty Icon Honey West

Girls and guns. It's such a glamorous combo! One of my favorite girls packing heat is Honey West, created by the authors Gloria and Forrest E. "Skip" Fickling under the pseudonym "G.G. Fickling" in 1957. Noted for being one of the first female "private eyes" in popular fiction, this glam super sleuth enticed readers with her titillating, sexed up adventures of danger and espionage. In 1965 ABC created a live action Honey West TV series starring Anne Francis, designed as the American answer to Emma Peel in the popular British spy series The Avengers. The series was produced by TV legend Aaron Spelling, who would later reuse the concept of glamorous female private detectives on his hit show Charlie's Angels. On this groundbreaking show, Honey West (with her pet ocelot "Bruce" in tow) solved crimes every week with her partner Sam Bolt, who was usually confined to their high-tech surveillance van, talking to Honey via a radio hidden in her lipstick case. She was usually always seen clad in her signature wardrobe staple of animal prints, unless she was sneaking around at night in a skintight black catsuit. Of course, going undercover sometimes required Honey to don a bikini or other revealing costume! You know....to blend in. A black belt in judo and karate, Honey also used a bevy of glam spy gadgets; an exploding compact, a garter-belt gas mask, and tear-gas earrings to name a few. In an era when roles for actresses were confined to housewives and girlfriends, Honey West was one of the first TV series in the U.S. with a female star in an action-adventure role traditionally reserved for a male actor. Unfortunately, the series was canceled after only one season, in part by the American debut of The Avengers. Without this series, we wouldn't have seen female driven spy shows like The Bionic Woman, La Femme Nikita or ALIAS. The character made a brief return to print the early 1970's, was the basis for an un-produced 2003 remake that would have stared Reese Witherspoon, and is currently featured in her own comic book series!

Noir glaMOUR!

Kiss me deadly

FREEZE!

My pussy!

Chillin' in the van!

Just a casual undercover look.

All private eyes need a good sportscar

Her man Friday!

 Catsuit!

Judo Chop!

 Another inconspicuous undercover look.

All detectives should wear an evening gown.

Armed and dangerous!

Fight! Fight! Fight!

The return!

A private eye(full) 

Don't look now!

Danger around every corner.....or curve!

Lil' Blonde Darling: Venus!

Blonde Beauty Icon Venus

Oh, I love comic book heroine's from the Golden Age of Comics (late 1930's to late 1940's). They all just had so much glaMOUR! One of most glamorous characters was Venus, first published in 1948 by what would become Marvel Comics. The series was based on the goddess of love and beauty Venus (Aphrodite) from Greek and Roman mythology, who dwelled in a castle at Mount Lustre on the planet Venus. Bored by her life in outer space with her handmaidens, she came to Earth to walk amongst humanity, minus most of her godly powers. Shortly after descending to Earth, Venus assumed the identity of Vicki Starr, and took a job as a journalist and editor at Beauty Magazine in New York City. Her editor at the magazine, Whitney Hammond, didn't believe her claim to be the goddess Venus, but he believed it would be good publicity for his magazine. To prove her worth as an editor to Hammond, Venus recruited ten of her handmaidens (including Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and Salome) to come to Earth as part of a Beauty Magazine project focusing on beautiful women, thus beating the line-up in their rival publication Lovely Lady Magazine. Venus soon began a romance with her boss, which angered his fiery secretary Della Mason, who was secretly in love with him as well. This of course led to lot's of drama, backstabbing and catfights at the office! Through the course of the series, several mythological figures appeared, including Hercules and Zeus and various other Olympians, Satan, and Norse gods Thor and Loki. Venus began as a light-hearted humor/fantasy series, but as the series continued, its focus shifted towards darker fantasy and horror themes. It was canceled in 1952 after 19 issues and faded into obscurity. Luckily, glaMOUR never dies!

Goddess on the mountain top ....burning like a silver flame 

The summit of beauty and love...and Venus was her name

I'm your Venus, I'm your fire, at your desire

The most glamorous beauty editor

 She's got it! Oooh baby, she's GOT IT!

 GODDESS!

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!

Lil' Blonde Darling: Lindsay Wagner as The Bionic Woman!

Blonde Beauty Icon The Bionic Woman

1970's TV was a good decade for female action heros....Lindsay Wagner as The Bionic Woman was definitely the most respected. While other popular shows like Charlie's Angels and Wonder Woman were considered seXXXed up "Jiggle TV",  Lindsay Wagner actually won an Emmy for Best Actress for her work on the show. Spun off from the popular Six Million Dollar Man series in 1976, the show featured Jaime Sommers, a former tennis pro, school teacher and childhood sweetheart of Col. Steve Austin (The Bionic Man). When she's nearly killed in a skydiving accident, Steve convinces his boss at the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) to replace her damaged body parts with Bionic implants and recruit her as an operative. Jaime is rebuilt with two Bionic legs, capable of propelling her at speeds exceeding 60 mph, her right arm is replaced by a lifelike prosthetic capable of bending steel or throwing objects great distances, and the inner mechanism of her right ear is replaced by a Bionic device that gives her the ability to hear a mile away. Both shows used an unacceptable and excessive amount of slow-motion, for heightened dramatic effect of the action sequences. It looks totally hokey now....but it was VERY high tech at the time! Jaime fought a plethora of villans; terrorists, aliens, Bigfoot, evil twins, sentient computers, men in turtlenecks. Her main enemy on the series were the Fembots, powerful female androids who she fought on several occasions. The Fembots were later lampooned in the Austin Powers film series...to much comedic effect. The show lasted 3 seasons before it was canceled in 1978. Who wants to put on a track suit and run in slow-mo with me?

 Bling

D-I-S-C-O

Cyborg

'
They don't make opening credits like they used to.

Big pimpin'

Color stories!

Inappropriate beach attire


Attack Sasquatch!

wind

 earthy

 Yes, she had a Bionic dog!


The Bionic Woman vs. The Fembots! Ok, so this not in English...but it's an action scene....the dialogue is unimportant!

Macrame!

Snakeskin!

Polyester!


Fembot Fights!

There was a even a Bionic Woman comic book series...but it only lasted 6 issues.

Run Jaime! Run!

BFFs

Dollfriends!

In 2007, NBC produced a re-imagined Bionic Woman series, but it came off as a poor mans ALIAS and was canceled after only 8 episodes. Never send a brunette to do a blondes job! ;)