I've read that Cooper in turn was influenced by Sir Walter
Scott's IVANHOE, in which the blonde is Rowena and the
brunette is Rebecca. For Scott and Cooper, the dichotomy was
not so much Blonde = good and Brunette = bad, as Blonde =
pure and Brunette = tainted (not tainted with an evil nature
but "tainted" with some forbidden racial or ethnic heritage
that simultaneously suggests a passionate personality but
also precludes a happy romantic liaison with the hero).
Rebecca is a Jewess, which makes any idea of romance and
matrimony with Ivanhoe impossible in 12th Century England.
Cora (in LAST OF THE MOHICANS) had an Afro-Caribbean mother,
while her half-sister Alice had a white mother.
In the Cooper novel, it was blonde Alice who eventually
won and wed the romantic hero, Duncan (not Hawkeye, the
Randolph Scott and Daniel Day-Lewis movies to the contrary),
while dark-haired Cora rejected the overtures of Magua and
perished tragically with Uncas.
Reading between the lines in the novels, it's probably
Rebecca and Cora who would have given the hero a better
bounce in the hay.
The example Mark mentioned, from MY DARLING CLEMENTINE,
seems consistent with the Scott and Cooper dynamic.
Chihuahua, the fiery Mexican saloon girl, is the "right"
match for the brooding, dangerous Doc Holliday (and she's
also the object of lust by John Ireland's bloodthirsty Ringo,
as I recall); they're both pariahs from Tombstone's
"decent" Anglo community. Virginal blonde Clementine is the
"right" match for straight-arrow Wyatt.
I don't recall offhand how blonde vs. brunette plays out in
various noir or hardboiled works. I suspect the dynamic is
more along the lines of blonde = good and brunette = bad.
That doesn't negate the fact that you can trace some Cooper
influence on hardboiled/noir in the lineage of the
"stoic American killer" from Hawkeye to Wyatt Earp to Philip
Marlowe.
Dunno about Walter Scott -- maybe by stretching things
a bit, a line of descent to Allan Guthrie and Scots
Hardboiled?
I've been lurking here for a few weeks. Interesting
exchanges.
Fred Blosser
Ed Lynskey wrote:
> ---
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net
<mailto:DJ-Anonyme%40webtv.net> wrote:
> > Has anyone else paid more attention? Is this
typical?
> >
> >
> IIRC, Cooper did this in LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Cora
was the
> dark-haired sister and Alice the fair-haired. Maybe
he was a
> prelude to what the noir writers did.
>
> I read Brewer's THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN recently but
didn't pick
> up on the hair color code. Intriguing idea,
though.
>
> Ed
>
>
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