The Cannes Film Festival is currently underway in its 69th year, and we’re already luxuriating in the glamour it offers. And yet, when we look back upon its nascent days—like say, 1956, a mere decade after it began—we all once again must admit that today’s vampish models and slinky ingenues got nothing on the queens who ruled the golden era of the silver screen.
Above, Ursula Andress is swarmed by fans, press, and paparazzi in 1960, a sort of gleaming snowflake among dark suited, scowling men.
In 1958, it’s Jayne Mansfield with her husband, Mickey Hartigay. Note that she is wearing polka dotted lucite mules and twin cherry diamond earrings?!