And you thought the people at Lucasfilm thought up Princess Leia’s double-bun hairdo. Nope. We’ll admit they tightened it up a bit, but the earliest version of the style we’ve ever seen is in the above test shots with Peggy Cummins made for an unidentified movie. We thought we’d be able to identify the film because there are other shots from the session, and in some the slate being held in front of her bears a character name—Betty Cream.
But a scan on the interchannels shows no character by that name ever played by her. Possibly, it was a character whose name changed or whose part was cut, but here’s what we think really happened. The only character in Hollywood history named Betty Cream was played by Helen Walker in 1946’s Cluny Brown. That year was just before Cummins began scoring featured roles, so it’s possible she did the hair/make-up sessions, but was axed. It happens, for various reasons.
Cummins and Walker had similar careers. They started near the same time, and had nearly the same number of roles, but while Walker did appear in a few notable crime movies such as Nightmare Alley and Call Northside 777, it was Cummins who made an indelible mark on crime cinema by playing the lead in Gun Crazy. It’s a movie that remains much discussed today due to its depiction of a character obsessed with firearms, and what it implied about the U.S. You can read a little more about it here.
