Laura Holt: Rockin' A Fedora Better Than Any Hipster

[Bastet]

Laura Holt was my first TV idol.  There were women on television I enjoyed watching, but not many I aspired to be.  And then this wonderfully accessible hero came along, not a fantasy, but someone I could truly emulate.

Laura was smart, resourceful, ethical, independent, athletic, beautiful (cute, sexy, elegant and down-to-earth all in one), professional and relatably flawed.  I wanted to be her so bad.  Yes, partly because I wanted to be able to make out with Remington Steele.  But mostly because of how cool - yet real - she was all on her own.

I've seen Stephanie Zimbalist on stage numerous times over the years, and she's just wonderful.  But never moreso than as Laura Holt: this was one of those times where actor and role just clicked in the perfect way.  And I know she worked hard to keep Laura from becoming the rigid sidekick to Mr. Steele and his zany friends and escapades.  We're all lucky to have had in Michael Gleason someone who understands that a female character written almost exclusively by men is problematic and thus it behooves those writing the character to listen to the woman playing her, but it wouldn't have mattered had SZ not cared enough about Laura to raise the issues in the first place.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Bastet

[GHScorpiosRule]

Mine too. I loved Laura. She was my hero. And as much as Remington was my first pre-teen crush, and he made my little heart pitter patter, he pissed me off whenever he took credit from Laura.

Stephanie was just awesome. How she managed to run in those heels...the disguises she came up with...how she figured out who the bad guy was...and there was just something about how Stephanie played Laura, that made Laura this sophisticated person, yet...relatable.

[BkWurm1]

Something that stood out to me about Laura - she drove most of the time.  In my household if my dad was going with us, my dad was ALWAYS doing the driving.   Even on long trips when my parents went back and forth, my mom might nap while my dad drove but never the other way around.  On TV it was the same.  I swear its still the same.

So I was a little bit fascinated by the dynamic on Remington Steele.  Except during the pilot, who drove wasn't a big deal but yeah, most often it was Laura doing the driving (ok, most, most often it was Fred, but that's another thread) 

[Bastet]

I can't say I ever noticed Laura doing the bulk of the driving (perhaps because the driving duties in my family were shared far more equally than in yours?), but I suppose the reason for that would be two-fold: a bit of a control thing, but mostly that having lived nearly all her life in Los Angeles she knows her way around better.

[BkWurm1]

Oh it made lots of sense for Laura to be driving, sure.  If you look at even modern day shows. who drives often is telling of the power dynamic at least between characters on shows were there is a clear "couple"  (On Bones I'm pretty sure the only time the female lead had driven was for the benefit of a Toyota product placement)  

I liked that Laura driving was never an issue. When the Auburn was introduced, it was more of a split -  each would drive their own cars -  but more than anything it was not a fight for control, that's just what I noted and liked.

But then I noted and liked just about everything about this show. 

[wolfsong1965]

Laura did definitely rock the Fedora before Fedoras were cool. I love the scene in Steele Threads where Laura flicks the brim of her hat to signal Remington.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Having rewatched this show again, I unashamedly admit how much Laura is still my hero and that this show struck GOLD when they created this character and got Stephanie Zimbalist to play her. I've yet to see another heroine like her in the past decades, and if there have been some, then clearly Laura overshadows them because I don't remember them.

 

There is of course the way she rocked the fedoras and hats she wore; but she was smart, savvy, yet had flaws and vulnerability too. Watching the interviews, I wish I had known where to send her letters to tell Stephanie how much of a role model she was for me.

 

There was her turning into season one Remington Steele, in the fourth season's "Steele in the Spotlight" I think it was, where Rebecca Holden's "reporter" wanted to find out what happened to Billie Young. Wanting the spotlight at the expense of keeping Billie's location secret and inadvertently setting in motion that detective to kill her make-up guy.

 

Yet, I never got mad at Laura* like I did with Remington, even though some of her actions befuddled me.

 

*We won't talk about "season five" Laura, because that wasn't Laura. It was Pod!Laura. Just like it was Pod!Remington.

[GHScorpiosRule]

So, in addition to Laura being AWESOME with all those hats, not to mention her investigative skills, I really loved her disguises.

 

My favorite has to be the stoned hippie plant lady she played in "Premium Steele" and the voice she used to play her. Always cracks me up. And when the receptionist/secretary asks her how to treat the sticky leaves of her Ficus, and then Laura repeats the question and then tells her she'll write down what to do, just makes me laugh.

 

And though I snickered at Remington's disguise as the postman in "Elegy Steele" * (I wonder if that's a typo, since I always thought the correct spelling was eulogy?) with that horrid moustache and the hair! But then there was Laura's wig and those HUGE glasses. I just can't believe that someone as smart as Descoin didn't recognize her.

 

And I mentioned this in Small Talk, but I really love how Stephanie/Laura is able to do so many accents flawlessly.  Be it Laura's regular "speaking" voice, which gives off an Old Hollywood "accent" if that makes sense, to her twang in "Tempered Steele" when she was in that motel, her Irish brogue, etc.  And the woman can sing! 

 

Am I seeing her through rose-tinted glasses? I ask because even when she frustrates me, I can never be mad at her or I find myself hardly criticizing her.  I mean, I can think of  four episodes where Steele has pissed me off and and I'm angry at him: "Sting Steele" where we first meet Daniel and he's lying to Laura about having the flu so he can help Daniel; only to 'fess up when Laura confronts him with his lies; "Blue-blooded Steele", again, lying to Laura about what Daniel's done and hopping off to Merry England; there's the third season opener-we've all talked about that. His actions and lies that led to the "let's be professional only" and then the season ender, when he just leaves her after getting the agency back.  As far as I'm concerned "Bonds of Steele" never happened. Otherwise that would be on the top of my list.

 

But Laura? I can't think of anything. Well, maybe one episode, where she let fame go to her head: "Steele in the Spotlight"-but once she learned about Billie's shooting, came to her senses. See? Can't really be mad at her!

[Bastet]

Elegy and eulogy are two different words, although they both discuss someone who has died; an elegy is a type of poem.

 

The hippie plant lady is also my favorite of Laura's undercover disguises.  But I pretty much love all of them, because I enjoy how she enjoys it - and that she's believable at just about anything.  It's one of the things I liked most about Sabrina on Charlie's Angels, too, so I guess I'm a sucker for it.

 

Laura is one of my favorite characters, and really should be mentioned more in discussion of positive representation of women on television.  For what we saw on screen, but also how she got there -- a big part of the reason Laura is a better-developed character than many of her TV sisters is that Stephanie was very protective of the way she was written AND Michael Gleason was cognizant of the fact having female characters written almost exclusively by men is inherently problematic.  Now, unfortunately, this didn't lead to him hiring more women as writers (although thank heavens the one he did hire was Susan Baskin), but it did lead to him listening to what Stephanie had to say and making changes in response.

 

Laura is a realistic and relatable character, which means she has flaws but is well developed so that we understand why she's doing or saying the thing she shouldn't be doing or saying.  Like you, I rarely get frustrated with her, and when I do it's not for long. 

Edited December 11, 2015 by Bastet

[GHScorpiosRule]

Thanks for that bit of trivia, Bastet.

 

It's gratifying to know that back then, there were writers and directors who were open to listening to actors' input on their characters--specifically female actors.  

[BkWurm1]

It's a small thing but I always get a bit annoyed at her when she won't let Steele eat during their trip to San Francisco.  They spend hours driving around looking for the right house but they can't spare 15 minutes to run through the drive through?