Old love: Stars still sexy after 40

BYLINE: Ben Steelman, Staff Writer -- You've come a long way, baby -- a long way past 40.

Consider the following:

* Sela Ward, 44, plays a divorced mom rediscovering romance in ABC's Once and Again -- when she's not shimmying across TV screens in a slinky black blouse to promote Sprint phone services.

* Rene Russo, 46, sunbathes topless in The Thomas Crown Affair and seduces the thriller's anti-hero (Pierce Brosnan) while tripping the light fantastic in a next-to-nothing black see-through gown.

* At 41, Angela Bassett gets her groove back in an island interlude with Taye Diggs in the 1999 film version of the Terry McMillan novel.

* Former Fort Bragg Army brat Julianne Moore, who's officially just turned 40, tackled steamy erotic scenes in Boogie Nights and The End of the Affair. Now she's about to take Jody Foster's place in Hannibal, the Silence of the Lambs sequel in which FBI agent Clarice Starling becomes the lover of serial killer Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lector.

Obviously love -- or at least sex -- isn't just for the Dawson's Creek generation any more.

An outstanding example of this trend comes in the new thriller What Lies Beneath, with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a 40-something couple whose only daughter has just left for college.

It's a poignant departure, but the script and dialogue make it clear there are consolations: With the house empty, the happy couple can now celebrate their mutual attraction much more vigorously -- and not just in the bedroom any more.

This marks the climax of a considerable transformation in American pop culture.

Of course, guys always benefited from a double standard. Nobody batted an eye when 45-year-old Humphrey Bogart courted 19-year-old Lauren Bacall (on and off screen) in 1944's To Have and Have Not, or when 48-year-old Harrison Ford paired off with Anne Heche, 31, in 1998's Six Days, Seven Nights. (Sexagenarian Sir Sean Connery is, of course, in a class by himself.)

The upcoming Autumn in New York, pairing 51-year-old Richard Gere with 28-year-old Winona Ryder, only continues the trend.

Until recently, though, women much past 30 were considered Beyond All That. When Anne Bancroft played the Older Woman, seducing Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967), she was all of 36 years old -- in other words, the same age that Sandra Bullock is now.

For decades, Hollywood and TV Land tended to see women past 50 in the mode of Margaret Dumont (the longtime comic foil of the Marx Brothers) or Frances Bavier as Sheriff Andy Taylor's Aunt Bee.

Rarely were they seen as desirable, and those women who thought they were -- like Vivien Leigh's Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire or Vivien Leigh as the aging coquette in Ship of Fools -- were depicted as somehow pathetic, even sick. If they wanted a companion, they were forced to pay for one -- as Vivien Leigh picked up a young Warren Beatty in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961).

Deborah Kerr, as the unfulfilled prep-school coach's wife, did seduce young John Kerr in 1956's Tea and Sympathy ("Years from now, when you talk about this -- and you will -- be kind"). Yet that was almost an act of charity, to "save" the poor, slender, artistic boy from turning into a homosexual -- a fate, in those days, still worse than death.

Things started to change, slowly, in the 1970s. Cloris Leachman won an Oscar as another unfulfilled coach's wife who has a discreet affair with Timothy Bottoms in The Last Picture Show (1971). Ruth Gordon's eccentric 80-year-old found romance with 20-year-old Bud Cort in Harold and Maude (1971).

Yet Lauren Hutton was all of 34 when she picked up Richard Gere as the Older Woman in American Gigolo (1979). Why the change? I blame the Baby Boomers.

As the nation's median age rises, the "Summer of Love" generation is not going gently into that good night. And Hollywood, always a good merchandiser, will do its best to sell them flattering, sexy images and role models.

Of course, frontiers remain. The notion of senior citizens enjoying sensuality is still met by a mixture of horror and hilarity. Consider the treatment of Grandma Klump's night of passion with Buddy Love in the current Nutty Professor II.

But by the time the Baby Boom crowd starts collecting Social Security, I expect those stereotypes will turn inside out as well.__(Wilmington, N.C.)Morning Star (August 4, 2000)