Joan Crawford

"Johnny Guitar" (1954) features Joan Crawford as Vienna, another tough bar girl turned business visionary. Having built a saloon in the middle of nowhere, this formidable woman waits for the railroad to come by her front door. Crawford uses her hard, hard voice like a hammer ... more— on the charming outlaw who wants a cut, the townspeople who can't abide her uppitiness, and the prodigal Johnny Guitar, who once loved and left her.

Vienna's opposite number is twitchy Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), a hysterical townswoman who dresses in preacherly black and almost literally burns with sexual jealousy of the arrogant saloonkeeper. Don't look for anything like a catfight in this radical Western: These women face each other down with .45s.

McCambridge in "Johnny Guitar" (courtesy Everett Collection)