By Kathleen Murphy
Special to MSN Movies

What's cool? What's hip? The terms originated in the world of jazz, back in the '40s, and were code for a specific kind of charisma, though Hip as practiced was by definition ineffable. The hipster might be a zoot-suiter or a trench-coated P.I., musician or beat poet, macho player or self-effacing professional, but he was an outlaw wherever he hung out. Solitary, alienated, armored up in self-protective irony and control, every move a statement of idiosyncratic identity, the cool cat prowled behind the scenes, underground, in the dark -- shunning the sunny conformity demanded by square society. Such sang-froid defended against 20th century horrors -- lynchings, Depression, Holocaust, atomic bombs -- and the French Existentialists incorporated cool as a way to cope with despair. In "The White Negro," Norman Mailer wrote that "Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle, and so it's appeal is still beyond the civilized man."

But times change, and the concept of cool has lost its high-camp resonance. Empty poses replace hard-core attitude and style, and the hipster's seen-the-worst-and-still-standing grin has devolved into unearned smirk and snark. Cool signifies trendy, satisfying, OK, no sweat, outstanding, pretty much anything you want it to mean. So, in anticipation of "Ocean's Thirteen," Steven Soderbergh's third convocation of ultra-cool cats, let's hang with some of cinema's legitimate Kings of Cool, past and present.

MSNBC: Meet the "Ocean's Thirteen" crew

Robert Mitchum
A big man as graceful on his feet as a dancer, Mitchum had the most lazily insolent gaze in the movies. Eyelids at half-mast, sensual lips curled in perpetual amusement at humankind's depravity, he looked as though he might metamorphose at any moment into a lion with a serious appetite. Nothing really penetrates that hipster armor: Even when he's deep in amour fou with femme fatale Jane Greer in the noir classic, "Out of the Past," there's some part of him that watches, waiting for the bottom to drop out, the dark to pour in. "You believe me about the money, don't you, Jeff?" the lady-thief purrs. As he leans into her red, red mouth, Mitchum's nasal drawl lays it on the line: "Baby, I don't care." When Dick Cavett captured him for a long TV interview in 1971, the man who was born to wear a trench coat and a fedora sipped Scotch, chain-smoked and never lost that monumental cool.

Humphrey Bogart
Bogart was such a master of laid-back cool that he blew you out of your seat when he skinned back his teeth and exploded into berserker violence -- and he was never more chilled-out than he was in movies by Howard Hawks. In "To Have and Have Not," Hawks paired him with 19-year-old Lauren Bacall, who projected pure, insolent sensuality -- whether lounging in a doorway showing Bogart how to whistle, or shimmying over to the bar in a midriff-baring gown. You can see the two falling in love (for real) as Bogart plays audience, enjoying Bacall's cool moves. For Hawks, high style constituted morality in a very fallen world -- acting good is being good, an existentialist's life insurance policy. Forget the plot in "The Big Sleep"; just enjoy this noir as a series of juicy scenes in which Bogart separates the hip from the square.

Steve McQueen
McQueen was "King of Cool" from the moment he showed up on late '50s TV screens in "Wanted: Dead or Alive." Hefting a sawed-off shotgun, his bounty hunter anti-hero won instant membership in the James Dean-Dennis Hopper-Montgomery Clift-Marlon Brando fraternity of alienated cool. Never a pretty boy, what he had were reserves of authentically macho style, laser-blue eyes, a killer smile and a wicked way with women. The Boot Hill funeral sequence early in "The Magnificent Seven" serves up McQueen and Yul Brynner as the coolest cats in the West. As townsfolk savor their performance, the pair drive a hearse up to the cemetery where a bunch of bigots stand guard -- they resent an Indian being buried there. A cheroot jauntily clenched between his teeth, Brynner calmly chats with ultra-professional McQueen while he methodically shotguns ambushers as they go. Afoot, the two are pure testosterone, ambling loose-limbed, pelvis forward, all the motion coming from the hips up -- it's ghetto style without the flamboyance, understated phallic arrogance. In "The Getaway," McQueen's Doc McCoy, locked up in a dehumanizing prison, moves like an ambulatory knot, a caged animal battling madness. But McQueen shows that explosive tension through electric stillness and precarious self-possession. "Bullitt" was his favorite role, but check out "The Great Escape" for quintessential McQueen swagger and style.

Next: More Kings of Cool