Actors less attractive than their real-life subjects

Dr. Ehrlich was better looking than Edward G. Robinson.

I've never seen a picture of Dr. Ehrlich, but I figure it's safe to say.

anyone who played this guy onscreen

Just give those whiskers a proper trim, and it's no contest.

Emil Jannings played Peter the Great. I think Peter was empirically more handsome . 
 

Carroll Baker was beautiful but Jean Harlow was luminous

There was nothing like those Kodachrome transparencies for producing a photographic vividness I call "hyper-realism" bringing, in this case, 1939 back to life as though it was five minutes ago.   

That portrait was made during a day-long shoot at the Gable/Lombard ranch in Encino shortly after their marriage, depicting Gable baling hay or currying horses, Lombard gathering flowers and the couple sitting casually on split-rail fences or posing before their brick-and-clapboard house in exhibitions of rustic domesticity. Gable remained in that home for the nearly nineteen years following Lombard's death until his own and, as a child in the same neighborhood (the poorer section, you understand), I was more than once alerted by Mom on the way to or from the local supermarket or barber shop with, "There's Clark Gable" as he trundled along Ventura Blvd in his Jeep and khaki shorts. 

I now return you to your regularly-scheduled thread.*


*And no indeed, Jim Brolin and Jill Clayburgh were no Gable and Lombard.     
 

Worse yet, he had a habit of playing dentist, pulling the teeth of obstreperous boyars