MSNBC newswoman Tamron Hall

Tamron Hall is one of the best reasons to watch MSNBC.

The Texas-born Hall is a daytime anchor on that cable news channel, and she currently co-anchors "The Big Picture" in the 3 PM Eastern hour with David Shuster. Their witty, playful banter is fun to listen to.

Prior to joining MSNBC, Tamron Hall was a general assignment reporter at KTVT-TV in Dallas, and she was a reporter and morning anchor at WFLD-TV in Chicago for ten years (1997 to 2007).

Actress Isla Fisher

Isla Fisher is a young and up-and-coming actress from Australia, born to Scottish parents and currently engaged to the outrageous comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

She first gained fame in Australia as Shannon Reed on the television serial "Home and Away" in the nineties She has appeared in many films in the past decade, including 2004's I ♥ Huckabees and 2005's Wedding Crashers.

Not all of her films have been favorably received. In 2009 she starred in the comedy Confessions of a Shopaholic as Rebecca Bloomwood, a young woman who works as a financial journalist to support her addiction to shopping. It was released just as the world was going through a recession that resulted from overspending and overconsumption, and suddenly being broke was no laughing matter.

Actress/singer Deanna Durbin

Last week, I paid tribute to Lauren Bacall, and this week I'm tipping my hat to another living legend of the 1940s.

Deanna Durbin starred in numerous Hollywood muscials of the forties, and she was known for her versatile voice as well as her glamourous looks. Her films included Can't Help Singing, her only Technicolor film, but she also did more serious fare like the film noir Chrismtas Holiday and the mystery movie Lady On a Train. Dissatisfied with the Hollywood starmaking machinery, the Canadian-born Durbin retired from movies in 1948 and moved to a farm in France. She's avoided the limelight ever since.

Model/author Waris Dirie

Waris Dirie was born and raised in Somalia, and became a model when she was discovered while living in England.

She had had a brutal childhood in Somalia, where she was brutally abused and forced into an arranged marriage to an older man. She managed to escape, which was how she made it to London and changed her life. She has become a spokeswoman for women's rights. Her autobiographical novel "Desert Flower," one of four books she's written, is being made into a movie.

TV newswoman Ann Curry

Ann Curry has been a regular presence at NBC News since 1990, when she became the network's Chicago correspondent. Her career took off almost immediately after that.

The multiethnic Curry (she's half-Japanese, and she's descended from four different European groups and the Cherokee nation through her father) worked as a television reporter in local markets in Oregon and California before moving to the national stage. She anchored "NBC News at Sunrise" from 1991 to 1996, then became a newsreader on "Today" in 1997, where she has remained. She's also anchored the news magazine show "Dateline NBC" since 2005, and she's been a reporter on several international stories.

Lauren Bacall

The one and only. Again, I'm using that phrase sparingly. :-)

Lauren Bacall is both one of the most beautiful and most enduring actresses in the history of American cinema. Her movie credits include some of the greatest movies of all time: To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Key Largo (all co-starring her first husband, Humphrey Bogart), How To Marry a Millionaire, Written On the Wind, Murder On the Orient Express, and The Shootist (John Wayne's last movie).

She also starred in two successful Broadway musicals, Applause (1970) and Woman Of the Year (1981). She won a Golden Globe award and was nominated for an Oscar for her role in 1996's The Mirror Has Two Faces, outshining Barbra Streisand in her own star vehicle. Why not? At 72, Ms. Bacall was still beautiful.

And in her eighties, she still looks great. :-)

The greatest picture even taken of Lauren Bacall was of a seductive pose she struck while visiting Washington, D.C. in February 1945, draped over an upright piano . . . played by then-Vice President Harry Truman.

And you thought the picture of Rosemary McGrotha as President was a hoot! :-D

Actress Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston gained notoriety as Rachel Green in the hit NBC-TV sitcom "Friends," which lasted ten years.

With her bubbly personality and blonde good looks, Aniston was a natural prospect for a movie career. (She had been in a horror film before "Friends," a movie she'd likely prefer to forget.) She made the transition to film gradually, with movies of the 1990s like Picture Perfect and The Object of My Affection, before winning rave notices for The Good Girl. More recently ,she has starred in the hits Marley and Me and He's Just Not That Into You.

As far as I'm concerned, her role as the harried waitress Joanna in Office Space will always be one of her greatest roles. :-)