Being a heterosexual male, it's hard to say what effect he had on the female population, although he wasn't in the movies for the length of time he was because of any great acting talent. My mother met him briefly during World War II. When I asked her, as delicately as possible, whether he had had any stimulating sort of "effect" on her, my mother, a fan of Clark Gable and Errol Flynn (to whom she wrote a fan letter as a child), curled her upper lip in distaste. I've only ever seen him in "Kiss of Death", a classic film noir from the late 40's. He performs effectively enough, although his role is one of those rare ones where it's actually hard to tell whether he has any genuine acting talent or not (sort of like Sylvester Stallone in the first Rocky movie). As classic as that movie is, though, it belongs not to Mature but to Richard Widmark, who plays the giggling, psychotic gangster Tommy Udo (in one unforgettable scene, he ties a crippled woman to her wheelchair and pushes her down a flight of stairs, laughing maniacally all the while), who inspired an adolescent Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo in Brooklyn to emulate him.

This wretched hack did about 348 biblical sword and loincloth movies, each of which was worse than the last.

I can't speak for his appeal to women, but I like Groucho Marx's comment about him:

"I never see any movie where the man's tits are bigger than the woman's"

I could never understand his appeal or success.  Even as a kid watching him in old movies I remember thinking this guy can't act, has a face like 40 miles of bad road and was someone I would easily suspect as a carnival escapee.  He must really have something on somebody. 

An oily-looking ginzo type who was noted as being the biggest p*ssy in Hollywood.  Refused to do any stunts whatsoever, and even used a stand-in for something as challenging as walking up a flight of stairs.  Also a noted hypochondriac, which is hardly a hunklike condition.  And, he was more interested in golf than anything else, which indicates he was a first-class snoid.  Virtually none of those guys of the WWII era had any cubes.

I think he's hot...dunno about my fellow females, though.