Actors Whose Careers Were Not Fully Realized

[Nathan Dodge]

Judy Holliday comes to mind. An Oscar winner for Born Yesterday (1950) but only a handful of movies afterwards. She died of cancer in 1965, age 43.

Who're yours?

 

[Orion]

Mine would be...

Carole Landis. Quite a beauty and a pretty good actress, who never got a real break in the movies. She had a rough personal life and killed herself in 1948 after Rex Harrison -- with whom she was having an affair -- snubbed her. (Some claimed it was murder.)

Dolores Moran. Another absolute stunner. Howard Hawks effectively ruined her career, with some really sordid, nasty fallout at the studio I read about in a biography. However, the movie that nailed her coffin shut in Hollywood, "To Have and Have Not," gave us Lauren Bacall (who Hawks was also quite upset with, since he discovered her and then she fell in love with Bogart.)

Priscilla Lane. You'll remember her as Cary Grant's fiancee/wife in "Arsenic and Old Lace," but her career never really took off. She was funny, pretty, and could sing too.

 

[dhermann1]

Robert Newton. He was the DEFINITIVE Long John Silver, but he was a lot of other interesting characters as well. The bottle ruined him, as it did so many.

 

[KY Gentleman]

Laird Cregar. His portrayal in "The Lodger" was very good, also in "Hangover Square". He died after weight loss surgery but had a promising career ahead of him.
Freddie Prinz also could have had a very bright career, he was so young when he comitted suicide.

 

[mike]

I guess it also depends if you mean they were celebrated for a time and have since been forgotten. That is often the case in stars of yesteryear. A terrific example is if you look at some of the contemporaries of Chaplin/Pickford/Fairbanks in the teens. An unbelievable amount of "stars" came and went well before 1920. I consider it like the Permian Age that preceded the first Dinosaurs.

 

[Miss Golightly]

Montgomery Clift - one of the greatest actors ever.

He made some fantastic movies during his brief career - The Heiress, A Place in the Sun, The Misfits, Judgement at Nuremberg and From Here to Eternity (for which he should have won the Oscar - not Frank Sinatra) and died at the age of 46.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Jones_(actor)

Christopher Jones, 'Ryan's Daughter'

-dixon cannon

 

[Lady Day]

Fredi Washington

Fredi Washington was a very fair-skinned woman with light eyes, even though she was actually a black woman through and through. This often made her equally disliked by both black and white film fans. But she still got a chance to show her talent in films. Her first film performance was with Duke Ellington in a musical short, "Black and Tan", as a dancer. In Hollywood she was urged to pass for white by studio heads, who said they would make her a bigger star than Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Constance Bennett and Greta Garbo. Fredi refused. Her best-known role was as Peola in the film Imitation of Life (1934). She appeared with Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones (1933) and in a few other films with her skin darkened. Her best work was on the stage, her best stage performance being in "Mamba's Daughters" with Ethel Waters. Fredi never made it to the top like her contemporaries Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker and Nina Mae McKinney because she didn't look black enough. But Fredi had what it took, and it is evident in the few films that she did do.

I always loved her preformance in Imitation fo life, and tried to find more of her work, but there just isnt very much.

LD

 

[BinkieBaumont]

"Jessica Lange, seemed to be heading for big things after "Frances" & "Tootsie" but she seemed to drop of the radar?"

Jessica in "Frances" the Frances farmer story

"Rock chick mode early 1980's

 

[Doctor Strange]

Jessica Lange is still around - she was outstanding starring in the HBO Grey Gardens just a few weeks ago!

 

[dhermann1]

You'd really have to include the great John Barrymore in this list. Again, the bottle.

 

[KY Gentleman]

Sal Mineo...

 

[mike]

You'd really have to include the great John Barrymore in this list. Again, the bottle.

I think he was fully realized, just on the stage rather than on film.

 

[SamMarlowPI]

priscilla lane kinda retired early...so know knows...but i wish she would've stuck around because she was gorgeous...and not a bad actress...

 

[Chasseur]

Robert Walker. What a great performance in "Strangers on a Train" and then he dies right afterward....

 

[Naphtali]

"Not fully realized" to me means a good actor who has made unusually poor script choices. Rutger Hauer leaps to mind.

Among the life-shortened careers would be Edna May Oliver and Rags Ragland, Marie Dresser, John Belushi.

 

[KY Gentleman]

Brandon Lee certainly had a lot of promise. He could have been both a good leading man as well as an "action film" star.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

I always thought too, that Vic Morrow's career was never fully realized. His role in 'Blackboard Jungle' should have launched his career into superstardom. Unfortunately, 'Combat!' typecast him and he never regained his stride and full potential.

Old episodes of 'Combat!' though do show his screen intensity and he directed several episode that showed off his skill in telling a good story.

Who knows what might have come out of his 'Twilight Zone' performance but for the unfortunate accident.

-dixon cannon

 

[Hemingway Jones]

James Dean, only three films. He was such a compelling screen presence.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A very funny young comedienne by the name of Marjorie White -- she turned up in supporting roles in dozens of films at Fox during the early talkie era, and then went on to freelancing at other studios -- only to lose her life in a car accident in 1934. A dynamic slapstick-oriented gal who could also sing and dance with the best of them -- consider her performances in "Sunny Side Up" and "Diplomaniacs" for hints of what might have been.