Most Over-rated Actress of the Golden Era?

[Fading Fast]

The more I think about Dietrich the more it seems to me that she would have been a much better performer in silent pictures -- that broad, overripe persona would have given Vilma Banky a run for her money. She did appear in a few silents in Germany, but by the time she got to the US, that ship had sailed. If you watch "The Blue Angel," though, she's essentially playing a silent-picture type of characterization in a talkie.

I struggled to enjoy that movie as, if memory serves, there were no likable characters in it. But, yes, I see your point. And while a talkie, in "Shanghai Express," she is lit in a way that suggests a silent movie with several of those scenes having a silent movie feel to them - and she shines (literally) with that treatment.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Face it, for women in Hollywood, leading roles are apportioned according to looks and little else. The best actresses get supporting or character roles. Kathy Bates may be the best actress of her generation, but she never gets the romantic lead roles because she isn't beautiful. In the stage play "Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune," Kathy Bates had the lead role as Frankie. When it was filmed as "Frankie and Johnny" Frankie was played by Michelle Pfeiffer, presumably because she really looks like a middle-aged waitress who can't find a date on Saturday night.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There were a few exceptions, though. Marie Dressler was nobody's sex goddess, probably, but she was the strongest box office draw of any actress in Hollywood in the early thirties. In "Min and Bill" she even got to play kind of a romantic lead -- granted it was opposite Wallace Beery, but still...

Edna May Oliver , Charlotte Greenwood, and Winnie Lightner were other unconventional-looking women who were big draws in leading roles at various times in the thirties. Greenwood and Lightner specialized in loud, rowdy, and raucous roles in musicals and comedies -- neither was particularly "pretty," but what they lacked in looks they more than made up in charisma. Oliver, who looked like Eleanor Roosevelt after a crash diet, played character parts in "A" pictures, but had her own starring series of B pictures at RKO, where she appeared as "Hildegarde Withers," an eccentric female detective.

As star-driven as the Era was during the days of the studio system, I think it was actually a better time to be an odd-looking character actress -- where are today's Patsy Kellys, Aline MacMahons, Marjorie Mains, Blanche Paysons, or Zasu Pittses?

 

[AdeeC]

I never really thought much about overrated actresses from the golden era much. All to me had something to offer, be it just talent, personality, star quality or beauty. If I have to name one it would be Norma Shearer. Being married to Irving Thalberg no doubt helped her land plumb roles better deserving of others. I tend to think more about those forgotten dynamic actresses who had everything and deserve more recognition like Dorothy McKaill and Lillian Roth plus that wonderful little known character actress Blanche Frederici for the non glamorous roles.

Some say Marion Davies was overrated. I have seen quite a few of her films and she IMO was an excellent comedienne. WR Hearst pushed her career relentlessly and he had many enemies and deservedly so. One way for them to get back at him was to deride her career. A lot written about her acting is rubbish.

 

[Fading Fast]

I never really thought much about overrated actresses from the golden era much. All to me had something to offer, be it just talent, personality, star quality or beauty. If I have to name one it would be Norma Shearer. Being married to Irving Thalberg no doubt helped her land plumb roles better deserving of others. I tend to think more about those forgotten dynamic actresses who had everything and deserve more recognition like Dorothy McKaill and Lillian Roth plus that wonderful little known character actress Blanche Frederici for the non glamorous roles.

Some say Marion Davies was overrated. I have seen quite a few of her films and she IMO was an excellent comedienne. WR Hearst pushed her career relentlessly and he had many enemies and deservedly so. One way for them to get back at him was to deride her career. A lot written about her acting is rubbish.

Having coincidentally seen a few Shearer movies recently, I tend to agree. I don't think she ever fully understood the difference between silent and talking movies and she always seems to be over emoting, over gesturing in the talking movies she made. The smart actors quickly understood that you had to turn down the volume on emoting and gesturing once you had dialogue to make your point.

 

[GHT]

Face it, for women in Hollywood, leading roles are apportioned according to looks and little else. The best actresses get supporting or character roles.

I can think of at least three British actresses who buck that trend. Whether it's the small screen or the big screen, Maggie Smith, Judy Dench & Helen Mirren all seem to get meaty, leading roles. Not only do they not have the bimbo looks, age isn't on their side either. But when you have a real talent for acting..................................

 

[LizzieMaine]

When Dame Judi passes on, half our box office takings will disappear with her. There is no star who equals her for drawing power with the elderly upper-middle-class white women who make up 99 percent of our audience. Maggie better get on her bicycle if she wants to catch up.

When I'm dictator, Helen Mirren will be appointed the next Doctor Who.

 

[GHT]

The Sage has spoken!
Was the British version of Prime Suspect ever shown on American TV?
Prime Suspect is a British police procedural television drama series. It stars Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison, one of the first female Detective Chief Inspectors in Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service, as she rises to rank of Detective Superintendent whilst confronting the institutionalised sexism that exists within her job.

 

[JackieMatra]

I think that sometimes here we're talking about two different things: acting ability ans star quality. Some actors have one, some have the other and a very few have both. To use some male examples, two very fine actors; Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall, have fabulous acting chops, but they can't carry a big-budget film by themselves. They always have to co-star with someone else. Only in small, independent films do they get to star. At the other extreme there's John Wayne. He was a one-note character actor, and he played one role: John Wayne. He could play it straight or comic or even occasionally as a bad guy, but he always played John Wayne. But whatever star quality is, Wayne had it in spades. When he was up there on the screen, your eyes were riveted on him.

Perhaps you're thinking of Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall recently, in the past couple of decades, when they have progressed rather past the usual leading man age range.
Gene Hackman became a leading man from "The French Connection" onwards, while the same was true of Robert Duvall, following "The Godfather".

I once would have agreed with you regarding John Wayne, but that was before I saw "The Long Voyage Home", a 1940 film directed by John Ford in which Wayne portrays a Swedish merchant seaman rather credibly, complete with a Swedish accent that John Qualen could not have bettered. Wayne also appeared in a fair number of minor roles in the early thirties as utterly un-"John Wayne" type characters, before he took to making Saturday kidee matinee cowboy B pictures and then finally hit it big with "Stagecoach" in 1939.

 

[AdeeC]

Perhaps you're thinking of Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall recently, in the past couple of decades, when they have progressed rather past the usual leading man age range.
Gene Hackman became a leading man from "The French Connection" onwards, while the same was true of Robert Duvall, following "The Godfather".

I once would have agreed with you regarding John Wayne, but that was before I saw "The Long Voyage Home", a 1940 film directed by John Ford in which Wayne portrays a Swedish merchant seaman rather credibly, complete with a Swedish accent that John Qualen could not have bettered. Wayne also appeared in a fair number of minor roles in the early thirties as utterly un-"John Wayne" type characters, before he took to making kidee Saturday matinee cowboy B pictures and then finally hit it big in "Stagecoach" in 1939.

I recall seeing one of John Wayne's brief early roles in in the lurid over the top precede BABY FACE. Here he plays an office boy, a temporary play thing for Barbara Stanwyck who twists him around her finger. Though his role is that of a hapless jerk there was something about him that was different and stood out. Budding star quality? Then again in THE CONQUEROR he is perhaps one of the worst ever miscasting in Hollywood history unless one likes seeing John Wayne playing Ghengis Khan as John Wayne.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

The perfect role has ruined many a fine actor. Case in point: Anthony Quinn played many and varied roles in his early career. Then along came ZORBA THE GREEK (1964), which won him an Oscar and which he inhabited as few actors have ever inhabited a role. Problem is, for the next 30 years, he just played variations on Zorba. You have to look at his earlier work in movies like LUST FOR LIFE, VIVA ZAPATA and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, to see how good and versatile an actor he was before Zorba came along.

 

[TimeWarpWife]

The Sage has spoken!
Was the British version of Prime Suspect ever shown on American TV?
Prime Suspect is a British police procedural television drama series. It stars Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison, one of the first female Detective Chief Inspectors in Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service, as she rises to rank of Detective Superintendent whilst confronting the institutionalised sexism that exists within her job.

Actually I watched Prime Suspect a few years ago on our local PBS stations and right now it's being shown on a local station we have that shows nothing but British shows 24 hrs. a day. It was very dark and gritty, IMO. I like Helen Mirren much better in the movies Red and Red 2.

 

[GHT]

For dark and gritty, see Mirren in the movie: "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover."
English gangster Albert Spica has taken over the high-class Le Hollandais Restaurant, run by French chef Richard Boarst. Spica makes nightly appearances at the restaurant with his retinue of thugs. His oafish behaviour causes frequent confrontations with the staff and his own customers, whose patronage he loses, but whose money he seems not to miss.
Forced to accompany Spica is his reluctant, well-bred wife, Georgina, (Helen Mirren,) who soon catches the eye of a quiet regular at the restaurant, bookshop owner Michael. Under her husband's nose, Georgina carries on an affair with Michael with the help of the restaurant staff. Ultimately Spica learns of the affair, forcing Georgina to hide out at Michael's book depository. Boarst sends food to Georgina through his young employee Pup, a boy soprano who sings while working. Spica tortures the boy before finding the bookstore's location written in a book the boy is carrying. Spica's men storm Michael's bookshop while Georgina is visiting the boy in hospital. They torture Michael to death by force-feeding him pages from his books. Georgina discovers his body when she returns.
Overcome with rage and grief, she begs Boarst to cook Michael's body, and he eventually complies. Together with all the people that Spica wronged throughout the film, Georgina confronts her husband finally at the restaurant and forces him to eat a mouthful of Michael's cooked body. Spica obeys, gagging, before Georgina shoots him in the head.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Okay, that's fairly noirish.

 

[Haversack]

Inkstainedwretch wrote in regard to The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover: "Okay, that's fairly nourish."

Except that colour played an important role in the film. Each room in the movie had a particular colour as its theme and the colour of the clothes the actors wore changed to match it as they moved from room to room. Peter Greenaway always plays with visual and aural atmospheres.

 

[Benzadmiral]

I never really thought much about overrated actresses from the golden era much. All to me had something to offer, be it just talent, personality, star quality or beauty. If I have to name one it would be Norma Shearer. Being married to Irving Thalberg no doubt helped her land plumb roles better deserving of others. . . . .

I'd have to agree on that. I've caught a few of her flicks, most notably The Barretts of Wimpole Street with Charles Laughton as the tyrannical father, and she just doesn't appeal to me in looks or acting or star quality.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The best thing I ever saw Norma Shearer do was a comedy bit in "The Hollywood Revue of 1929," where she and John Gilbert do the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet" in the slang of the moment. For those few minutes, she's relaxed and obviously having a lot of fun, and she actually seems to come to life. Everything else I've ever seen her do, she plays the scenes like her girdle's too tight.

 

[AdeeC]

I'd have to agree on that. I've caught a few of her flicks, most notably The Barretts of Wimpole Street with Charles Laughton as the tyrannical father, and she just doesn't appeal to me in looks or acting or star quality.

Agree with that too. Despite having some talent I always found Norma Shearer bland and lacking charisma despite getting mostly prestigious roles. After making THE BARRETS OF WIMPOLE SREET she starred in two of the most pretentious and enormously expensive costume films of the period, ROMEO AND JULIET and MARIE ANTOINETTE. In the first she plays Juliet despite being and looking 34 years old against 40 year old Leslie Howard. They both look ridiculous playing teenagers in an otherwise beautiful looking film. MARIE ANTOINETTE has lavish settings and costumes but is a snore fest mainly due to her omnipresence. Both lost money. Of course she received her regular Oscar best actress nominations for her efforts in both films. After her husband died her career wound down pretty quickly.

 

[tommyK]

I agree with a lot of the crowd here, Garbo, Shearer and Katharine Hepburn are overated. Although they each have movies that I do like them in.

The one I think hasn't been mentioned here is Myrna Loy. I think she's great in the first two Thin Man movies and a few others but after seeing at least a dozen of her non-Thin Man movies she plays the same character over and over. Just caught "Test Pilot" today. Gable, Loy and Spencer Tracy are all stinking up the joint in that one.

By the way,if there is male version of this thread I'd have Spencer Tracy at the top of my list. Again, I like him in a few things but generally he has little appeal to me.

 

[emigran]

I have two that drive me nuts...
Ava Gardner... the worst
Liz Taylor

Both very beautiful for sure but c'mon..
And I totally disagree with the Barbara Stanwyck naysayers... her range and abilities were extraordinary... from The Lady Eve to Meet John Doe the list is long and IMHO superlative acting throughout