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Film/TV Fame: Yes, It Fades
Near the end of his life, Kirk Douglas had a Twitter account. He modestly introduced himself to this new medium as someone who used to be a movie star, as if it were hard to believe. But even the memory of Spartacus can fade.
We know the legend of Ozymandias, a mighty tyrant, confident that his reign and his fame would last forever. Now, all that remains of his memory are his boastful words on the ruined base of a vanished statue. Glory is fleeting, even for today’s movie star pretenders to the throne of Ozymandias, and the eternal illusion of permanent fame that only Hollywood can provide. The public confers fame. The Academy confers immortality.
Of course, we need to define: how brief is “fleeting”? Ten years? Fifty years? A century? You also need an honest, if purely subjective, estimate of the level of fame involved. You can remain famous but no longer be “bankable” in Hollywood terms. Even if you keep your fame, it can outlast your top-rank earning ability. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Roberts, and Jim Carrey will all be famous right to the end of their lives, but none of the three can command $20 million a picture anymore.
At the end of 1978, New York Magazine ran a snarky article called Farewell to the Seventies: One Year Too Early and Not a Moment Too Soon. It confidently predicted that shortly, no one would ever remember Saturday Night Fever or Saturday Night Live. You don’t know what will last. Valerie Perrine or Betty White? Debra Winger or Mr. T?
With exceptions, fame fades in a graceful drooping line over time. There are some prominent cases of non-linear fade, sometimes due to public disapproval, more often due to a change in the culture. One example is Glenn Ford, who just about came out of nowhere to become one of the biggest movie stars of the Fifties, but he didn’t sustain it. There was no scandal, no special reason why. He’d become typecast, and his square-jawed Fifties type was increasingly out of fashion in the Sixties. As early as 1970, Glenn Ford was a cautionary example of the surprising impermanence of stardom.
Three decades earlier, a misconstrued example was John Gilbert, the silent era screen Romeo, whose star is (incorrectly) thought to have plunged in early talkies because his voice recorded as too high-toned and “fruity”. It wasn’t so; he was in a bunch of early sound films whose soundtracks prove it. But what Gilbert did suffer from was a sudden cultural change towards Depression-era realism that made his florid, flapper-era “Great Lover” mannerisms suddenly a laughingstock. Gilbert hung on for a couple of years in smaller roles. He died of drink. It wasn’t all Gilbert’s fault; if Rudolph Valentino hadn’t died a year before talkies took off, it’s very likely the same thing would have happened to him.
Something slightly similar once happened, interrupting the stardom of John Travolta. It’s hard to recall now, but in the first two years of Travolta’s film career, after he left Welcome Back, Kotter, he was instantly one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Studios bet on his staying power. In 1978 he was offered a king’s ransom to play the lead in The Godfather Part III and turned it down. But by 1980, audiences laughed and cheered when the airplane in Airplane! knocked down the broadcasting aerial of WZAZ, “where disco lives forever”. The Saturday Night Fever poster on the walls of millions of teenage girls became a social embarrassment. Travolta gamely went on to be a character actor before his stardom was triumphantly resurrected by Quentin Tarantino, a skilled recycler of the formerly-more-famous. (Later, he worked similar magic for Pam Grier, a different kind of Seventies movie icon.)
Film stardom has generally been more esteemed than the TV kind. Yet Kojak and Columbo are as remembered today as Popeye Doyle or Dirty Harry. Most postwar actors worked in both TV and film. A few have been able to leverage the lead in a television series into the lead role in feature films, and to movie stardom—Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood were the biggest. Over the years, many other TV stars tried but didn’t quite make the grade—Pernell Roberts, Robert Vaughn, Harry Hamlin, Erik Estrada, David Caruso, Jimmy Smits. Most were good actors who continued to work.
Luck will always be an element of fame. For actors, the most elusive luck is being cast in the right role. James Gandolfini had prominent supporting roles in feature films like The Grifters and The Last Castle, but no one remembers him for that. Michael Chiklis as The Commish was a snooze, but his next police role, The Shield, was electrifying.
A fair chunk of my career was boosted by being aware of the upcoming anniversaries of significant films, the willingness of their surviving cast to participate in public events, and the exploitable potential thereof. With feature films, only two intervals really count, scaled to a human lifespan: 25 and 50 years. (There are also added anniversaries based on the year a futuristic film is set in: 2001. Back to the Future’s 2015. Blade Runner’s 2019.)
Most popular films tend to star attractive, usually young actors in scenes of drama, action, comedy and romance. Whether it’s Maria in West Side Story, Kevin Bacon’s character in Footloose, or Elle in Legally Blonde, these iconic characters are played by actors young enough, even a quarter century later, to carry off still looking like their earlier selves on the red carpet of anniversary events.
At the 50th, relatively few people in the live or onscreen audience will remember the era when the original film or TV show came out. Gone With the Wind looked different by 1989. No actors are expected to look like they did half a century ago, and faded stardom is a given. The 50th is purely and simply a celebration of survivors, and a final verdict on a film on its way to critical Valhalla.
It seems hard to believe, but as time goes by after your most recent hit picture, fame slowly decays, like uranium giving off reassuring warmth while it turns to lead. Twenty years ago or so, I used to see Warren Beatty from time to time each summer because our kids went to the same theater day camp. Circa 2004-’08 he still looked and acted the star, in a distinctive L.A. it’s-the-weekend-and-I’m-just-folks style.
As late as pre-#metoo-era 2013, he was able to put together financing for a Howard Hughes film from Clinton-era playboys Steve Rattner, Steve Bing and Ron Burkle. But then Beatty’s, it seems fair to say, final motion picture, Rules Don’t Apply, came out in 2016.
With a cost of $31 million, marketing and ad costs of another $20 million, and a theatrical gross of $3.9 million. It’s far from the most amount of money that Hollywood has ever lost on a film, but as a percentage loss, it was so scary that two days into the theatrical release, TV was briefly flooded with new ads for Rules Don’t Apply, ones that dispensed with subtlety to blare, “From the star of Bonnie and Clyde! Shampoo! Heaven Can Wait! Reds! Bulworth!”
That’s one of the saddest things about stardom: if you have to insist that you still have it…you don’t.
Published in General
Always a fun read, sit. Waiting for your book.
Birth of a Nation passed it’s 110th anniversary of release last month. More and more famous films will be passing their century mark. We’re close to the 100th anniversary of the talkies. The Jazz Singer premiered October 6, 1927.
Andy Warhol had that famous line about everyone being famous for fifteen minutes. I saw the internet, said “My god, it’s full of YouTube stars” and knew him to be an optimist. Even so, I was blindsided by TikTok.
A ten year career followed by a sudden drop into obscurity sounds pretty nice.
I’m always saddened when the supermarket Muzak plays the music from “Fame” because the song has outlasted the singer.
Another beautifully written essay, Gary. Thank you. And thank you for the reminder of the never ending value of humility.
It sticks a dagger in my heart when I hear Led Zeppelin in my Food Lion . . .
Those stars who never insisted they had it seem to keep it more gracefully. There is something to be said for humility, particularly given all the factors that lead to stardom, or don’t.
Thanks again Gary for a great post!
“Out on the road today, I saw a DEADHEAD sticker on a Cadillac. A little voice inside my head said, “Don’t look back. You can never look back”.
Glen Ford’s straight-shooter persona turned out to be perfect for the role Pa Kent in Superman (1978).
Big movies need big stars (Ben Hur, Gone With the Wind, Butch Cassidy, Great Escape) but the modern emphasis on special effects and the overwhelming corporate desire to build franchises seems to minimize the need for defining star power. How many different guys have played Superman, Batman and Spiderman? It is not that those actors did not have presence and talent but there is a system that does not make them indispensable. The franchise uber alles.
The reverence for screen greatness also seems diminished. For decades, the only outlet for old movies was non-primetime TV reruns. I used to love the Biograph theater in DC for themed film festivals, especially content that would never be in TV (e.g., Japanese samurai classics like Seven Samurai, and Jojimbo). The infrequent broadcast of the Wizard of Oz was practically a family event. There was a time when one might plan for scheduled rerun of Spartacus, High Noon or From Here to Eternity but now if almost any flick can be pulled up at any time on cable, do we do it or does the volume of newer “content” obviate that choice??
Grand dames like Helen Mirren and Katherine Hepburn are especially remarkable given that there seems to be even more pressure to make attractive females interchangeable and dispensable. What was that great line by Goldie Hawn about the stages of an actress’s career ? Something like bimbo, district attorney and then driving miss daisy with big gaps in between.
My kids and grandkids balk at watching black and white movies–it is a difficult adjustment for them to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. I watched some of Earth versus the Flying Saucers (1956) on Tubi with my 5-year-old grandson last Saturday. He thought the effects were lame and could not suspend belief long enough to identify with the fear of fighting a technologically superior enemy. In his worldview, there is always a weapon available to our side to blow up any such external threat. In my world at that age, all grownups remembered fighting Hitler and Tojo and then there was Stalin and the bomb. SciFi was usually about monstrous, fearful challenges.
But other than changes in historical context and culture, there is simply something qualitatively different about a movie being “content” rather than an event in and of itself.
All the same, the supermaket’s soundtrack has been kickin’ it lately.
Irene Cara was really something. And most people have probably heard very little of her repertoire.
There are colorized versions of many old movies now, including “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Gene Wilder, “The World’s Greatest Lover.”
Sacrilege.
Hey, if it’ll get the grandkids to watch them…
And maybe when they’re a bit more grown-up, they can better appreciate the original form.
I have considerable admiration for those who “fade” by choice. I would put the late and great Gene Hackman in that category. Cameron Diaz? Of course it helps if one is Grace Kelly and has royalty as an option (Markle aside).
For the better part of Hollywood’s history what was important was casting a bankable star who could bring audiences into a movie theater. We are no longer living in the better part of Hollywood history. It may be too early to suggest that Hollywood is in its death throes but many factors may be in play now that makes Hollywood’s demise inevitable – their severe left turn ideologically, the industry’s support of DEI, the overwhelming array of entertainment options not dependent on movie theaters, and the convenience of watching films at home on fairly nice 4k televisions with surround sound systems without having to put up with annoying strangers who talk over every scene.
Yes, the community of a movie theater audience is lost. No longer do we laugh, cry, or grip the edge of our seats together in the dark. Industry execs who continue to produce films pushing woke propaganda rather than stories with universal appeal will continue to hasten the demise of the movie theater business.
Many of us elder folks, aka Boomers, grew up going to the movies, on a weekly basis…sometimes a few days a week during the summer months especially in environs that were blazingly hot where spending a few hours in an air conditioned theater was a relief.
Entertainment industry types don’t seem to be concerned with bankable stars anymore. There may be 4 or 5 who can still bring people to movie theaters and that may be a generous estimate but it’s often more the case that millions of Americans are content to wait for the movie to show up on a streaming service in a matter of days.
As I get older (and more curmudgeonly), I’m less concerned with fame receding from certain movie stars. Instead I reflect fondly on the performances from actors and actresses that moved me and those actors who always seemed to deliver performances worth watching again and again: Stewart in “It’s A Wonderful Life”, in “The Philadelphia Story”, “Vertigo”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, etc.; Bogart in “Casablanca”, Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, “The Maltese Falcon”, “The Caine Mutiny”; Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday”; Mel Gibson in “The Year of Living Dangerously”, “Gallipoli”, “Braveheart”; Brando in “On The Waterfront”; the entire cast of “The Best Years of Our Lives”; Peter Sellers’s performances in “Dr. Strangelove”; Howard Rollins, Jr.’s performance in “Ragtime”, Walter Huston in “Dodsworth”…to name just a few.
A kind thing to say, sir! I’m waiting for the startup of The Ricochet Press. Hank Rhody on science, Prof. Mark Boone on Christian theology, iWe on the Torah…you could just about get an informal college education on this site.
It’ll be the same year as the 50th anniversary of Star Wars. Two years away; I think of myself at 25, waiting on line in June 1977. It doesn’t feel like a half century ago.
But it is, nearly.
BTW, the last theater I projected at was the Liberty on 42nd Street. It had the New York premiere of The Birth of a Nation. By the early Seventies, race relations had changed quite a bit from what you see in the film.
There’s a less well known aphorism also attached to Warhol. It’s something to the effect that anything or anyone who is in the news for more than two days sticks in the public memory. “Famous” people like that include Lorena Bobbit, Tawana Brawley, and Tanya Harding.
The Ten Commandments was also an annual family TV event, generally around Easter. The arrival of television did seem to be a factor in making films less “special”, but it also allowed us to see many more old films than we would ever have seen in revival theaters. Pre-video cassettes, pre-streaming, the rigid scheduling of TV at least gave us a sense of occasion; “appointment TV” was actually a thing.
To be fair to today’s Hollywood, making females attractive and interchangeable goes back a long, long way.
But other than changes in historical context and culture, there is simply something qualitatively different about a movie being “content” rather than an event in and of itself.
That, too, is not a hard and fast dividing line between yesterday’s movies and today’s. Chris Nolan still makes “event” movies, as seriously as Kubrick did. And some of the old, old guys did treat films as product, not much different than the gloves they used to tailor and sell in Nova Scotia.
But I’m not really disputing anything in your excellent comment.
Disney periodically rereleased their classics in theaters. Home video was not yet a thing, and it gave parents a chance to share the movies they had seen as children. Mom saw Bambi when she was six. It was released again when I was five, and she thought it might be a little too intense. It wasn’t. I loved it. It is the earliest movie I remember seeing in a theater. Home video made it more available, but with Disney cannibalizing it’s classics for “live action” remakes “updated for modern audiences,” those classics recede into a past that most kids will never see.
The first movie I saw in a theater was Song of the South, one of the other seven classics. At about eight.
Way back in the day, the “Late Late Show” and various incarnations thereof broadcast all manner of movies of the past. I managed to get two first cousins once removed to overcome their Millennial allergic reaction to black-and-white long enough to watch Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep and now they are film noir fans.
I don’t know if it were the first I saw, but I did see it. Now? Can’t pry it out of their vaults. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah!
Free James Baskett! Free James Baskett!
I’ll just say this, and it addresses the Glenn Ford matter as well:
“Fate Is The Hunter.”
downloadable/torrentable.
Also on laserdisc.
A very well informed comment, Brian. Your examples are great ones.
I would suggest that we’re dealing with an overlap between two problems: the content of movies, and the way people choose to watch them. Even if every movie was made by Angel Studios, and every one of them had the quality of the classics you list, there’d still be an issue with a generation or two that barely has the patience to sit through a half hour of television. They’d rather be on their phones.
The other problem, the content of the films, is tougher but (mostly) solvable. People in the industry have usually been liberals. When they were of the Gregory Peck–Henry Fonda–Kirk Douglas variety, that caused no great friction with the public.
The issue isn’t that studio bosses are woke; they seldom are. But they are trend followers, not trend setters, and they’ve been panicked into thinking they were actually doing things that were popular.
Not many years ago I saw Billy Crystal on a talk show. His big movies are now many years in the past, but maybe it was a forgivable humblebrag to proudly mention that when he was in Africa, even in a remote town, they called him “Mister Oscar”.
His smile fell when no one laughed or reacted. The host, if anything, made it worse by gently, condescendingly explaining that Billy used to host the Oscars. But that was mostly in the 90s, and it was a young crowd who didn’t know who he was. That’s no great knock on Crystal, but it was a poignant moment.