Impactful Short Careers

I was looking at a filmography and it occurred to me that there were some actors and actresses who had an impact on cinema history and American culture far beyond the stretch of their film careers.

Nowadays we are used to many of our stars rising and falling in a short period of time, but there are some stars that have risen into the pantheon of Hollywood legend that were not around for very long either. Or, as in the third case, they were around, but not working due to illness. For some leaving Hollywood was a decision, for others it was a sudden death, but all of these people are memorable because of the powerful characters they portrayed of film as well as the public persona that they portrayed off film.

The first one that attracted me was the very short listing for Grace Kelly. Yes Princess Grace retired from film at the height of her career. In this listing she was credited with only 11 movies. Only 11 movies in 6 years from 1951 to her marriage in 1956 is quite a feat for one so well known. That is almost nothing in the history of film. Yet we are left with that noble visage, that perfect coif and demeanor that made her best suited to play queens and society girls. Of course in those 6 years she won an Oscar for a very unregal role in The Country Girl where she played the long suffering wife of the alcoholic has been actor Bing Crosby who has one last shot at stardom if he can stay sober. She was also nominated for a supporting actress award three years earlier for her role in Mogambo. Part of her attraction stems far beyond her film roles into the fairytale role she played off-screen as a darling of Hollywood who met and married a prince, and became a princess. Of course her life ended tragically in a car accident, but that was not until much later.

James Dean is another actor whose reputation far outweighs the bulk of his acting achievements. Due to his untimely death from a car accident he also had a career spanning the 6 years from 1951 to 1956 with only 7 films to his credit. He was nominated for two Best Actor awards in 1955 for East of Eden and in 1956 for Giant, both posthumously. It seems as if we have never escaped the method acting that he and Marlon Brando employed and his iconographic roles as disgruntled teens lashing out at the authority around them are still considered the height of cool. Though I do not know if I can agree with an actor whose style consists of mumbling otherwise good dialogue like Curt Kobain with one or two scenes of emoting and yelling, he certainly has left an imprint on the culture of Hollywood. To this day James Dean still signifies a counter culture of coolness, a repression of youth that lashes out at authority.

Vivien Leigh made only 16 movies in 30 years due to serious mental illness and her inability to remember lines. But she will always be remembered for the quintessential role that was the envy of Hollywood as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. Another memorable role was as Blanche the questionably sane older sister to Stella whose arrival upsets family life in A Streetcar Named Desire. Her visage and her strong independent woman live on long after the questions about her professionalism, her drinking, and her tumultuous relationship with Laurence Olivier. She died in 1967 at the age of 54.