Hollywood’s Forgotten Stars: Part 3

Here in the third of a series of four pieces I will be looking back on twenty of Hollywood’s forgotten stars. We have done the actresses with Norma Shearer coming out as number one, so this week it’s all about men and the actors numbered 10 - 6 in my countdown. I hope you enjoy it. As always your comments are more than welcome.

Five forgotten male stars from the 1920s through to the 70s

N.B.: This list is not intended to be definitive. It is merely intended to highlight the talent of ten largely forgotten actors who played a significant role in Hollywood history, be it as a great box-office star, an Oscar winner, a pioneer or an unfulfilled talent that shone all too briefly. In deciding on my order, I have rated the actors on both their contribution to cinema and how little I perceive them to be remembered by the general public. The biggest star will not necessarily come out on top.

10 – John Cazale
No discussion of forgotten talent would be complete without a nod to John Cazale, although the recent surge of interest in his career meant he was by no means an automatic inclusion on my list. Cazale was more of a supporting actor but his early death at 42 from cancer denied him the chance to build on a quite incredible six years of film work. He would have been battling Pacino and De Niro for roles during the 1980s had illness not taken him shortly after completing his work on ‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978). Cazale only made five films but all of them are considered classics and all were nominated for a ‘Best Picture’ Academy Award. His performances as Fredo in ‘The Godfather’ (1972) and ‘The Godfather Part 2’ (1974) showed the depth of emotion that Cazale could bring to a character, even if they weren’t the main focus of the movie. He simply stole the show from Pacino in ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (1975) despite originally being considered totally unsuitable for the role by the director Sidney Lumet. The cult of Cazale has grown in recent years through books, magazine articles and a documentary film on his life and ironically, whilst he won’t ever become an icon like James Dean, his early death added to the quality of his screen appearances may yet ensure his name remains better remembered than many of the bigger stars on this list.
Watch John Cazale in: Cazale made an impact no matter how small the part but it is his turn as bank robber Sal in ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ that gives a really tantalising glimpse of how good he could be.

9 – Charley Chase
The world of silent comedy was a crowded one. The public liked to see people being kicked up the bum, Model T Fords falling apart and fat dowagers fall into ridiculously deep puddles to such an extent that studios (lots and lots and lots of long forgotten studios like Vim, King Bee, Mutual, etc.) churned them out at a phenomenal rate. This also meant that there were literally hundreds of actors who made these movies, entertained the masses and were promptly forgotten (ever heard of Max Davidson, Louise Fazenda or Ford Sterling?). In the 21st century we are pretty much left with five people who have any sort of reputation: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and that is a real shame. I could have gone for the Chaplin-esque (in ego as well as style) Larry Semon or the sad-faced Keaton-a-like Harry Langdon but the one who deserves more recognition is Charley Chase because the situation comedy in its present form started with him. Chase was more like Harold Lloyd in appearance – nothing outrageous, no silly costumes or the like – but there wasn’t the reliance on physical humour that most of his contemporaries had though as ‘Never the Dames Shall Meet’ (1927) showed he could pratfall with the best of them. He was the king of the comedy of embarrassment which is a type of comedy that has rarely as been as popular as it is today. Ricky Gervais, Mitchell and Webb, and Larry David are all currently flying the flag for a style of comedy that is reliant on putting people in excruciatingly unsuitable situations that will end in their humiliation. Chase was a natural at this; most famously when discovering a naked Viola Richard in the back of his car in ‘Limousine Love’ (1928) and so as most silent comedy is written off as crude slapstick and endless custard pie fights it is odd that one of the least physical of the accomplished silent clowns has been forgotten.
Watch Charley Chase in: The Chase performance that has lasted longest in the public eye is his supporting role in Laurel and Hardy’s ‘Sons of the Desert’ (1933) but the best short he made as the star is ‘Mighty Like a Moose’ (1926), a comedy about plastic surgery fifty-odd years before Jordan was even born.

8 – Clifton Webb
As career boosts go, Clifton Webb being chosen by Otto Preminger to take a part in the film noir ‘Laura’ (1944) must be one of the strangest. Webb was not only in his mid-fifties, he was also a Broadway musical comedy star with virtually no silver screen experience. He was dancer and singer who had worked on shows written by every great ‘Tin Pan Alley’ composer you would care to mention so it was understandable that Daryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, was perturbed by Preminger’s decision to cast Webb as the elegant, evil Waldo Lydecker. As unlikely as the casting was it was truly inspired as Webb gave a fantastically hiss-worthy performance in possibly the greatest example of the genre. The film was a big hit and Webb had an instant following amongst the public. Fox signed him up and cast him in similar roles in ‘The Dark Corner’ and ‘The Razor’s Edge’ (both 1946) and both were successes at the box office. Webb’s brand of classy malevolence only really had a parallel in the great George Sanders but, unlike Sanders, Webb showed that sharp-tongued characters had a place in comedy and as the main attraction, not just a supporting player , when he was cast as male nanny extraordinaire Lynn Belvedere in ‘Sitting Pretty’ (1948). Belvedere was Mary Poppins mixed with Noel Coward and whilst Robert Young and Maureen O’Hara were billed as the stars, this was a one-man show. Webb reprised the role in two less successful (and less accomplished) sequels but Webb’s output during the 1950s continued to be, at the very least, interesting. ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ (1952), ‘Titanic’ (1953) and ‘Three Coins in the Fountain’ (1954) continued this most unlikely of star careers before a series of forgettable ensemble romances brought Webb’s Hollywood career to a close. He did have time to make the British war movie ‘The Man Who Never Was’ (1956) during this period and it is a fascinating curiosity, made cheaply but strangely brilliantly. Webb died in 1966 after never recovering from the death of his elderly mother (Webb himself was 71 when she died). He had left a legacy that was as curious, entertaining and unexpected as it is forgotten.
Watch Clifton Webb in: ‘Laura’ is truly brilliant but Lynn Belvedere is Clifton Webb’s most masterful creation. As such ‘Sitting Pretty’ comes highly recommended.

7 – Tyrone Power
Romantic lead, swashbuckling hero, sleazy womaniser, grizzled cowboy, musical star - Tyrone Power did it all. Unusually for a star of the studio era, Power didn’t seem to suffer from typecasting and portrayed a wide variety of characters during his career which was cut short by a heart attack he suffered whilst filming ‘Solomon and Sheba’ (1958). Power’s early successes included the pioneering disaster movie ‘In Old Chicago’ (1937), the lively musical ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ (1938) and the superb western ‘Jesse James’ (1939). His most famous role was in 1940 when he donned the black mask for ‘The Mark of Zorro’. His fencing ability, honed especially for the role, has gone down in Hollywood history after his co-star Basil Rathbone said “he could fence Errol Flynn into a cocked hat”. Despite a couple more swashbucklers like ‘The Black Swan’ (1942), Power changed direction again in the mid-1940s with forays into film noir. ‘The Razor’s Edge’ (1946) with Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb was a particular success but Power was already limiting his screen appearances so that he could spend time acting in the theatre. His popularity never again reached its peak of 1939 and 1940 but this allowed the versatile actor to play the character parts he always felt his good looks had stopped him from being considered for. The last film he completed before his death, ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ (1957), was a perfect example of this as Power had to hold his own when sharing a screen with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton, two of the screens most memorable personalities. The performance is one of Power’s best but the immortality afforded to his co-stars has never materialised despite being one of the studio systems most popular stars.
Watch Tyrone Power in: It has to be ‘The Mark of Zorro’ - with the exception of ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ (1938) it is probably the best example of its kind.

6 - Robert Donat
Robert Donat’s chronic ill health meant that he only appeared in twenty films in a twenty-six year career that ended with his death at 53 (which, amazingly, meant he reached an older age than Cazale, Chase and Power who all died in their forties). To begin with he was the urbane alternative to Errol Flynn in movies like ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ (1934), ‘The 39 Steps’ (1935) and ‘Knight Without Armour’ (1937) and his style of acting was very much like that of David Niven (whose career undoubtedly benefited from Donat’s misfortune). With ‘The Citadel’ (1938) he made the move into straight drama which made more of his acting talent than his ailing physical prowess. In the following year when ‘Goodbye Mr. Chips’ (1939) was released he won the Academy Award for best actor, sensationally beating Clark Gable for ‘Gone With the Wind’ (1939). The film was Donat’s last for three years as ill-health and his desire to do more work on the stage reduced his movie credits to about one a year in an era where the big stars studio contracts demanded much more. None of his 1940s output was particularly memorable, though 1948’s ‘The Winslow Boy’ was an excellent courtroom drama. As his health further declined in the 1950s, Donat concentrated more than ever on his theatre work. He made only four films in eight years, dying before the release of ‘The Inn of the Sixth Happiness’ in 1958. As long as ‘The 39 Steps’ is revived for film, TV and theatre productions, Donat will never quite vanish from the wider public consciousness but his current reputation doesn’t match what he put on the screen – great performances and great entertainment.
Watch Robert Donat in: His late release ‘Lease of Life’ (1955) was a contender but this is really a straight choice between ‘The 39 Steps’ and ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips’, the latter of which I will go for due to Donat’s tear-jerking brilliance in the lead role. Anyone who doesn’t well up just isn’t human.