Big in one decade, gone in the next...

Being a fan of films from all eras, it's amazing to me how sometimes an actor will be absolutely red hot for a period of time, make a bunch of good movies, then a decade or so after they burst onto the scene they can hardly find a job. And I'm not talking about actors who burn their careers with their off the set antics, ala Mickey Rourke in the late '80s, but those thespians who were being cast in high profile projects for a span of five years or so to great acclaim and success, then maybe after a few too many bad professional choices in a row they are simply not cast in anything at all anymore. It's great when the biggest movie stars can sustain careers from decade to decade, but they can't all be Paul Newman or Dustin Hoffman. There's that other class of actor who for a few years are right in-step with any name in the business...and then they're gone. But while they were on top, they helped define the era's style.


For example. There are a few from the '70s that I loved who never really made it out of that decade. One of the primary being...



Elliott Gould

After a bit of success in the dated Paul Mazursky sex comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Gould momentarily exploded after playing Captain "Trapper John" McIntyre in Bob Altman's MASH (1970). He was married to superstar Babs Streisand and he was on the cover of TIME magazine announced as the next big thing. He starred in Alan Arkin's directorial debut, an adaptation of Jules Feiffer's dark comedy Little Murders (1971), he worked with Ingmar Bergman in Beröringen (1971), an early attempt at the buddy cop flick in Peter Hyams' Busting (1974) and a couple more stints with Altman in The Long Goodbye (1973) and California Split (1974)....and all of them were duds at the boxoffice and/or critically. The die was probably cast right there. But with the exception of the Bergman flick, I think Gould was wonderful in all of them, and I think he's flat-out great in both The Long Goodbye and California Split.

The second half of the decade saw him still working, though in less and less prestigious projects. I like the period con & caper comedy Harry & Walter Go to New York (1976 - Mark Rydell) very much, but it's clear from the business it didn't do that the success of Paper Moon and especially The Sting was not to be replicated. He's one of the many famous faces in Dickie Attenborough's slightly disappointing WWII epic A Bridge Too Far (1977), but it's not a very highlighted role. He starred in Peter Hyams' conspiracy thriller Capricorn One (1978) about a faked Mars landing, but like with just about all Hyams' efforts it falls well short of being anything spectacular (or even competent). The last really fine movie he made in the decade was a low-budget Canadian production called The Silent Partner (1978 - Daryl Duke), a good little flick about a bank teller who sniffs out a robbery before it happens and, rather than alerting anybody, short changes the thief and keeps the money for himself. Ingenious plan...except for the psychotic criminal (played by Christopher Plummer) now coming at him for the cash and revenge. It has a couple tone problems as the mix of dark comedy with some brutal violence in the last act doesn't gel terribly well, but overall, a good little movie. But alas, too little too late to save Gould's sinking career and nobody saw it anyway.

The decade finished off with two godawful flicks in Escape to Athena (1979 - George Cosmatos) and The Lady Vanishes (1979 - Tony Page). Athena is a cheap-o Guns of Navarone wannabe that is an embarrassment for every single actor roped into this turkey (Elliott joined everybody from David Niven and Claudia Cardinale to Roger Moore and Telly Savalas to Richard Roundtree and Sonny Bono). It is "Mystery Science Theater 3000" bad. And the ridiculous and cheap-o remake of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes is likewise embarrassing. Gould even tried softening his image (and taking the money where he could find it) by starring in some supposedly family-friendly flicks in Matilda (1978) about a boxing kangaroo, and two Disney live-action vehicles in a Father Goose dully mixed with The Flight of the Phoenix thingie called The Last Flight of Noah's Ark (1980) and a wacky and heartwarming comedy about a man dying and making a deal with Satan to con kids out of their souls in The Devil and Max Devlin (1981).

And that was about all she wrote for a while. Everything else he tried in the '80s were smaller and smaller budgets, some of them only released on the fairly new format of video tape and not getting any kind of theatrical distribution at all. He turned to television and tried to jump start his career with a sitcom called "E/R" (1984-1985). And even though it was populated by TV stars-to-be like Jason Alexander and George Clooney, this last-ditch effort to capitalize on whatever was left of his Trapper John persona didn't work and the series was cancelled after only one season.

Barry Levinson gave him a chance in the early '90s, and he was good in a supporting role in Bugsy (1991). But even after that he was still doing nothing but no-budget projects with little or no distribution. To this younger generation he is now known probably primarily as the recurring role of father to Ross and Monica on the hit sitcom "Friends" or as one of the minor players in Danny Ocean's crews for Soderbergh's Ocean's 11 (2001) and Ocean's 12 (2004). He doesn't have a heck of a lot of screentime in any of them, and the same goes for the recently released Ocean's 13 (2007) - though there at least his character is key to the plot this time around and even though much of his performance is lying around in a bed he does have a more highlighted role this installment.

I always liked him on screen, and think it's too bad he faded away so quickly. It's nice that he's getting a little bit of notice again, but he was almost a big movie star for a while.





More from the '70s to come, including George Segal, Ryan O'Neal and Roy Scheider! Plus '80s stars like Steve Guttenberg and Treat Williams! Stay tuned...

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Roy Scheider

Starting with the violent pimp in Klute (1971 - Pakula), then the partner in The French Connection (1972 - Friedkin) - netting Roy a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Academy Awards, just as good starring in its Hackman-less unofficial sequel The Seven-Ups (1973 - Philip D'Antoni), to the underseen The Outside Man (1972 - Jacques Deray), and a little cult flick probably nobody ever heard of called Jaws (1975), Roy Scheider was incredibly successful in the first half of the 1970s. And he stayed pretty damn hot with Marathon Man (1976 - Schlesinger), Billy Friedkin's decent but ignored reworking of Wages of Fear called Sorcerer (1977), begrudgingly signing on for only the first sequel in Jaws 2 (1978) - which still managed to do healthy boxoffice despite the fall-off in quality, Jonathan Demme's solid Hitchcock ode Last Embrace (1979) and capping it off with Bob Fosse's thinly-veiled nightmare-stylized autobiography All That Jazz (1979) which even earned him an Oscar nomination as Best Actor (the year Marathon Man co-star Hoffman finally won for Kramer vs. Kramer). By just about any standard, that was a monster decade for an actor.

It's a shame the '80s weren't as kind to him, with Blue Thunder (1983) being the best of the bunch. The unnecessary but watchable sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) and Elmore Leonard's 52 Pick-Up (1986) are all OK for what they are, and Roy always does his best. But most of the rest of what he did in the decade was anywhere from forgettable to dreadful (Still of the Night, Night Game, Cohen & Tate, Listen to Me), and none of them made a dent at the boxoffice (other than Blue Thunder, which did respectable business but became a hit on video). He never made a real smooth transition into older supporting character actor in the industry's eyes in the '90s. Though I think he's fantastic in The Russia House (1990 - Fred Schepisi), Naked Lunch (1991 - Cronenberg) and Romeo is Bleeding (1993 - Peter Medak), he has been used sparingly since then. I understand why he took that silly Spielberg-produced "SeaQuest DSV" TV show, but it was pretty cheesy Sci-Fi stuff. Now you'll see him pop up in dreck like The Punisher every once in a while.

Sad. He was way frickin' cool back in the day.

George Segal

Segal had some real success in the second half of the '60s, with starring roles in the POW flick King Rat (1965 - Bryan Forbes), the excellent spy flick The Quiller Memorandum (1966), tracking Rod Steiger's serial killer in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968 - Jack Smight), and of course memorably co-starring along side Burton, Taylor, and Sandy Dennis in Mike Nichols' knockout Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), earning a Best Supporting Actor nod. But it was in the 1970s that he became an outright movie star for a while.

George is wonderful in the dramedy Loving (1970 - Irvin Kershner), adeptly plays Romantic Comedy with Babara Streisand in The Owl & the Pussycat (1970 - Herbert Ross) and shows his full comedic brilliance in Carl Reiner's dark farce Where's Poppa? (1970) where he tries to give his annoying mother Ruth Gordon a heart attack. And that was just 1970! He followed with a gritty turn as an addict in Born to Win (1971), had fun with Bob Redford in the caper flick The Hot Rock (1972 - Peter Yates), could have been Oscar nominated for his work in Mazursky's Blume in Love (1973) and/or Melvin Frank's A Touch of Class (1973) - his co-star in the latter, Glenda Jackson, was nominated and won that year.

Of course he intersects with Elliott Gould in Altman's California Split (1974), but he also tried Sci-Fi in The Terminal Man (1974), parody in The Black Bird (1975), a con comedy Western with Goldie Hawn The Dutchess & the Dirtwater Fox (1976) and thrillers in Russian Roulette (1975) and Rollercoaster (1977). But I think clearly his greatest strength was in comedy, and in the second half of the decade he finished off with a couple good ones in Fun with Dick & Jane (1977) with Jane Fonda and Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978) with Jacqui Bisset and Robert Morley. But while most did respectably at the boxoffice and during this period Segal was a regular on the talkshow circuit with a very charming manner and his banjo, his star seemed to be waning.

In the '80s the comedies all fell flat and his phone simply stopped ringing. He tried to turn his love of the banjo and Dixieland jazz into a sitcom called "Take Five" (1987), but it was cancelled after only two episodes! He fared a little better (how could he have done worse?) the next year playing an intrepid insurance investigator solving crimes in "Murphy's Law", but it was cancelled after half a season on the air. He shows up as the cad who impregnated Kirstie Ally in Look Who's Talking (1989), but into the '90s he was apparently persona non grata to casting agents. In the middle of the decade he got a couple good shots, as in a terrific cameo in Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995) and as Ben Stiller's adopted father in David O. Russell's modern farce Flirting with Disaster (1996). This led finally to a measure of success as a supporting player in the sitcom "Just Shoot Me", starring Laura San Giacomo and David Spade, which ran for six full seasons (1997-2003). But from about 1966 to 1976, the guy was a bonafide movie star.

Ryan O'Neal

Ryan was a TV star coasting on his good looks in the primetime soap opera "Peyton Place" (1964-1969), and after the series ended he made the leap to the big screen. He had a megahit almost right out of the gate in the extremely popular and extremely silly and overwrought Love Story (1970 - Arthur Hiller), where his Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV falls for Ali McGraw who is stricken with a terminal illness and teaches him the bitersweet lesson that "love means never having to say you're sorry". Gag. "Peyton Place" was Tennessee Williams by comparison, but it did make O'Neal an instantly bankable star. He followed that up with two very good films: Blake Edwards' underrated Western The Wild Rovers (1971) with William Holden and Peter Bogdanovich's madcap loveletter to Bringing Up Baby in the charming farce What's Up, Doc? (1971) with Streisand (the knock at Love Story's most famous line at the end of the film is classic all by itself). O'Neal is terrific again in The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) and especially Bogdanovich's Depression-era con comedy Paper Moon (1973) where his daughter and co-star Tatum earned her Oscar. His next project was Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), where Stanley trades in on O'Neal's handsome persona for the vacant title cad. Quite a first half a the decade.

The rest of the '70s were less successful. He and Tatum teamed with Bogdanovich again for Nickelodeon (1976), but the spark and wit were glaringly absent this time and the movie was a huge flop. Like Gould, O'Neal was recruited for A Bridge Too Far (1977) but likewise didn't really benefit from it. Walter Hill's The Driver (1978) is an interesting take on the emerging action genre, purposefully keeping the characters only as archetypes, but it was a bit ahead of its time and it doesn't all quite come together despite good work from Bruce Dern and nifty stunt driving. O'Neal, probably sensing the heat was off of him, agreed to do a Love Story sequel in 1978, Oliver's Story, with Candice Bergen the new love of the sad sack's life. While probably no worse a movie than the original (certainly no better), it did definitely not have anywhere near the level of phenomenal success the first one did. He finished the decade re-teaming with Streisand for the boxing romance The Main Event (1979)...and nobody much cared.

O'Neal was notorious all through the decade, in the good movies and the bad, for his torrid love affairs with his leading ladies (excepting Tatum O'Neal - no Chinatown action going on there). That all stopped as the '80s came around because he hooked up with pal Lee Majors' wife Farrah Fawcett who left the Six Million Dollar Man for Ryan. It's a good thing he was more or less happy in that regard, because his film career all but evaporated in the '80s. When the Bogdanovich-ish Chances Are (1989 - Emile Ardolino) and Irreconciliable Differences (1984 - Charles Shyer) are your best efforts of the decade and neither one makes twelve bucks at the boxoffice, you know you're looking at a career in free fall. He did some forgettably bad flicks during the decade as well as one unforgettably bad movie in Norman Mailer's notorious Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987) - though it does belong in the so-terrible-it's-mesmerizing category.

He and Farrah had a decent little sitcom in the early '90s called "Good Sports" that didn't get half a chance, but might have resurrected both of their careers had it caught on. It didn't, and soon Ryan and Farrah's on again/off again possibly abusive relationship playing out in the tabloids was the only way O'Neal's name was ever heard. These days he shows up rarely (Zero Effect being the only decent role he's had in the last fifteen years), but for a time he was a true golden boy, and when the role suited him he could really excel. Those days are long, long gone.

Ben Gazzara

A young Gazzara was impressive in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) as the criminal Jimmy Stewart's lawyer was attempting to defend, but despite that notice and steady work in TV and film throughout the 1960s, Ben didn't hit his stride until the 1970s. And not that he was ever a superstar, but he became one of the actors John Cassavetes turned to for his groundbreaking independent films and seemed to finally translate his early promise on stage and screen into fine work. Gazzara and Cassavetes had met doing a cameo together in the comedy If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969), then John cast him in his next movie he wrote and directed, Husbands (1970), co-starring Cassavetes himself and Peter Falk. But while it was the greatest role of his career to that point, it didn't immediately bring film roles.

He appeared in a bunch of television projects, the best of them being the mini-series "QB VII" (1974), a WWII era courtroom drama with the likes of John Gielgud, Anthony Quale, Leslie Caron, Anthony Hopkins and reuniting with Anatomy of a Murder co-star Lee Remick. The movie was nominated for many Emmy Awards, but Gazzara was left out of the fun. He worked with Cassavetes again in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1977), was part of the all-star cast of Voyage of the Damned (1976 - Sturat Rosenberg) and in Bogdanovich's Saint Jack (1979). All are top-flight performances, though they brought little in the way of money or notability with the moneymen in Hollywood.

I love him in Bogdanovich's They All Laughed (1981) playing a detective romancing the target he's supposed to be watching for her jealous husband - but when it's Audrey Hepburn, who could blame him? He was also part of one of the most infamous and odd duds in film history, one of those (also Larry Olivier and Toshirô Mifune) rounded up for the Korean War would-be epic Inchon (1981 - Terence Young), funded by Reverend Moon's cult Unification Church at a tag of somewhere around $45-million (and thems 1980 dollars), and bringing in less than $2-million. He does good Cassavetes-like character work in the Italian production Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981) based on Charles Bukowski's writings, but all he gets for the rest of the '80s are low-budget foreign flicks or made-for-TV stuff - though one of the notables is the 1985 TV movie "An Early Frost", one of the first mainstream pieces to deal with AIDS. The only Hollywood role he really nabs is as the heavy in the Patrick Swayze potboiler Road House (1989). Yeah. From Anatomy of a Murder and Husbands to Road House.

He does decent little supporting roles these days with a new breed of independent filmmaker, as in Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Gallo's Buffalo '66 (1998), Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998), The Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski (1998) and Lars von Trier's Dogville (2004). But during that period he was working with Cassavetes and Bogdanovich, he was one of the most interesting presences on screen. While it lasted. And though he was never in a blockbuster or Oscar winning film, he certainly feels like a relic from the 1970s.

Jacqueline Bisset

One of the screen's all-time beauties, Bisset started her international career in the second half of the '60s. UK-born but speaking perfect French thanks to her mother, she was noticed by Roman Polanski who used her in Cul-de-Sac (1966). She then had supporting roles in Casino Royale (1967), Two for the Road (1967 - Stanley Donen), with Frankie Sinatra in The Detective (1968 - Gordon Fouglas) and with Steve McQueen in Bullitt (1968 - Peter Yates). She's one of the stewardesses in the all-star prototypical disaster pic Airport (1970), which further raised her already ascending profile.

But rather than try and turn that little bit of clout into Hollywood gold, she seemed to chose work by the director, not the budget or likelihood it would make her a household name in the midwestern United States. She co-starred in the thriller The Mephisto Waltz (1971 - Paul Wendkos), Paul Newman's daughter in John Huston's satirical Western The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), with Ryan O'Neal is the slick caper flick The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973 - Bud Yorkin), as a movie star in Truffaut's playful movie in a movie movie Day for Night (1973), a French mix of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and James Bond with Jean-Paul Belmondo in The Magnificent One (1973 - Philippe de Broca), and one of the many all-star suspects to Albert Finney's Hercule Poirot aboard Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

The rest of the '70s had her continue to mix American projects with international ones. After a highlighted cameo along side Chuck Bronson in J. Lee Thompson's St. Ives (1976), she had a couple roles that brought her some mainstream recognition. In The Deep (1977) with Nick Nolte and Louis Gosset trying to beat Robert Shaw to buried treasure in an adaptation of a Robert Benchley novel, Bisset's nipples steal the entire film after her often wet T-shirt showed off her lovely chest. It may not seem like much now, but for a generation of lads The Deep and that Farrah Fawcet poster with her in the red bathing suit were the first sexual experiences we had. Perhaps I've said too much? After that notoriety, she starred as a thinley-veiled Jackie Kennedy to Anthony Quinn's Aristole Onasis-like character in The Greek Tycoon (1978). Nothing but slick tabloid crud, but it got noticed anyway. Her last great film of the decade was also George Segal's: the fun dark comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?.

After putting a nail into the coffin of the disaster genre she helped birth with the dreadful When Time Ran Out... (1980) with Paul Newman, William Holden, and other stars trying to escape an erutping volcano and then taking the same cult money Ben Gazzara did for Inchon, she actually had a few decent flicks left in her before she faded away in the latter part of the '80s. She produced and starred in Rich & Famous (1981), a catty chick flick that wound up as the great George Cuckor's last film. Pretty standard soap opera stuff, but she and Candy Bergen have good roles anyway. Then comes Class (1983), as the December part of a May/December romance with Andrew McCarthy - who she doesn't realize is the best friend of her prep school son Rob Lowe. Again, formula stuff, but Bisset does well with what little there is to work with. And she's always sexier than Hell. Her last great film is one of John Huston's best: with Albert Finney in Under the Volcano (1984) - how Albert went unnominated that year is still a mystery.

Class and Rich & Famous started her career playing the "older woman", which she did in a slew of mostly forgettable movies into the 1990s (do have to mention the campy fun of Paul Bartel's 1989 Scenes of the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills). Still beautiful today in her sixties she works regularly, though none of it even overseas the caliber of stuff she was getting in the 1970s. A little indie called The Sleepy Time Gal (2001) proved she still has serious acting chops, but the opportunities to do much of anything on screen that's worthwhile are few and far between. But I still have fantasies about scuba diving to this day.

Elizabeth McGovern

McGovern was not yet twenty when she got her big breaks into the business. She was attending Julliard when she was cast in Redford's Ordinary People (1980), a good supporting role as the girl Tim Hutton's depressed High Schooler falls for. Right after that she was swept into the huge period drama of Milos Forman's Ragtime (1981) as one of the co-stars in that massive production. That role earned her a nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and a new star was apparently born. Her next was the convoluted romantic comedy Lovesick (1983) with Dudley Moore and Alec Guinness before being swallowed up into another large scale period drama: Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in America (1984), playing the grown-up object of DeNiro's character Noodles' obsession. She also played opposite Sean Penn in the charming WWII romance Racing with the Moon (1984 - Richard Benjamin). That's not too shabby a start to a career. And after those five films she was still not yet twenty-four!

She returned to the New York stage in favor of fighting it out for the best roles in Hollywood, though still appearing in films periodically like the Hitchcockian thriller The Bedroom Window (1987 - Curtis Hanson), the John Hughes attempt at a more adult dramadey She's Having a Baby (1988) with Kevin Bacon, and as a reconstructed Mickey Rourke's love interest in Walter Hill's solid B-movie Noir Johnny Handsome (1989). She has a nice role in Volker Schlöndorff's adaptation of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1990) and in a rather good little black comedy too often forgotten called A Shock to the System (1990) with Michael Caine, then a little cameo role in Soderberghs' King of the Hill (1993). But ever since then, she shows up very rarely. I liked her a lot in Ordinary People, Ragtime, Racing with the Moon and Once Upon A Time in America and can't help but wonder what her career in the movies might have become if she had wanted to seriously pursue it. However in a time capsule of the early '80s film scene, Elizabeth would have to be included as a young force to be reckoned with.

Alan Arkin

Arkin started out as a successful folk singer in the late '50s then moved to the stage of Chicago's famed Second City comedy troupe before becoming a movie star. For a while, anyway. Alan exploded onto the screen in Norman Jewison's Cold War satirical farce The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! (1966) as the leader of a Soviet sub accidentally run aground off the coast of New England and mistaken by the townspeople as an attack. Arkin is terrific and pulled off the rare feat of getting a Best Actor nomination in his film debut (Paul Scofield won for A Man for All Seasons)! Then he shifted gears completely to play a menacing psychopath terrorizing a blind Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark (1967 - Terry Young), and the comedian was very effectively creepy. After the unfortunate duty of trying to play the character Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin should have watched this one very carefully before signing on for his re-make) it was another Oscar nominated turn at the center of Carson McCullers' heartbreaking The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968 - Robert Ellis Miller), and again Arkin showed-off his range as the gentle deaf-mute. He gives another fine character performance in Hiller's forgtotten Popi (1969), then he got the role of a lifetime as Yossarian in Mike Nichols' excellent but unfairly maligned Catch-22 (1970). Buck Henry's script and Nichols' direction really capture the tone and spirit of Joseph Heller's masterpiece. Obviously that extremely thick and dense novel couldn't be translated fully, but they really captured it brilliantly on screen. Arkin heads an all-star cast, and is the heart and soul of the film. He is Yossarian.

He cashed in all those successes for a chance to direct, adapting Jules Feifer's dark comedy Little Murders (starring Elliott Gould). It does OK with the critics, but it's a miss at the boxoffice. Arkin is great again as the lead in Neil Simon's The Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972 - Gene Saks), then Freebie & the Bean (1974) with James Caan. Not only is his chemestry with Caan great, but also in the few scenes with Valerie Harper as his wife. Alan is in support of the nice little comedy Hearts of the West (1975 - Howard Zieff) and quite good as Dr. Sigmund Freud trying to cure Sherlock Holmes of his cocaine addiction in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976 - Herbert Ross). Arkin and Peter Falk are incredible together in Andrew Bergman's insane romp The In-Laws (1979 - Arthur Hiller), but his star was fading as the next few projects bombed in huge ways: Simon (1980) which feels like it was made about a decade too late, Improper Channels (1981) a little movie that feels about five years behind the curve, and The Return of Captain Invincible (1983) about a retired superhero who had to go underground when he was suspected of being a Commie - also a movie out of step with the times. That was it for Arkin as movie star.

It took him a while, but in the '90s he settled into older character parts. The best role he'd had since his '70s heyday came in Glengarry Geln Ross (1992 - James Foley), but he's quite good these days in movies like Mother Night (1996 - Keith Gordon), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997 - George Armitage), The Slums of Beverly Hills (1998 - Tamara Jenkins) and Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001 - Jill Sprecher). His late career went into the stratosphere last year with Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and some forty years after his first nomination he won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actor as the drug-addicted unconventional grandfather who is never afraid to speak his mind.

This belated recognition is fantastic and I hope it translates into a string of great roles in the twilight of his career (he's now seventy-three), but in the late '60s and early '70s Arkin was tapped into the zeitgeist and his deadpan comic demeanor as well as his ability to stretch dramatically made him a star.

Jimmy Caan

The White man's afro. The chest hair. The machismo. James Caan was a superstar in the '70s. He started with some really good supporting roles in the '60s, including the claustrophobic thriller Lady in a Cage (1964) terrorizing Olivia de Havilland, riding sawed-off shotgun in the Howard Hawks oater El Dorado (1966) with Duck Wayne and Bob Mitchum, and with Robert Duvall and Shirley Knight in Coppola's understated The Rain People (1969). Then came his time to shine.

In '71 he suited up as the tragic Brian Piccolo to Billy Dee Williams' Gale Sayers in the made-for-TV flick "Brian's Song". And while that raised his profile a bit, he became a true household name as part of the ensemble of The Godfather (1972 - Coppola). Playing the hot-headed, philandering Sonny Corleone who is gunned down at a tollbooth on the causeway, Caan rode the phenomenal success of the film like everybody else involved, and he was nominated as Best Supporting Actor with his co-stars Pacino and Duvall (Joel Grey in Cabaret won out over all of them). Next he starred in the gritty low-key romance Cinderella Liberty (1973 - Mark Rydell) as a sailor involved with Marsha Mason's hooker and her young son who he bonds with. Caan followed that with The Gambler (1974 - Karl Reisz) as an addict for action who keeps on spiraling downward trying to hit more and more dangerous longshots (love the final shot as he looks at himself bloody in the mirror of that cheap Harlem whorehouse). Sonny's brutal killing in the first flick left him out of all but a flashback scene in The Godfather Part II (1974), but that year he co-starred with Alan Arkin in one of the early attempts at the cop buddy genre in Freebie & the Bean (1974 - Richard Rush), and though it suffers from some tone problems the chemistry between him and Arkin is top notch.

He signed on to romance and bicker with Streisand in her Fanny Brice sequel Funny Lady (1975 - Herbert Ross), but there was no charm in that one. That year also found him in the near-future corporate bloodsport of Rollerball (1975 - Norman Jewison) and a double-crossed espionage expert in Sam Peckinpah's convoluted mess The Killer Elite (1975). He intersects with Mr. Gould in that period comedy I like but nobody else seems to (especially when it was released) called Harry & Walter Go to New York (1976 - Mark Rydell), also co-starring Diane Keaton and Michael Caine. He too joined Gould and Ryan O'Neal to A Bridge Too Far (1977 - Attenborough). Jimmy also stars in Frenchman Claude Lelouch's odd Western-set drama Another Man, Another Chance (1977) with Genevičve Bujold emigrating to the American frontier. But none of these projects were making any money or garnering the kind of critical acclaim he had just after The Godfather. Pakula's Comes a Horseman (1978) with Caan part of a love triangle with Jane Fonda and Jason Robards is another one I like much more than its reputation, but it didn't help kick-start his sagging career. He's actually quite good in Chapter Two (1979 - Robert Moore), standing in for Neil Simon in the story of how the playwrite made the difficult transition falling in love again after the death of his wife, with Marsha Mason in essence playing herself. But while Mason got an Oscar nomination (losing to Sally Field as Norma Rae), Caan did not make the cut.

The '80s opened with Jimmy trying to take a hold of things himself, starring in and making his directorial debut with Hide in Plain Sight (1980). It's competently helmed, and Caan is good as the man searching for his family, but yet again it didn't score at the boxoffice. He's very strong in Michael Mann's directorial debut Thief (1981), but it doesn't propel him back tot he A-list. He finishes up this period of his career with Lelouch's epic Bolero (1981) and a flat Neil Simon-wannabe romantic comedy Kiss Me Goodbye (1982 - Robert Mulligan) as a ghost haunting his ex Sally Field and her new lover Jeff Bridges.

Then he retired for about five years. He resurfaced at the end of the '80s in Coppola's Gardens of Stone (1987), where he gives a decent performance but the movie doesn't quite come together. Then he tried to see if he'd fit in the Sci-Fi action genre that was so damned popular by then with Alien Nation (1988). It's mid-level Sci-Fi, but Mandy Patinkin and Terence Stamp really steal the movie under make-up playing two of the alien Visitors, and the movie does mild business. Caan's real comeback is in Rob Reiner's adaptation of Stephen King's Misery (1990) as a trapped novelist imprisoned and tortured into bringing back a favorite character of an obsessed fan. Kathy Bates won the Oscar as the nutball, and Caan doesn't really have another lead role afterwards. Throughout the '90s he does become a steadily working character actor, and sometimes he flashes some of the star-quality brilliance that made him in the '70s (see especially the finale of Lars von Trier's Dogville - wow!). But oh to be back in the era of open shirts and gold chains matted in handfuls of chest hair....

Julie Christie

For about ten years from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s, there was no bigger actress in the business than Julie Christie. Heartbreakingly beautiful, she was first noticed as the chief love interest in John Schlesinger's "angry young man" flick Billy Liar (1963) opposite Tom Courtenay. Just two years later she was a super star with the release of Schlesinger's Darling (1965) as a sexually liberated model who's jet-setting lifestyle catches up with her, and of course as Lara Antipova the object of Doctor Zhivago's (1965 - David Lean) love. She was nominated for and won Best Actress at that year's Oscars - for Darling, not Zhivago. Not bad for a twenty-four-year-old.

Those first successes were followed by Truffaut's take on Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1966), the center of three suitors' affections in the wonderful Far from the Madding Crowd (1967 - Schlesinger), the title character of Richard Lester's dated but interesting Petulia (1968), and another period romance with Alan Bates in Joe Losely's The Go-Between (1970). Then she shifted gears a bit and was outstanding as an opium-addicted madame braving the wilderness and her business partner in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), garnering her another Best Actress nomination (Jane Fonda won for Klute). That was followed by her grieving mother who may or may not be getting messages beyond the grave from her daughter in Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973). Then this boom period of her career concluded in Hal Ashby's Shampoo (1975) as a more adult and even more liberated version of the character she played in Darling. She also has a memorable and funny cameo in Altman's Nashville (1975), where the character Karen Black plays can't believe the skinny woman with the frizzy hair is supposed to be some sort of movie star. But boy, was she ever. She also made news in this era in the roles she turned down. As one of the most sought-after actresses of the day, she had offers for Rosemary's Baby, The Godfather and Chinatown, all of which she declined (much to the delight of Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton, and Faye Dunaway).



After Shampoo Christie's career began to stutter. The would-be horror thriller Demon Seed (1977 - Donald Cammell) is beyond silly, and while she is beautiful and charming in Warren Beatty & Buck Henry's re-working of Here Comes Mr. Jordan in Heaven Can Wait (1978), it's not a role that required a heck of a lot from her either. After taking a few years off she resurfaces in the underseen Memoirs of a Survivor (1981 - David Gladwell), then has one of her last great roles of the first half of her career in the Mercahnt/Ivory production of Heat & Dust (1983) - though the story is told in flashbacks and a young Greta Scacchi really steals the film in the period parts. But for Christie, who was born and grew up in India, the project must hold a special place in her heart.

The rest of the '80s hold no high-profile American projects of any kind, a cameo-sized role in Sidney Lumet's disappointing Power (1986) being the only part she even shows up for here in the States. She works sparingly until the second half of the '90s, when she begins to take smaller supporting roles. One is a complete waste in the dud fantasy flick Dragonheart (1996 - Rob Cohen), but she's as compelling as ever as Queen Gertrude in Kenny Branagh's somehow still underappreciated Hamlet (1996). The next year had a brief but magnificent return to form as a leading lady in Alan Rudolph's Afterglow [size=](1997)[/size], playing an unhappy wife married to the philandering Nick Nolte character who decides turnabout is fair play and seduces the husband (Johnny Lee Miller) of his latest mistress (Lara Flynn Boyle). Julie's performance is full of the same sexiness and sharp wit as her work decades earlier in the likes of Darling and Shampoo, and she is rewarded with a nomination as Best Actress (the year Helen Hunt wins for As Good As It Gets). If that had wound up being her last leading role, it was a great one, and shows that had she been actively pursuing good roles all along since the late '70s she would have had twice as many top-flight performances to her credit.

She mostly appears in what are basically cameos, such as Hal Hartley's fun allegory No Such Thing (2001), one of the schoolmasters in the background of Hogwart's in Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), somewhere in the middle of Wolfgang Petersen's overblown Troy (2004), very strong in only a couple key scenes of The Secret Life of Words (2006 - Isabel Coixet) and memorable as Kate Winslet's disapproving mother not initially charmed by Depp's antics and potentially scandalous attraction to her family in Finding Neverland (2004 - Marc Forster).

This year came a very welcome surprise in Away from Her (2007). Directed by Julie's two-time co-star Sarah Polley (No Such Thing & The Secret Life of Words), it is a fantastic adaptation of an Alice Munro short story. Christie stars as a woman with Alzheimer's Disease, with Gordon Pinsent as her husband who has to deal with the disease and the pain of committing her to a full-time care facility. Julie gives one of the best, most nuanced, effective performances of her career. And she's still achingly beautiful. It's easily one of the best films I have seen this year (already seen it three times theatrically) and I hope it gets enough attention that next year come awards time she is at least nominated for a whole slew of them. She certainly deserves it.

She's now in her middle sixties, and Away from Her gives me hope that there are still great roles left to play. But for a decade or so she was the actress on both sides of the Pond.

Jill Clayburgh

Her window of superstardom wasn't open terribly long, but in the late 1970s Jill Clayburgh was one of the hottest actresses of the moment. Her look and style helped to define that era as a counterpoint to the impossibly unattainable goddesses like Farrah Fawcet, one that women could identify with strongly and men could fall for, too. A successful New York stage actress, she got her break into feature films in Ernie Lehman's adaptation of Phil Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1972), and had good supporting parts opposite Ryan O'Neal & Jacqui Bisset in The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) and George Segal in The Terminal Man (1974). But her star really began to shine a few years later in a couple of comedies: wooing Gene Wilder aboard the Hitchcockian comedy Silver Streak (1976) and in a romantic triangle with pro football players Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson in Semi-Tough (1977 - Michael Ritchie). I think initially she was kind of seen as a poor man's Diane Keaton - and maybe a rich man's too, as she was in a long-term relationship with Al Pacino in the first half of the decade. And though Keaton and Clayburgh have similar looks and ranges in the '70s, Jill has a kind of vulnerability I find unique to her.

She really proved who she was in 1978 starring in Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman. It is one of the definitive female performances of the decade, in one of the first mainstream attempts to look at the effect of divorce in America. The stigmas that were attached back when the practice was comparatively rare were still very much in place in the '70s, but the divorce rates were rising at an extreme rate. Clayburgh is fantastic as the woman who is surprised she has to rediscover herself at a point in her life when she thought everything was set. Some of the dramatics are a bit dated, but Jill's performance still towers. She was rightly Oscar nominated...though unluckily for her this was the year of Coming Home and The Deer Hunter, and Jane Fonda took home the statue as Best Actress. But there was no denying Clayburgh was a star now.

The next year was another strong performance, though basically a comic take on some of the themes from An Unmarried Woman. In the James L. Brooks scripted Starting Over (1979 - Alan J. Pakula), Clayburgh is charming and sympathetic being romanced by Burt Reynolds (in one of his best and most often overlooked performances) who is still kinda hung up on his ex, played by Candice Bergen. Some great Jim Brooks moments throughout, Jill captures the awkwardness of her character expertly, and for the second year in a row she was Oscar nominated as Best Actress (Sally Field's year for Norma Rae). She continued this personal success into the early '80s, in Bertolucci's La Luna, opposite Michael Douglas in It's My Turn, and Walter Matthau as Supreme Court Justices in First Monday in October. Even though the movies were far from successes financially, Jill's work was still very good - though you could say she kept hitting the same notes too often, now.

She was excellent again in a dramatic turn as a professional woman trying to kick her dependency on prescription drugs in I'm Dancing As Fats As I Can (1982 - Jack Hofsiss), but her next was Costa-Gavras' follow-up to Missing called Hannah K. (1983). It's a sincere movie that uses the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a backdrop for a courtroom piece, and while Jill gives it her all she is a bit miscast and the film feels adrift, biting off more than it can chew and not focusing particularly well on any of the themes. She tried another kind of genre with the thriller Where Are the Children? (1986), but it's not a terribly impressive production and Clayburgh's career as a leading actress was more or less done right there.

But since 1979 she has been married to award-winning playwrite David Rabe (Hurlyburly), and she seems content to let the film career go and return to New York and the theatre. She'll show up every now and again on television ("Law & Order" fans will likely remember a strong 1998 episode where she played a divorce attorney bitterly fighting with another '70s relic in Tony Roberts) or a little role in a movie, but to spot her in forgettable sitcom-level dreck like Fools Rush In (1997) and you almost forget what a force she was for a brief period of time. She did have one great return to the big screen in the indie picture Never Again (2001 - Eric Schaeffer), and her performance is like seeing what the women she played in her best '70s work might be going through as fifty-somethings today. It has a good role for Jeffrey Tambor too, but while they shine doing great character work the overall movie is pretty flat. Still, it was great to see her get a chance to actually act again.

Marsha Mason

Like Clayburgh, Marsha Mason is very representative of the late '70s and an everywoman who was trying to find her way in the changing society. She had an easy gift for comedy tinged with drama. She also had an unfair advantage in that her husband, playwrite and screenwriter Neil Simon, was at the height of his career while she was available to play the leads in the material he was producing. But even before she starred in a few Neil Simon-penned films, she was making a name for herself. The hooker with a heart of gold is about the oldest cliché you can find, but she plays it well and believably in Cinderella Liberty (1973 - Mark Rydell) with James Caan as the sailor who falls for her and her son. She was Oscar nominated for her work, the year Glenda Jackson won for A Touch of Class opposite George Segal. And Mason co-starred with Segal that year as well, in Mazursky's Blume in Love (1973).

She doesn't appear in a film for a few years after that, concentrating on her stage career and new marriage to Simon. Before she emerged as the Neil Simon leading lady of the big screen, she is very effective in Robert Wise's horror thriller Audrey Rose (1977) - kind of The Exorcist infused with reincarnation rather than Satan. No hint of the comedic in Marsha's performance as a very concerned and very scared mother. But that performance was very much overshadowed by The Goodbye Girl (1977 - Herbert Ross). As a single mother who has been burned one too many times by vain and flighty actors, she is of course perfect nailing the Simon-rhythms and comedically pitched frantic rage as she falls for Richard Dreyfuss' vain and flighty actor in spite of herself. It garners Oscar nominations for Picture, Original Screenplay, the precocious Quinn Cummings as Supporting Actress, Dreyfuss as Best Actor, and Marsha as Best Actress. Only Dreyfuss wins (at the time the youngest to ever win Best Actor), Marsha and Neil losing out to the Annie Hall juggernaut. But it was crystal clear Mason was inherently likeable, and that Neil would continue to supply material that was perfect for her.

The following year found Marsha part of the all-star cast in the Simon parody The Cheap Detective (1978 - Robert Moore) starring Peter Falk in a funny mishmash of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. It's not as consistently hilarious as Simon's previous spoof Murder by Death (1976), but still a good time - especially if you know the Bogey movies by heart. Then Mason was solid in the Simon-less terminal illness tearjerker Promises in the Dark (1979), but more crucially she reunites with Cinderella Liberty leading man Jimmy Caan in Neil Simon's Chapter Two (1979 - Robert Moore), the thinly-veiled account of how Mason and Simon met after the death of his first wife. Mason gets her third Best Actress nomination for retelling her own story (losing to Sally Field in Norma Rae - a part Mason passed on), and she netted her fourth nod for her and Neil's next pairing Only When I Laugh (1981 - Glenn Jordan) with Kristy McNichol and James Coco. Mason and Simon material team with director Herbert Ross once more for Max Dugan Returns (1983), with Jason Robards, Donald Sutherland, and the screen debut of Matthew Broderick. All the witty Simonisms are still in tact, but this one is a bit lighter and less focused than the previous entries, and the brief era of Simon/Mason pairings on the big screen ends...as did their marriage in 1981.

Marsha is the romantic lead to Clint Eastwood in his Heartbreak Ridge (1986), but she basically ends her career as a leading lady in films. She now spends most of her professional life on the New York stage, surfacing occasionally for small supporting roles in the movies. But if you don't remember her form duds like I Love Trouble (1994) or Nick of Time (1995), that's understandable. Maybe if say David Mamet and Rebecca Pidgeon ever split, she's got a chance to move in there and get some work again?

Richard Benjamin

Can't say that he was ever a "star" in the same respect say Alan Arkin was for a while, but Richard Benjamin was definitely a sought after actor in the '70s. After of a bit of mild TV work in the '60s including co-starring with his wife actress Paula Prentiss in the short-lived series "He & She", Benjamin was tapped to star in the adaptation of Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus (1969) with up-and-coming '70s star Ali McGraw. From there he was recruited for a supporting part in Mike Nichols' all-star Catch-22 (1970) and as a jerk of a husband to Carrie Snodgress in the sadly forgotten dark comedy Diary of a Mad Hosewife (1970). Yet another good little movie that may be a bit dated but shouldn't have been lost along the way is The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1970) where Benjamin stars as a neurotic and sympathetic peeping tom searching for love and a way out of his boring life. He starred in another Philip Roth adaptation in Portnoy's Complaint (1972), but it's not nearly as successful in the transition as Goodbye, Columbus was. Richard was excellent in the clever murder mystery The Last of Shelia (1973) along with the likes of James Mason, James Coburn, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon and a young Ian McShane in a great script witten by Anthony Perkins and Broadway superstar Stephen Sondheim. That same year he was the unlikely hero in Michael Crichton's Westworld (1973), a near-future amusement park turned horror show when Yul Brynner and the other robots lead a murderous revolt. This great period of his acting career really ends with The Sunshine Boys (1975) where Benjamin is perfect as the put-upon nephew of one half of a pair of legendary Vaudevillians (Walter Matthau and George Burns) who he must get to stop their bickering and bury their old grudges long enough to appear in a television special.

The rest of the '70s finished with supporting roles in the dramedy House Calls (1978), an odd conspiracy thriller made for Australian television co-starring his wife called "No Room to Run" (1978), the hysterically obsessed and incompetent man jealous of a suave vampire in Love at First Bite (1979) and part of a large ensemble trying in vain to recapture the magic of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World in the watchable but forgettable Scavenger Hunt (1979) with appearances from the likes of Ruth Gordon, Roddy McDowall, Tony Randall, Scatman Crothers and Vincent Price to Dirk Benedict, Cleavon Little, James Coco, Meat Loaf and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The '80s start with a series of disappointments that feel like '70s cast-offs like The Last Married Couple in America (1980), How to Beat the High Co$t of Living (1980) and Buck Henry's unfunny dud First Family (1980) that despite an impeccable cast that includes Bob Newhart, Harvey Korman, Gilda Radner, Madeline Kahn, Rip Torn, Fred Willard, Buck Henry and Dick Benjamin can't manage three laughs in a hundred painful minutes. The last job he has that is even remotely successful for him as an actor is Saturday the 14th (1981), a mild horror comedy that hoped to do for haunted house movies what Airplane! had done for disaster pics. I liked it when I was twelve, but having seen it in recent years it really doesn't hold up very well. However, compared to First Family it's practically Young Frankenstein.



But Richard Benjamin was smart. He knew his career as a leading man and even a supporting player didn't have much of a shelf life, so in a move that was still fairly uncommon in that era he decided to move behind-the-scenes. He became a director, and right off the bat hit a cinematic home run with the wistful and brilliant period comedy My Favorite Year (1982) led by Peter O'Toole's Oscar-nominated turn as a sad and drunken Errol Flynn-type movie star given one more chance on a Sid Ceaser-like live TV sketch comedy show. Mark Linn-Baker plays the part Benjamin would have himself ten years before, and he proved right away he had a potentially successful second career. His next project in that chair was Racing with the Moon (1984), a WWII period romance starring Sean Penn, Elizabeth McGovern and Nic Cage. It was a mild success that at least earned good notices from critics if not a lot of box office. His third project was a bit of a disaster: City Heat (1984). A period comedy that wanted to be akin to The Sting only with a bit of gunplay starring two of the biggest screen icons of the day in Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds must have seemd like an instant classic on paper. Blake Edwards and Eastwood clashed and Benjamin stepped into the troubled production. There's a great supporting cast with the likes of Jane Alexander, Rip Torn, Richard Roundtree and Madeline Kahn, but the witless script and no consistency in tone sink the film. That and the stunt accident on the set that broke Reynolds' jaw and stopped production for weeks while he recovered. Despite that failure, Spielberg tapped him to helm The Money Pit (1986), a modernized slapstick take on Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House with burgeoning movie star Tom Hanks and escaping television star Shelley Long. I think it's a damn funny little movie, but it wasn't any kind of smash hit. He wasn't anywhere near the Hollywood A-list as a director again, though he continues to work in smaller projects and most of them are TV-movies these days. He made one that I thought was a fun action/comedy that deserved a better fate than it got: Downtown (1990) starring Anthony Edwards and Forest Whitaker. But mostly they've been middle-of-the-road and forgettable from a would-be thriller Little Nikita (1988) to clunky comedies like Made In America (1993), Milk Money (1994), My Stepmother Is An Alien (1988) and Marci X (2003) to ineffectual dramadies like Mermaids (1990) and Mrs. Winterbourne (1996).

In addition to his directing, he'll still appear in front of the camera every now and again such as Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997) and last year's bar mitzvah comedy Keeping Up with the Steins (2006), but from about 1970 to 1979 Richard Benjamin was definitely in-demand and wound up in a handful of good flicks. And he's still happily married to Paula Prentiss, who he wed forty-five years ago.

Steve Guttenberg

If you were a child of the '80s, Guttenberg didn't make no Bibles. For about five or six very concentrated years from 1982 to 1987, one of the most successful actors in Hollywood was Steve Guttenberg (really, it's true!), and to even say the name brings to mind the decade of the 1980s. After training for the stage including time with L.A.'s legendary improvisational troupe The Groundlings, Steve started working in pictures. When he was twenty he got a plum supporting role in the conspiracy thriller The Boys from Brazil (1978) as the first kill of the evil Nazis in that movie. After what might have been a career killer co-starring with Valerie Perrine and The Village People in the horribly horrible Disco Musical Can't Stop the Music (1980), he quickly erased that blemish from his resume when he played hockey player Jim Craig in the made-for-TV project "Miracle on Ice" (1981) starring Karl Malden as Herb Brooks coaching the U.S. Olympic team to surprise glory at Lake Placid. But it was when Barry Levinson cast him with other unknowns like Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, Tim Daly, Ellen Barkin, Kevin Bacon and Paul Reiser as a bunch of 1959 Baltimore guys who hang around the Diner (1982) that he really started getting noticed around town. His character is a centerpiece to the story as they are all gathering for his wedding...assuming his fiance can pass the "football quiz". Guttenberg played the shallow and selfish young man very well, and his comic timing seemed natural.

From there on he quickly became a bit of a star. He co-starred with Jason Robards, John Lithgow and JoBeth Williams in the landmark nuclear holocaust TV movie "The Day After" (1983), but it was the surprise hit of the patently dumb comedy Police Academy (1984) that made him. With a small budget and huge boxoffice returns, Guttenberg's affable cadet Mahoney leading a pack of misfit would-be officers for some reason or another was popular and spawned an almost immediate line of sequels. Steve was no fool and showed up for the payday of the first four flicks, but wisely left before they petered out completely a few entries later on cable TV. But he wasn't just going to sit back and be the Police Academy guy. Ron Howard cast him in Cocoon (1985) where his fisherman helps space aliens reel in their brothers from the ocean floor. It was a hit, and though the elder castmembers like Wilford Brimley, Don Ameche, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy were the real stars, Guttenberg's chemistry with Brian Dennehy and the barely clad E.T. Tahnee Welch were key ingredients to the film's success. And now he was attached to a hit that didn't have fart jokes and slapstick aimed at thirteen-year-old boys.

After trying to parlay his Officer Mahoney persona into the average comedy Bad Medicine (1985), he found himself in another big hit that played to all ages: Short Circuit (1986). A secret tactical prototype robot gets a magical personality after being struck by lightning, and dopey tech Guttenberg has to keep it out of the hands of the evil Military brass while romancing a fetching young lady (Brat Packer Ally Sheedy). Much like with the old folks and aliens of Cocoon, it was the mechanical co-star that stole the show, but again Guttenberg was in the right place at the right time. He tried to change his screen image in the Hitchcockian thriller The Bedroom Window (1987) as a man who may know too much after witnessing a murder through a neighborhood window and tried for a more adult romantic comedy in the dull Surrender (1987) with Sally Field and Michael Caine. But despite his best efforts, once again it was a family-friendly comedy that became the megahit: Three Men and a Baby (1987). Americanizing a French farce, the combo of a trio of bachelors played by Guttenberg, Ted Danson and Tom Selleck changing the poo-poo diapers of an adorable infant dropped on their doorstep was a colossal hit, the fourth highest moneymaker of the year.

But this is about where Steve's luck runs out. After a mess of a little comedy about a haunted hotel called High Spirits with Peter O'Toole and Daryl Hannah (no less than Neil Jordan wrote and directed this turkey!), he dutifully signed up for the inevitable sequels Cocoon: The Return (1988) and Three Men and a Little Lady (1990), neither of which lived up to the expectations of the originals. After a dour little indie comedy called Don't Tell Her It's Me (1990) a.k.a. The Boyfriend School with Jami Gertz and Shelly Long barely even got a release, Steve took a bit of a break from Hollywood. He focused on stage and charity work before resurfacing five years later as a supporting actor in the likes of Jodie Foster's Thanksgiving dramady Home for the Holidays (1995) and the Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen vehicle It Takes Two (1995). He's worked sparingly in the years since and his labor of love to bring James Kirkwood Jr.'s cult play and novel P.S. - Your Cat Is Dead (2002) to the big screen as director and star ended with it barely getting distributed at all. He had a small return to at least cult glory with a recurring and key role in the second season of "Veronica Mars" as the Mayor who turns out to be a creepy child molester with V.D. Quite a ways from Three Men and a Baby.

Certainly nobody will ever cast Steve Guttenberg as the lead in a major Hollywood feature again, but in the '80s he wound up accidentally starring in some beloved blockbusters.

GREAT job Holden!!!

I still think Caan should have won the Oscar for The Godfather.

One guy I'm afraid may be slipping into a similar category is Kevin Spacey.

Wow, great list Holden! I certainly hope you were working on this for longer than just today! That's a crazy amount of research.

Fantastic posts Pikey, it brought back some great memories of actors I used to like but as you say have dropped off the scene after quite a good start to there careers. you are a champion My only suggestion would be, I wish you would do this about once a week as it is a lot to read in one day, and give us time to discuss each person before you move onto the next.

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Katharine Ross

Katharine had been a working actor for a few years on television and small roles in a couple films including Shenandoah (1965) with Jimmy Stewart and The Singing Nun (1966) with Debbie Reynolds, but when she shows up part way through Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967) as the forbidden daughter of the older woman Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock has been having an affair with, you knew Ben was in trouble...and that you were looking at a couple new movie stars. Hoffman went on to have one of the greatest career runs ever for the next decade or so (see my thread HERE), and Katharine Ross too had a great run. Hers just didn't last as long.

She was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for The Graduate (losing to Estelle Parsons for Bonnie & Clyde) and after appearing as John Wayne's daughter in The Hellfighters (1968) she was in another instant classic: Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (1969 - George Roy Hill). Her Etta Place doesn't get as much screentime as Newman or Redford's title characters of course, but she is a key ingredient to the chemistry and the film's success. She co-starred with Bob Redford in another Western right away in Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (1970) and in an infamous bomb of a would-be drama with Jason Robards called Fools (1971). She also co-stars in a decent mystery called They Only Kill Their Masters (1972) with James Garner and Hal Holbrook as well as an odd French thriller Chance & Violence (1974) with Yves Montand.

None of those was anything approaching the status of The Graduate or Butch & Sundance, but at least she was working. She got her first true starring role in a cult classic: The Stepford Wives (1975). The blend of Sci-Fi, social commentary and thriller along with Ross' central performance didn't add up to an Oscar nomination or anything, but at least it had her tapped into the culture again. She did reprise her role as Etta Place in a cheap-o made-for-TV project "Wanted: The Sundance Woman" (1976) that had her improbably teaming with Poncho Villa. The rest of the 1970s are spent blending into large ensemble pieces like Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Betsy (1978) and The Swarm (1978). She stars in a routine Horror/Thriller called The Legacy (1978) that does little for her career but does have her fall in love with co-star Sam Elliott. She had married the great cinematographer Conrad Hall after Butch, but they divorced in 1975. Elliott had a small blink-and-you'll-miss-it role in Butch too, but he and Katharine's paring this time was a keeper (they have been married since 1984).

In the '80s Katharine's career petered out, showing up almost exclusively in made-for-TV projects, often with Sam (five projects together after The Legacy). Mostly she and Sam seem very content to spend time on their ranch together, and after taking the '90s almost completely off in this century she has started appearing on screen again, the most memorable being the psychiatrist in the new cult favorite Donnie Darko (2001). But given her beauty and the heat she had coming off of The Graduate and Butch, she might have turned into a bigger star.

I heart Holden.

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