CiCi's Top Ten People Who Need A Biopic

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You can't win an argument just by being right!
I really wish I could hear her say that in person
LOL. In my mind I said it with her Hungarian accent.



Madonna is supposedly getting one. Not sure I would bother watching that.
You might not, but I think a Madonna biopic, premature as it might be, would be box office gold.



You can't win an argument just by being right!
You might not, but I think a Madonna biopic, premature as it might be, would be box office gold.
I think it would to. I personally just think she's overexposed, in more ways than one.



Survivor 5s #2 Bitch
I've been so busy the past few days, but I'm back!

5. Clara Bow



The original "It Girl" who partially inspired the character of Norma Desmond had a life as bizarre as the Gloria Swanson character. She grew up in poverty, and her mother suffered from psychotic episodes. One night, Bow woke up to her mother holding a knife to her throat, though she was able to fend off the attack. Her mother was then admitted to a sanatorium. But her death distraught her, and she apparently tried to jump into the grave of her mother at her funeral. School life caused her great heartache, for being too tomboyish and poor, and her home life was a mess. But she managed to win a talent competition in the early 20s that kick started her career in film.

Bow would become one of the biggest stars of American cinema in the late 20s and early 30s. Despite initially struggling for parts for being 'too fat'. She would also befriend Louella Parsons during the early years of her career, with Parsons using her column to defend Bow when she could.

Bow retired from acting in 1933 to live as a rancher with her husband. When her husband eventually decided to run for the House of Representatives, Bow attempted suicide, citing that she couldn't bare life in the public eye again. She became socially withdrawn, although she wouldn't let her husband leave the house alone.

Eventually, she was diagnosed was insomnia, which was believed to have been triggered by the butcher knife incident with her mother. Bow underwent electroshock therapy, but would later leave to live in a bungalow on her own, which she rarely left until her death in 1965.



A film about Clara Bow is a lovely idea but box office appeal would be pretty much non-existent and no studio is going to back an idea that's not going to translate into box office receipts.



This list has seemingly paused, but my top choice of an actor whose life story would make for a potentially fascinating biopic is Sterling Hayden.



His film legacy at this point is probably best remembered for his two pictures with Stanley Kubrick, The Killing and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, John Huston's heist Noir The Asphalt Jungle, and as the corrupt Police Captain in The Godfather. His film career is peppered with some interesting films and performances that stretch from the early 1940s into the early 1980s. But more interesting than that are his off-screen exploits.

He worked on boats as a young man, steamers and schooners, and earned his master mariner's license, sailing around the world several times and captaining his first vessel at the age of twenty-two. He was tall (6'5") and handsome, which led to some modeling work on a lark. That led to Hollywood and a contract with Paramount, even though he had no training as an actor. He starred in a couple movies in 1941 but then enlisted in the Marines for WWII. He was commissioned a second lieutenant but before he could ship out for the front lines somewhere he was picked to become an undercover agent in "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of the Coordinator of Information, which became the OSS and after the war the CIA. He had a pseudonym for this service, John Hamilton, and was involved in many covert and dangerous operations, running guns and supplies by boat through U-Boat infested waters and parachuting behind enemy lines, especially around Yugoslavia. He earned a Silver Star for gallantry in action in the Balkans and Mediterranean as well as an accommodation from Tito! Hayden retired from active duty as a Captain in 1945 and a couple years later he was back in Hollywood.

Because he had fought along side brave Communists in the war he was briefly a member of the party in America, which of course led to problems during the Red Scare. He did name names when he was called in front of the committee, and it is a decision that he hated himself for. He worked steadily throughout the 1950s, and while The Asphalt Jungle is a highlight and Nic Ray's Johnny Guitar is a cult classic, he was relegated to B-movies.

By 1958 he'd had enough and left the business to mostly sail around the world. By the early '60s he was based in California and began writing. He wrote a novel (about sailing) and his autobiography, Wanderer, both of which were very well received. Kubrick convinced him to come out of his self-exile to play General Jack D. Ripper in Strangelove, and after that he would take the occasional film role, often stipulating in his contract that he would not shave the long beard he preferred to wear by then. Apart from his iconic part in The Godfather, other highlights from the end of his career include Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, Bertolucci's 1900, and the comedy hit 9 to 5. Playing the abolitionist John Brown in the 1982 TV mini-series "The Blue & the Gray" was his final credit. He died in 1986 at the age of 70 from cancer.

Between his sailing, his war record, the red scare, being in the movies, and ultimately winding up as a pot-smoking alcoholic who might be mistaken for a homeless drifter, he was quite a character.


Don't know who could play him? Though he is only 6', Michael Fassbender could probably give it a go?

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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