Lugosi made many bad decisions before his drug addition. He felt the part of Frankenstein’s Monster was beneath him. I am sure Karloff was quite happy to step down to the role that made him famous.
The quick Irony is shortly after this, is when he started to take almost any role. Apparently he thought the big roles would roll in after Dracula and then he discovered there was only so much demand for him.
Jim
Oh yeah…good times.
Cree Summers has had some success doing cartoon voice work.
As for bad careers?
Two words: Britney Spears.
In my opinion, the problem is that a lot of entertainers don’t understand “this is it”. They see a starring role on a TV series as being a step to the top. What they don’t realize is that for most of them, being the star of a TV series is the highest point of their career and everything after they leave the show will be a downhill slide. Which is why it’s sad to see so many of them hurrying to get off the show.
Poor Bela. His desire to avoid being typecast in horror movies led to him being typecast of horrible movies.
Lugosi also pissed away money like nobody’s business. He was in his late 40s before he began making good money in the English language theater so you’d think he’d have known better, but perhaps living hand-to-mouth for so long gave him an “if you got it, flaunt it” attitude. He earned well over $1 million in his career (doesn’t sound like much now but that’s in the eight figures when adjusted for inflation and this was when you could buy a Beverly Hills mansionette for $40,000) and continued earning well above the national average even into old age but he spent it as soon as he made it. He was also foolishly generous to struggling actors, waiters, etc.- he’d tip $100 during the 1930s. It was during/after World War 2 that he finally wound up without a nickel, so down and out that his 4th ex-wife went to court to have his child support and alimony payment reduced (the judge was notoriously hard on deadbeat dads [quite progressive for the day] and she was terrified he’d lock the old man up for not paying money he flatly didn’t have). Actor Brian Donlevy, who married Lugosi’s ex-wife, actually partially supported him during his final Ed Wood years.
The Three Stooges are notorious for making the worst business deals in entertainment not to directly involve Brian Epstein. They made peanuts (compared to less profitable film stars) from their movie contracts (they earned far far more from personal appearances), roped themselves into long contracts with no way out, etc., then finally turned down the chance to buy the syndication rights to their films for a few hundred thousand dollars which would have earned them tens of millions in their own lifetimes. Moe Howard died very well-off because of real estate investments but several of the others wound up broke due to high living and bad management, though a renaissance and personal appearances as old men replenished their coffers a bit towards the end. (Even as old men working alone they made very good money on the college campus circuit.)
When Max Baer Jr. was a young broke actor and before Beverly Hillbillies he signed a 10 year contract that began around $500/week and ended up around $1,500/week. To a young struggling actor in the early 60s $500 week probably seemed a fortune but it meant that as a star on a Top Rated Show he was earning less than many of the writers and production staff and a fraction of what even Miss Jane and Mr. Drysdale were getting- he had to make personal appearances at county fairs and the like to make “real money” while the show was on. (I think Donna Douglas also had a long term low money contract.)
After the show was cancelled he was hopelessly typecast as Jethro because it had run for so long. His nest egg was wiped out within a couple of years by unemployment and divorce and he wound up living on the charity of friends. Ultimately he had the last laugh when he cashed in his life insurance, his pension, sold his residuals, sold everything he owned and hit up everybody he knew for personal loans and made the very low budget ($100,000) movie Macon County Line which earned $30 million in theatrical release, the highest budget:gross ratio of any movie in history until Blair Witch Project, and it left him rich enough that he never had to work again (so for the most part he didn’t, though he’s currently building a Hillbillies themed casino in Reno.
The role of Archie Bunker (originally Archie Justice) was written for Jackie Gleason but he backed out when he read the first scripts. He thought it was too controversial and not physical enough for a man of his talents. Mickey Rooney (broke and deeply in debt in the early 70s [and many other times]) was considered as well but I don’t know if he backed out or if Norman Lear got sober. It finally went to Carroll O’Connor who had some major credits (Cleopatra, Hawaii) but was far from a household name. The role of Edith (originally feistier and more acidic- that’s even evident in the first few episodes where she wore pants and talked back to Archie) was once written with Audrey Meadows in mind (I’m not sure if this was when they were still talking to Gleason) but she declined because her husband was in ill health and they didn’t need the money (thanks mainly to the fact he was rich but also to the fact she had the foresight to take residuals from Honeymooners, the only member of the cast to get acting residuals).
His inability to speak without his thick Hungarian accent also severely limited the roles he could play.
I’m not saying it’s a major handicap to his career, but Seth Green is only 5’4" and small-statured. I think that’s going to limit his roles. Considering he’s been in the business since he was six years old, I wonder if he’s just choosing his projects more for what interests him at this point. (Sorry, all gossip I’ve heard about him has been heterosexual in orientation: girlfriends, hitting on women, etc.)
I’m not disagreeing with you, but I will add that, even with said limitations, one can still achieve the highest level of stardom - see Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.
I can’t believe it too so many posts before someone mentioned Britney Spears. Talk about an ongoing train wreck.
I’m also inclined to agree with the Tom Cruise thing. He did just get $75 million to do MI:3 and the producer credit, but that movie also was a mild flop. As of yet it’s lost money, though eventually it’ll be profitable after DVD release I’m sure. I think a pretty fair chunk of that failure is to be blamed on his public snafus of late.
There’s pretty much no chance that he’ll ever be a total wash out or anything, but I think he ruined his chances at being truly legendary. Before the whole Scientology thing and more importantly the constant whack-job public persona his career was on track be Paul Newman-esque. He was pretty much beloved by everyone, through 2000 everything he touched pretty much turned to gold. Since then his popularity has waned and he’s fell into a rut of doing badly reviewed blockbusters. He’ll certainly never be so broke as to resort to being in utterly crap movies, but when you consider what his career could have been like he’s worth mentioning here.
The Cuba Gooding Jr comparison is a good one. True he went from a one-hit wonder gaining an Oscar to doing utter replete crap. But did anyone expect him to be the next Denzel Washington based on Boyz in the Hood, Judgment Night and Jerry Maguire? How far did he really fall?
Cruise however could go from a Newman level career down to a Brando level finish.
If you’re looking at scale, Cruise could be in the midst of a huge dropoff.
Well, neither Hoffman or Cruise are quite that short. Somewhere in the 5’7" range, and those three inches can make a huge difference, but he lacks a certain gravitas that those other guys had. His height is only part of that equation, but I’d say his choices are quite limited. Frankly I think he should be credited for achieving what he has.
My feeling on Green is that he wants to be a creator, not just an actor. He gives off the same geeky vibe as Whedon or Smith. I mean, he is co-creator of Robot Chicken, and a chunk of his work has been genre stuff, or otherwise unconventional. I always get the impression he’s happy doing what he does - mostly from the fun he seemed to have playing himself in Tucker.
I agree. Seth Green is one of the hardest working men in show business, and I think he just does whatever interests him. I never got the impression that he was interested in being a star.
True enough. Jumping ship isn’t the right word. But that spinoff wasn’t in the same league with the original Mary Tyler Moore show. Perhaps the blame for that lies with MTM- at the time spinoffs were much more common than now.
Neil Patrick Harris definitely does not belong in this thread. He’s had a respectable career on stage (Cabaret & Rent, then the original casts of Broadway’s Assassins and London’s tick…tick…BOOM). And he is the best thing in How I Met Your Mother.
Whitney Houston has gone from on top to the gutter, but I don’t know if that’s her manager, her husband, or her alledged drug use.
Hoffman and Cruise both claim 5’7", and neither are slight. I’m just saying that even standing on a box, you can tell Seth Green is a wee guy.
It wouldn’t matter to me, I think he’s hella sexy. And I’m 5’2". Call me, Seth!
. . . doing the same schtick that made him the best thing in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle.
One of the best agents out there has to be whomever Johnny Depp has.
I’ve said it before,I’ll say it again, the agent for Will Farrell, I think, has some forbiden gay porn and coke fests on a whole bunch of Hollywood exec’s because Will Farrell seems to be in every freaking comedy lately.
Just here to throw in with the Seth Green love. To me, he’s always given off the vibe of someone who is perfectly satisfied being a PERFORMER, rather than a STAR. As we’ve seen in this thread, performers are almost never out of work. Stars may go way higher, but that also means they make a bigger crater when they fall.
I don’t know who manages/d Paul Newman, but he seems to have comfortably sailed through the last 30 years doing pretty much whatever he likes.
Well, for one thing, he was already a millionaire. He owned several companies in Austria that manufacture medical devices. So, his track record looks about like this:
What’s next? I don’t know, but this man hasn’t failed yet at anything he set out to do.