Old movie star as in star in old movie and/or a person of a certain age who is a movie star.
I’ve been watching “old” movies over the past couple of years, and every now and then I see someone I recognize and I’m startled.
For example, I watched Bye, Bye, Birdie and was midway through the show before it suddenly hit me that I was hearing Dick Van Dyke’s voice but not seeing his face. No character on screen at that time had white hair. I moved closer to the screen and had one of those :duh: moments. I am most familiar with Dick Van Dyke from his role on Diagnosis Murder and I’m not unaware that he got that part at least partially due to his previous success in television etc. I was still startled to see him as a young man.
Another example: Angela Lansbury and Judy Garland were born only three years apart(assuming that the dates I got from Google are correct). This surprised me because I think of Angela Lansbury as old but living and Judy Garland as young but dead. Why did I look up birth dates? Because I saw a trailer for a movie that featured both of them on a video of a movie featuring Garland. Their characters were similar enough in age for me to be curious. (If you are wondering: Lansbury was born October 16, 1925 and Garland was born (ok Frances Gumm was born) June 10, 1922 and died June 21, 1969).
Have you ever had any surprises like that? If so, please describe them.
Several months ago I started a thread about spotting young actors before they became famous, and that thread stretched a good 4 or 5 pages. Last week I saw another one:
It was an episode of Night Court, probably from around mid-season. The plot involved Roz going into anger management therapy, and the whole gang going with her. While there, a young black man broke into the place and threatened everyone with a gun. It was hard to see his face (bad TV lighting and dark-skinned people often make for unrecognizable faces), but the voice was unmistakably that of a very young Don Cheadle. The credits bore this out.
If you want to see a whole bunch of virile young old men, check out the original version of Twelve Angry Men.
I was surprised when I first recognized Robert Stack as Carole Lombard’s pretty-boy boyfriend in To Be or Not to Be.
Similarly, check out early Vincent Price as the indolent “male beauty in distress” in Laura.
And in Sunset Boulevard–look, it’s a young Jack Webb, smiling and laughing and cracking smart jokes! After all those long, dour years of stony-faced acting in Dragnet, it always comes as a rather a shock to me to see him in this movie, playing someone with a fun personality.
I was flipping through the channels the other day and saw a very young Harry Morgan from MASH. I did a real double-take considering I’ve only seen him in his older stuff!
I was pretty startled to discover that the handsome guy acting opposite Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was in fact George Peppard. At the time, I’d only seen him in The A-Team, and had no mental image of him as a young man.
Very young??? :rolleyes: Morgan had been starring in films and TV for 20 years before MAS*H. Try seeing him in “The Ox-Bow Incident” or “The Well.”
Harve Presnell is best known as the father in Fargo and Mr. Parker in The Pretender – older character parts. But he broke into movies as a romantic lead in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. This page shows the difference the years have made (first photo).
I once stumbled on the D.W. Griffith silent film, Sally of the Sawdust without knowing much about it. There was this guy with a tiny mustache doing what seemed to me to be a W.C. Fields imitation. Then it hit me: who’s be imitating Fields in a silent film? He didn’t become a star until sound. It had to be Fields himself. Here’s a photo; it looks more like him than the scene I stumbled on.
I watched Myra Breckenridge for the first time recently. I kept wondering who the pretty blond girl could be who was outshining Raquel Welch! It turned out to be Farah Fawcett in her first movie role.
If you want to see a very pretty, very young Angela Lansbury, watch Gaslight, the version with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Besides being a great movie, Angela Lansbury has a small role as a maid. I think it was her first role ever.
I was watching a 30’s screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and a very comely blonde wench that I didn’t recognize. I turned the TV on just after the movie had started so I’d missed the opening credits. When the credits scrolled I was astonished to find that the cute, young babe was Irene Ryan, Grannie from The Beverley Hillbillies., perhaps the most unattractive woman on TV at that time. I’d known she done comedies in the 30’s but based on her looks alone, she should’ve been a huge star.
If you really want a shock, check out the early (1930’s-40’s) films of Shelley Winters! She was actually quite a babe back then! Too bad she waited till The Poseidon Adventure for her underwear shot!
Me too except that I thought he looked exactly the same! I had to look up his age and ask, “was this guy EVER young?” It was in Holiday Affair that I saw him.
I flip out about how cute and hot Shirley MacLain was. Usually I’m surprised by how hot people were. Then I get depressed about how it all turned out. It really makes me think about how hotness is but a fleeting moment. That’s why I never get outraged when Lindsay Lohan wants to be skinny and blonde or some other celebrity act of looks-ruining. She might as well look however she likes since she’s going to be Joanna Cassidy before you know it.
I’m used to my mom giving me long-winded lectures whenever I mention to her how hot someone used to be. She is one of those people who believes all movies after 1970 suck and all actors since then are just pale immitations of the better old fogies that came before.
I’m heavily into Robert Mitchum and I can always tell what year his movie was from by the state of his eyelids. It’s not that unusual to see him young though.
It’s also weird that sometimes I realize a lot of today’s stars are like copies of stars that got old. Matthew McConaughey is just Paul Newman really. If Paul Newman smoked a lot of pot and never had very good roles.
I saw an old western recently, 1949’s Lust For Gold. It was narrated by the son of the miner who’d made the claim as he retraced and tried to find his murdered father’s wealth out in the wild. I realized part way through that I recognized a deputy’s voice, then it suddenly dawned on me he was a very young Will Geer.
I was surprised when watching “Suicide Theater” on a tape called “TV Turkeys” about the lead actor. As soon as her said “Well whattay know”, I knew him. It was the sam,e way he delivered the line on Star Trek years later. It was a young DeForrest Kelley, without the eyebags.
There was an old “Bonanza” where a very oung DeKelly played an imprisoned doctor. One of his lines is (I’m not kidding): What do you want me to do? I’m a prisoner, not a surgeon.
A young, pre-Phantom Michael Crawford played Cornelius Hackl in “Hello Dolly.”
