There are many famous examples of actors and musicians who had one huge hit and never really accomplished anything else. My question is how often does this happen in fields like literature, classical music, and the fine arts? Are there any sculptors/painters/other “high art” fields who had huge success with one piece but either didn’t put anything else worthwhile (or maybe didn’t put out anything at all)? The only ones I could think of were Ralph Ellison and Harper Lee, who put out one classic novel and wouldn’t even release a single completed novel for the rest of their lives.
Pachelbel.
Margaret Mitchell is another famous example.
Harold Russell who one the Academy Award as the amputee in The Best Years of Our Lives. It was his first and only movie role although he did do a handful of television bits forty years after his movie stint.
Some of that the answer is prolly going to be “no”, because the medium doesn’t lend itself to distribution. A painter won’t be a one-hit-wonder unless his work can be reproduced, likewise a sculptor. An artist who paints one great work, for example, will be called upon by patrons or buyers to produce more, since they can’t have the one existing first work for themselves. Until mass reproduction and distribution became possible, it was hard to a one hit wonder.
But I’ll give you one, an artist: Harvey Ball. Billions of people would recognize his (AFAIK) one successful work, but very few would recognize his name. I’ve never seen or heard of anything else he ever did that was worthy of note except for his one “hit” piece.
Ernest Thayer. I’d say most Americans are familiar with his one well-known poem, but have never heard his name. He seems to have done some other comic poems for various magazines, but nothing else made it into popular consciousness.
Anna Sewell is another one.
I figure it’s also true, but very unfair, to say that Anne Frank is a one-hit wonder, too.
I tend to think of one-hit wonder labels as being a bit of a back-handed compliment. Even when I know better it’s hard for me to get away from the reasoning, “If they were really as good as this piece makes them appear they’d have had similar successes more than once.” That leaves me a bit uncomfortable calling some people one-hit wonders who defintely qualify on a numerical basis, but who never had the opportunity to show what else they might produce.
Someone mentioned Margaret Mitchell upthread, and ISTR she’d been shopping the idea of a sequel to GWTW when she was killed. But no one knows whether she’d have been able to match the popular response she got with her first work. Anna Sewell has only one work to her credit, and died very shortly after selling Black Beauty. Thayer, on the other hand, lived another fifty years after the original publication of Casey.
He also appeared in the 1980 film Inside Moves, which garnered a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Diana Scarwid.
An obvious choice is John Kennedy Toole, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning A Confederacy of Dunces was published after his suicide. He also had written, at 16, a novella called The Neon Bible and some other small things, but I think he could legitimately be called a one-hit wonder.
oops
Also oops.
Shit, can someone mop that up!
For those of you who, like me, needed a hint: 
Norman MacLean never wrote fiction until “A River Runs Through It” was published in 1976 when he was 74 years old. He wrote a non fiction book after that (a wonderful book called “Young Men and Fire”), but no more fiction.
I find this especially odd as he was an English professor at University of Chicago, it isn’t like he didn’t have the opportunity. Of all the possible entries this is the one I mourn the most. He would have been considered among the very best if he had written more.
Jonathan Larson wrote and composed Rent.
He didn’t appear to be known for much before that and certainly wasn’t able to follow up afterwards.
Bear in mind, most of the musicians we call “one hit wonders” made a LOT more recordings than the one they’re famous for. Many made dozens or hundreds of recordings, and some even had long careers, but just never managed to get a second song into the Billboard top 40.
So it is with MOST of the potential “one hit wonders” in other fields.
Harper Lee is an exception. She, apparently, only had one novel in her, and never tried seriously to write another. But most painters, novelists, composers who are famous for just one thing actually have dozens or hundreds of works to their credit that the casual observer of the arts scene can’t name or is only vaguely aware of.
If you’re looking for people like that, well, try to name:
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TWO paintings by James McNeill Whistler (his Mom and…?.
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TWO pieces composed by Hector Berlioz ("Symphonie Fantastique and…?).
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TWO novels by William Golding (he’s a Nobel Laureate, so surely you can name one besides “Lord of the Flies,” right?).
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TWO plays by Joseph Kesselring (“Arsenic and Old Lace” and…?).
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ONE painting by Edvard Munch that doesn’t featuring a screaming head.
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A novel by Margaret Mitchell that doesn’t feature Scarlett O’Hara.
It´s funny how when gods see fit to send us the manual for the amazing machine they built us, they invariably only do so once.
How about a “Salvation for Dummies”, at the very least?
I’m not going to claim to be a ‘casual observer of the arts scene’, but just sitting here without going to Wikipedia or my iTunes, I can name ‘The Damnation of Faust’, ‘Nuits d’été’, the ‘Requiem’, the operas ‘Les Troyens’ and ‘Beatrice et Benedict’ and the ‘Romeo et Juliette’ symphonie.
Wouldn’t agree with that one. The opera Les Troyens is pretty famous, and there are also Harold in Italy, the Te Deum, and the Requiem, among other works. Maybe not household names, but well known among classical music lovers.
ETA: well, I spent too long on this one, but I refuse to make it another “oops”!
Yeah, Berlioz doesn’t count. But Dukas (“The Sorceror’s Apprentice”) does. And maybe Orff (“Carmina Burana”) and Holst (“The Planets”) do too.
In literature, there’s Mary Shelley (for Frankenstein), and probably Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin).
There are many who wrote one very known novel and nothing of note otherwise. For instance:
Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon. Had other novels published, but they’re forgotten.
William M. Miller, A Canticle for Liebowitz. His only completed novel (a second, St. Liebowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was completed by Terry Bisson). He did have quite a few short stories, including the Hugo Winner, “The Darfsteller.”
Tom Reamy, Blind Voices – died as he was editing the novel. He had a series of short stories before that, including the award-winning “San Diego Lightfoot Sue.”
Ken Grimwood, Replay – a couple of other novels that were forgotten.
I will say that, for novels, most authors continue to try to publish more.