The 1950s Hollywood was a glitzy yet very cutthroat business with the employers or more correctly, the very studios, deciding the destiny of actors and actresses.
Many stars of the time were very talented, some more than others, but one of them was so beautiful, so talented and her career has ended so terribly in tragedy, that it is worth revisiting her true story.
Previously destined to be a great actress, she was simply blacklisted by one of the largest studios, leaving many minds wondering what could have happened.
Lee Grant actress was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood at the beginning of 1950s.
Her standard features, elegant demeanor, and seductive screen acts made her popular among the important studios in a little time. She was perceived as the next big thing by the producers and starred in a line of movies that presented her with her charm and versatility.
She played her first film role in the 1951 film adaptation of Detective Story, a Kirk Douglas movie, which brought her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination and Best Actress Award at Cannes.
Readers were crazy about her and critics raved about her acting. All was going so well, and then there was a hitch.
Inscrutable Fall from Grace
However, her fast career had a surprising twist as Grant was one day abruptly prohibited in one of the leading studios in Hollywood. The move was expedient and dumbfounded a lot of people. How would an up and coming star with all the good things in her favor not find a place in the industry that she once loved?
Gossips started circulating. Others asserted that she had fallen out with mighty executives who could not adjust to their demands. Others still opined that her personal life had turned into a problem in the studio since Hollywood was used to taking tight control to the images of its stars. Some even thought that she might have been blacklisted because of things beyond her control- maybe it was all done through the rough politics of show business.
In 1951, as CBS recorded, Grant made an emotional eulogy at the memorial to the actor J. Edward Bromberg, where she insinuated that he had died under the pressures of having been subjected before a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
The following 12 years would not be as normal as far as her career is concerned.
The Price of Hollywood Poker Games
In such a way, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, studios took massive control of actors. When a star broke the unwritten rules of the industry, it could be black listed and all their contracts could be torn up, what happens when this happens is that their careers are ruined overnight. So many good actors and actresses had their hopes dashed merely because they cannot fit the image of what the movie studios wanted.
Grant is another victim of studio system who was once on the course to becoming a superstar.
The later Grant became visible in such movies as Valley of the Dolls, Columbo, Shampoo and Mulholland Drive, and ultimately won an American Academy Award in the category of Best Supporting Actress, she had a hard time of it during the fifties and early sixties. The propositions became few and far between and her name slowly disappeared off the newspapers.
An Advance Have to Reckon with
Her beauty, talent and the movies she appeared in are there to show what would have happened had her career not been barbarically ended. Hollywood forgot about her, but the rest of the world, who truly loves movies did not forget her being one of the most beautiful and underrated movie stars of her days.
Her story is still reminding people that fame is quite unpredictable and even the most shining stars can be darkened under some pressure that they cannot influence.
Her ordeals in the present day when actors enjoy their new found freedom bring out another side of classic Hollywood, the dark side; a place where talent did not, unfortunately, always pay to survive.