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Everyone knows Welles, Huston, Kubrick, Spielberg, Scorsese and Nolan. But what about Leisen, Hill, Hiller, Boorman, Mann and Sayles?  For every “name” director, there are several others we feel deserve more recognition. They may have had successes—critical and/or financial—but for some reason they’ve tended to fly under the radar. Here are six filmmakers whose legacies deserve our respect and appreciation. Even though their names may have faded from memory, their finest work lives on, as you’ll soon discover.

Keep all those “Zoolander” jokes to yourself, because being a model in a movie doesn’t necessarily mean a pretty face (or body) catwalking across the screen for mere amusement or titillation, or because the director needed a hot date for the Screen Actors Guild awards. Underneath the high cheekbones and sculpted abs often lie the makings of a great actor. Here are some of the folks who made astonishingly smooth moves from still photography to motion pictures.

Younger film fans may find it hard to believe, but Clint Eastwood wasn’t always a badass. Prior to his iconic performance in “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), Eastwood was best known to American audiences as Rowdy Yates, a kind-hearted supporting character on the popular “Rawhide” TV show. In fact, it was the opportunity to leave Rowdy’s friendly persona behind that most intrigued Eastwood about going to Spain to work for director Sergio Leone. “I decided,” Eastwood said, “it was time to be an anti-hero.”

On the 115th anniversary of his birth, I can safely claim that Alfred Hitchcock's name and work endure like no other director of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Today, many moviegoers in their teens and twenties may look blankly at you if you mention legendary helmers like John Ford, George Cukor, or Billy Wilder. Yet more than likely, they’ll know the name Hitchcock, and will have seen at least one of his pictures."Vertigo" (1958) the greatest movie of all time, toppling "Citizen Kane" (1941) from the number one spot. Not only do Hitchcock's movies stay evergreen, they seem to get better with age. (Much as I admire "Vertigo," my favorite Hitchcock outing is 1946's "Notorious" starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, the director's favorite leading man. See it if you haven’t.)

Even though much of the appeal of horror movies lies in their power to tap into primal fears, I’d like to think our cerebral cortexes have evolved to the point where we want our thrills to test our minds as well as our nerves. After all, horror movies often leave the greatest, and most lasting, chill when they hinge on psychological, rather than fantastical, terrors.  The higher the intelligence of the piece, the harder it is to dispel that chill, and the more elegant the premise, the more likely it is to stay lodged in our psyches. Smarter scary movies just seem more believable, even when they are set in space, or when ghosts crawl out of the television. Not surprisingly, a large percentage of such titles are adapted from works of fiction. The “interior” aspect of fiction reminds us that the worst nightmares are often conjured not by reality but by our own imaginations.

Do you remember Walter Brennan? Sure you do. No? Well, you should. After all, he spent four decades as sidekick to some of the top stars in the business. If his face isn’t familiar, I’ll bet you’d recognize his voice. Like Cagney, Bogart, and Mr. Magoo, Brennan owned a voice that was unmistakable. It became fodder for comedians and impressionists, and I’m pretty sure one of your uncles took a crack at it, too.    Brennan was the go-to guy when a director needed a town drunk, a good-hearted hobo, a local priest, or a deputy (he was indeed a natural for Westerns). But to say he was merely adept at playing local yokels undermines his achievements in the business. Brennan won the first ever Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1937, and by 1941 had won it twice more. His feat of winning three Academy Awards wasn’t matched by another actor until Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis did it decades later (and Nicholson and Day-Lewis needed a lot more than four years to equal Brennan’s record). To date, Brennan is still the only actor to win three statuettes for Best Supporting Actor. 

 Life is full of weird coincidences: The first time Brad Pitt’s star power really hit me was in a film directed by...Robert Redford. The movie, of course, was Brad’s big breakthrough, 1992’s “A River Runs Through It”, in which Brad plays the more rebellious of two brothers growing up in 1920’s Montana. Watching it over twenty years ago, I vividly remember thinking that Redford was directing a younger version of himself. Think about it: they look alike, they talk alike, and a generation apart, each would be considered for the same kind of roles. Each in their younger days had the fair, clean-cut quality commonly referred to as “All-American”.

It seems Peter Lorre was born to be sinister. Though small in stature (just under 5'4"), his oversized, sleepy eyes seemed to pierce right into your soul. His soft, eerie voice, though imitated countless times by comedians, never failed to chill. Lorre sometimes belittled his own talent, describing himself as "a face maker." But what a face! Lorre's creepy presence was surprisingly flexible, allowing him to appear in everything from horror films, to comedies, to film noir.

I’m taking this opportunity to speak directly to six gifted actors whose recent output on the big screen does not live up to their God-given (and Method-trained) abilities.  We can always learn from history, right? In that spirit, I’m suggesting some other players from yesteryear whose examples might provide some inspiration if these stars choose to break out of their respective ruts.   I fervently hope at least some of them do.