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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”.

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.   

One thing I love about movies is their ability to make you feel emotions you don’t generally experience in day to day life, like pulse-pounding terror.

Eva Marie Saint would never play showy roles in movies; she wasn’t temperamentally suited for them, and she didn’t need to do them. She was never one of those outsize personalities who always seems to be saying: “Look at me!” That, in fact, was a big part of her appeal. In her quiet, determined way, she also decided when fame hit that she would have a life and a career. She took time to raise her two children with her husband of 65 years, director Jeffrey Hayden. This meant fewer high profile roles.

Just like the image of her fragile, unconventional beauty trapped within the glow of a tight spotlight, Judy Garland’s life as a performer was surrounded by a vast darkness. She gave the world her special gift, and it gave back not a shred of happiness. There was an overarching sadness about her that only grew more pronounced as the hard years went by. As Frank Sinatra put it, “When she sang, it always felt like she died a little.”   It was tragic pretty much from the outset. When overbearing show mom Ethel Milne found she was pregnant with her third child by husband Frank Gumm, she attempted to induce miscarriage by throwing herself down a flight of stairs. Failing that, she tried to get an abortion. This desire may have partly stemmed from Ethel’s growing suspicion that her husband was homosexual. Regardless, a family friend finally convinced the couple that this little one would be a blessing. They hoped for a boy. On June 10, 1922 they welcomed their third daughter – Frances Ethel Gumm – the combined hopes of her mother and father right there in her name.

Over the course of movie history, there have been the great actresses, women who light up the screen with charisma and character, like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Meryl Streep. There have also been women whose special gifts had more to do with the sexual allure they projected. Hey fellas, you must have noticed them, right? Brace yourselves then- here are our picks for the top twenty female cinematic sex symbols of all time. (Drum roll). 

Seemingly more machine than man, Churchill lived to see his 90th birthday, smoking and tippling pretty much the whole way, getting by on the occasional cat nap.

It seems implausible now, but fame did not come to Jack Nicholson quickly. In 1969, after a decade of trying to break through as a movie star, the 32-year-old was slowly acclimating himself to the idea of giving up the stage and working behind the camera.