Tonight on TCM, No Way Out, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s controversial 1950 film dealing with racism and violence that marked Sidney Poitier’s screen debut. As debuts go, it’s one of the better ones out there. In fact, it’s what you would call a “star turn.” It may have been Poitier’s first movie but he was clearly destined to become a star, his onscreen confidence and charisma well in evidence from the outset. But many stars have far more inauspicious debuts. So many of the classic Hollywood actors are so famous to us now from their superstar years that it seems strange to think of them spending years playing small parts before being discovered by the public. And yet, so many of them did. Below are some of my favorite debuts, from the biggest and best to the smallest and oddest. It’s a rather incomplete listing due to the fact that there are still so many debut movies I haven’t seen due to the fact that the movies themselves never made a dent in the public consciousness and are unavailable anywhere.
Okay, let’s get the biggest one out of the way right now: Orson Welles in Citizen Kane. Yes, he worked on some shorts before this and narrated Swiss Family Robinson but for true intents and purposes, Citizen Kane is his debut and what a debut it is. You will have to look far and wide to find a more confident and powerful debut performance in film history. Welles takes on the role of Kane as if it was the culmination of his life’s work. You watch Welles as Kane and think this guy’s been acting in movies for years. And this is no simple performance either. He takes Kane from his early to mid-twenties (the age Welles actually was while making the movie) through middle age, old age, and death and does a pretty damned impressive job every step of the way. It has always been a sore point for me that neither Welles’ performance here or the extraordinary work of Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster were honored with Oscar gold, instead losing out to Gary Cooper’s rather insufferable performance (for me, at least) in Sergeant York. I think I like Huston’s work better but given that this was Welles’ debut performance, I’d have to give him the edge for that alone.
Now to take it down a notch to a real oddball movie that marked the debut of two of the biggest stars Hollywood has ever known by one of the biggest directors it ever produced. The stars are Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart and the movie is Up the River, directed by John Ford. I’ve only ever seen it on TCM and it is not, I repeat, not representative of anyone’s best work but it’s such a bizarre movie, I don’t care. First, the ease with which prisoners break out of the prison, and then return, willingly, is remarkable. Why do they return? Well, naturally because they don’t want to miss the annual prison baseball game against another set of prisoners, not even the guards. It’s goofy and both Bogart and Tracy show the promise that their careers would fulfill but it’s no Citizen Kane. On the other hand, it doesn’t have to be.
Moving up in the years, way up, we go to a modern star’s debut in an Oscar nominated movie, Meryl Streep in Julia. Now, again, like Welles, Bogart, and Tracy, she had done other work. In this case, she had done voice work and a tv movie but her big screen debut was as a snooty acquaintance of Lillian Hellman in this highly fictionalized tale. I watched it again just around six months ago and three people stood out: Jason Robards, Vanessa Redgrave, and Meryl Streep. Robards and Redgrave won Oscars but Streep, in a very small role, proved charismatic. Better in The Deer Hunter the next year and even better in Kramer vs. Kramer after that. She hasn’t been a favorite actress of mine for years, or ever, but particularly since the early eighties (I know, I know, that’s a long time ago) when it was decided she was the Queen of the Accent and I felt like those simpler, and better, portrayals in The Deer Hunter and Kramer vs. Kramer (and Manhattan, too!) got lost and/or taken for granted.
Back to the thirties we find Katharine Hepburn making her debut in the 1932 snoozer, A Bill of Divorcement, starring John Barrymore. Wow, is she mannered in this one and, like so many of Barrymore’s movies adapted from plays, it’s a slow, wooden, stagy, dated piece that holds little more interest than it is Hepburn’s debut. If I hate it so much, why is it even here? Because it’s fascinating to me to see such a mannered and belabored debut turn into the star career it did. Sure, Tracy and Bogart’s debut was silly to a fault but I could see their star charisma shining throughout it. Had I seen this movie in 1932 upon its release, I wouldn’t have give Hepburn a one in ten chance of having a successful career. Go figure.
Shirley MacLaine made her big screen debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s not too well received The Trouble with Harry, a movie I like despite its reputation and I’ve written about that here before. I don’t care what anyone thinks about it, I’ve always liked it. It’s fun to watch and the locations are beautiful. And one more thing: I love Shirley MacLaine in it. Just love her. She’s so authentic to me, so real in every scene. So sweet, so gentle, so kind. This one’s the opposite of Hepburn’s debut. After watching this, anyone could easily predict a big future for this talented red-headed lady.
A few more to wrap things up.
Leslie Caron in An American in Paris.
Marlon Brando in The Men.
Lee Remick in A Face in the Crowd.
Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront.
Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd.
And dozens more. Of course, some of my favorite actors and actresses have debuts I’ve never come close to seeing. Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Edward G. Robinson, Clark Gable, and more all did plenty of movies before they became big stars. Others had debuts I’ve seen but am indifferent to. That doesn’t mean someone else won’t find them to be the opposite or find something on my list, like Up the River, to be a complete waste of time. The mileage may vary but one thing’s for sure, they all became stars and, like them or not, their debuts serve as their introduction to the world of cinema. Whether the introduction is a good one or a bad one depends on them, and interestingly enough, the viewers.