I watch the biography channel a lot, and I am now watching Lloyd Bridge’s life.
Bridges went from a standard actor to a rich star as a scuba diver in the hit show “Sea Hunt.” Then comes the “poor baby” bit. He was “typecast.”
The entire cast of “Married With Children” worried themselves to death about being “typecast.” Every one of them left the show as multimillionaires, but they were very upset about the “limited range” of their titanic acting talent they had been able to show on “Married With Children.”
I got sick of hearing about it.
Poor Marilyn Monroe! She was typecast as a sex symbol.
If you just had a hit show and wind up a multimillionaire, I find it hard to feel sorry for you. Above all, I get sick of hearing you bitch about it.
Back in the 1930’s, when Fred Astaire and his sister were the star dancing team, their biggest competition was a man named Buddy Ebsen, another big-time dancer. But I never heard Ebsen crying about how he was stereotyped as a dancer.
Ebsen then had his wildly popular role as Jed Clampett in “The Beverley Hillbillies.” How stereotyped can you GET?
Then Ebsen did “Barnaby Jones.”
In other words, Ebsen didn’t spend his life crying about his “unused talent.” He found out what WE wanted to see and gave it to us.
The word for an actor or anybody else is this:
“If you can’t cut it, get the hell out of it.” You’re not there to show how talented you are. Your job is to entertain US.
Biography Channel, PLEASE cut the “poor baby” bit!
#1 by H.S. on 12/01/2004 - 6:41 pm
WHOA! You’re forgetting your own flip side to this recording.
(“If you can’t cut it, get the hell out of it.” You’re not there to show how talented you are. Your job is to entertain US. –Bob)
There are MILLIONS of people who are tuning in to WATCH this “Poor Baby” routine. It’s television’s version of all the Hollywood stars magazines, Soap Opera blues reports. “Get the real-life story on your favorite bigger-than-life personality.” People love to know the private heartaches and scandals, and joys, and failures, and hard times of men and women that turn them ON. “Bitching” gives them a few more moments in the spotlight – whether they can do anything else or not.
Nobody, but nobody does it like Hollywood. It is positively a religious experience. They are fit to testify before Congress, don’t ya know! Big alligator tears and all.
They ARE entertaining us. You watched it. Guess it worked.
But whadaIknow. I haven’t watched since about 1989.
#2 by Peter on 12/01/2004 - 7:13 pm
Well, Buddy was Southern, duuh.
#3 by Don on 12/02/2004 - 1:23 pm
I wouldn’t mind being typecast as a mathematical genius.
#4 by Elizabeth on 12/02/2004 - 6:57 pm
I remember when William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, two of the stars of the original STAR TREK series, bitched about being typecast… Nimoy even wrote a book about it (I AM NOT SPOCK), but both Shatner and Nimoy finally accepted their fate — partly because it’s led to a lot of good gigs for both men.
And there’s Tom Selleck, for whom it took several mediocre movies to realize that a large number of the American public love watching a stand-up fellow basically playing himself. (He’s starring in and directing some interesting TV movies based on Louis L’Amour novels of the cowboy era of the West.)
#5 by Jay on 12/03/2004 - 12:28 pm
While I can’t sympathize with the whining, it does suck to do the same thing over and over again.
When we used to go to the field, I gained a reputation for making the best lemonade. So I got “typecast” as the lemonade-guy and every day would have to make gallons of the crap. You never heard so much bitching…But then again I was only making about $1000 a month. For revenge, I used to throw cigarette butts and spit my chew into the jugs I knew the officers would drink out of.