RIP Margot Kidder (not at all OT!)

In Holden's case I think it was really two pictures: Sunset Blvd and Stalag 17.

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Yes. When Holden won the Best Actor Oscar from Stalag 17, his wife told him, "You know that was really for Sunset Boulevard."

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If his answer had been "Billy Wilder" it would have been closer to the truth. It was Wilder who saw that special something in Holden; the real man in the "pretty boy", yearning to breathe free.

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Yep. They were a real team. Recall that during this period, Hitchcock kept trying to get Holden but could not (that he only offered him Strangers on a Train and The Trouble With Harry was likely part of the problem.) Meanwhile, Wilder kept trying to get Cary Grant but couldn't, while Hitchcock did. I think the issue there is that Cary simply didn't like the parts he was being offered by Wilder-- Sabrina(where he would have to share the screen with another male star as his brother); Love in the Afternoon(where he was to play a fairly old lothario to young Audrey Hepburn.) Truth be told, I'm not sure that ANY Wilder hero would have fit Cary Grant. Holden, conversely, could have done Rear Window or To Catch a Thief or NXNW.

Other good parts helped. This is what the term "being on a roll" really means in Hollywood, eh?

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Yep. One hit led to another and soon Holden was being offered the best scripts practically before anyone else(I think only Brando, Grant, and Stewart were in as much demand.)

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There was also, around the same time, such films as The Moon Is Blue, Escape From Fort Bravo, Executive Suite and Sabrina; and one can sort of see the new Holden emerging full grown in the tragic Korean war picture The Bridges At Toko-Ri. He was a true hero in that one, a real grownup, and yet a reluctant hero all the same, which would be his "pattern" in those years.

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I trust it is not to much of a spoiler to note that Holden played pretty much the same guy in "Bridges at Toko Ri" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" -- a war hero who escapes intact(WWII in Toko-Ri; a Japanese prison camp in "Kwai") and is FORCED TO GO BACK (to Korea in Toko-Ri, to the prison camp in Kwai)..and he dies the second time. Tragic, ironic, unfair. But Holden took his orders well in both films.

He died in Sunset Boulevard, too. And years later, he died SPECATCULARLY in his comeback film, The Wild Bunch.

Wagner never got a chance for that kind of career. My reasoning is two things: first, I don't think that he was half the actor that Holden was. That's putting it bluntly, but there it is,

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Acting ability is a mysterious something, isn't it? I've often mused on these boards about why, say Steve McQueen hit stardom and John Gavin did not, and the answer comes back quickly: "McQueen could act, Gavin could not."

Well, I think Gavin COULD act. He's fine in Psycho as far as I'm concerned in terms of reading his lines with a certain believeablity and edge(my favorite of his well-sold lines is: "Well, one of you better tell me what's going on , and tell me fast! I can only take so much of this.") . But evidently, Gavin could not really "go deep " and do the things that McQueen, or Newman...or Holden...could do. Let alone Brando.

I read a autiobio by Billy Bob Thornton(of all people) and he made the rather direct contention: "You can either act, or you can't." He wrote "Brando could be busing tables in a restaurant and you'd look at him and say: who is THAT?" I kind of get what Billy Bob is saying. The innate ability to "have a persona" and to express emotion likely is a real gift of sorts, not as measurable as being able to sing well or to play an instrument, but a talent nonetheless, and Hollywood has a way of finding those people. I think Robert Osborne said "the ones who become stars are the ones who ARE stars."

A similar drift: some critic asked the rhetorical question: "Would Sean Connery have become a star without James Bond?" His answer was: yes. Connery had enough star power that some other role in some other movie would have made him a star.

Secondly, I think that Holden had a far more masculine, downright sexy presence once his career took off. Wagner has always struck me as rather effeminate; not swishy, just not a Real Man, in the old sense, now anachronistic. Also, there was always that eyebrow raising-smarmy aspect to him, on screen anyway, that I find off putting. Bill was a natural. Robert wasn't.

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Yep. Robert Wagner looked 22 years old for about 40 years, and when he finally matured, he just didn't feel rugged.

Rugged matters to stardom. Its why from Star Wars, Harrison Ford became a star and Mark Hamill did not. Its why from Rich Man Poor Man, Nick Nolte became a star and Peter Strauss did not.

And we men can feel that "vibe" in real life. We know when the rugged ones enter the room and we others have to find another way to get the girl....which we can, with more work.....

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My two cents...

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Always interesting to read. Movie stardom continues to intrigue me...why this one, why not that one? So many male actors in particular seem to loathe their profession -- "I'm just saying lines and looking good" and feel empty about it. But they DO matter, they matter as role models and fantasy figures and "imaginary friends." (My family moved around a lot when I was a kid, and while I was trying to make new friends, it was comforting to go to the movies and hang with my long time friend John Wayne in the meantime.)

That's because it's assumed that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin (in the brain), when there is no actual test for that, which then causes serotonin-overload. I don't believe chronic depression is always caused by brain chemistry, or we'd have a lot more cured patients.
With manic-depression, the medicine lithium is more of a sure thing (the late Patty Duke , who died at 69 also, says it changed her life)