Artists who never found work again after controversy

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was one of the biggest stars of the silent movie era. In 1918, Paramount Pictures signed the rotund comedian to a then-staggering three-year contract worth $3 million. But when he is discussed today, it is likely in reference to the death of actress Virginia Rappe in 1921. When Arbuckle was charged with manslaughter, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst turned his trial into a media sensation. After two mistrials, Arbuckle was cleared of all charges, but Hollywood morals watchdog Will Hays nevertheless banned the comedian from the industry. Arbuckle found pseudonymous work as a director of two-reelers, but it would take ten years for Hollywood to welcome him back. Alas, on the very same day he signed to star in a feature film for Warner Bros, Fatty Arbuckle died of a heart attack.

College football legend, bright light of the Harlem Renaissance, titan of the theater, movie star, uncompromising political activist… Paul Robeson packed a lot of living into his seventy-seven years on this planet. And he would probably be discussed in reverent tones today had he not been affiliated with (though not a member of) the American Communist Party. His testimony before HUAC in 1956 led to his passport being revoked, and his career in every medium – film, theater and music – never recovered.

Robert Blake got his start as a member of the Little Rascals in 1939, and enjoyed steady employment in movies and television before becoming a full-fledged star as the cockatoo-feeding cop “Baretta.” His career stalled out in the 1980s, but he made a comeback in the 1990s as a scenery-chewing man of menace in “Money Train” and “Lost Highway.” Blake’s off-screen dark side made headlines when he was charged with the murder of his wife, Bonnie Lee Bakely, in 2001. He was acquitted in 2005, but found liable in a civil suit for Bakely’s death later that year. Blake has been looking to make a comeback over the last decade, but has thus far found no takers. 

Cocaine may be a heck of a drug, but it hardly excuses the horrific acts Rick James and wife Tanya Hijazi visited upon twenty-four-year-old Frances Alley in 1991. James’s R&B stardom had faded after peaking in 1981 behind the single “Super Freak” when he and Hijazi were accused of tying Alley to a chair and sexually assaulting her. James went to prison, and, while he released two albums after the incident, his only successful “comeback” was as a punch line in Charlie Murphy’s “True Hollywood Stories” for “Chappelle’s Show.”  

Like many members of the Hollywood Ten, Samuel Ornitz got his start as a playwright and novelist before heading to Hollywood in search of more lucrative work as a screenwriter at the dawn of the “talkie” era. He found it by writing close to thirty scripts (including the 1933 adaptation of “Imitation of Life” and the Lionel Barrymore/Bela Lugosi horror film “Mark of the Vampire”) before being blacklisted for refusing to answer HUAC’s anti-Communist inquiries. He remained in Los Angeles, but did not write another screenplay after 1945. He passed away in 1957.

He won three Emmys playing the loveably boisterous neighbor Cosmo Kramer on “Seinfeld,” and he burned pretty much all of that audience goodwill to the ground when he dropped the n-word on a black heckler at the Laugh Factory comedy club in Los Angeles. Michael Richards has never fully recovered from the 2006 incident. He’s sworn off stand-up, and has only booked one substantial TV gig in the short-lived TV Land show “Kirstie.” He’s out!

The winners of the 1990 Grammy for Best New Artist found their burgeoning celebrity nipped in the bud when it was revealed that the duo, Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, did not sing a single note on their debut LP. The boys attempted a comeback in 1993 as Rob & Fab, but the infamy was too great to overcome. Pilatus spiraled downward into a life of drugs and crime before committing suicide in 1998. Morvan briefly found work as a deejay at L.A.’s KIIS-FM, and released an unsuccessful solo album in 2003.

Though Emil Jannings’s thick accent put the kibosh on his attempt at American movie stardom, the actor remained immensely popular in 1930s Germany – which posed a problem. Best known as Marlene Dietrich’s co-star in “The Blue Angel,” Jannings remained in Germany and threw his support behind the Nazi Party, earning an “Artist of the State” accolade from Joseph Goebbels. After the war, Jannings was spectacularly unemployable. He fled to Austria, where he died in 1950.

The fiercely political screenwriter John Howard Lawson (pictured right with fellow Blacklistee Dalton Trumbo) was one of the most prominent members of the American Communist Party in Hollywood, which made him an easy target for HUAC. He wrote the excellent Humphrey Bogart WWII film “Sahara” in 1943, and worked steadily right up until his blacklisting as a member of the Hollywood Ten in 1947. Lawson moved to Mexico in the early 1950s, and adapted Alan Paton’s anti-Apartheid novel “Cry, the Beloved Country” for England’s London Films. He wrote one more screenplay, “The Careless Years,” in 1957 under an alias before leaving the film industry for good.

Randy Quaid earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in only his third big-screen role (1973’s “The Last Detail”), and quickly became one of Hollywood’s most dependable portrayers of lovable goofballs like Cousin Eddie in the “Vacation” series. Then, along with his wife Evi, he ran afoul of the authorities for fraud and burglary relating to Santa Barbara real estate, hightailed it to Canada, and started releasing bizarre videos. Quaid’s most infamous transmission was a sex tape in which he appears to engage in actual coitus with Evi (who’s wearing a Rupert Murdoch mask). The couple returned to the U.S. in 2015, and plan to make Vermont their permanent home.

The man who hunted down the hooky-playing Ferris Bueller was arrested for a far more serious offense in 2002. Charged with possession of child pornography (and asking a fourteen-year-old boy to pose for nude photographs), Jones pled no contest and received five years probation (while also being required to register as a sex offender). He subsequently booked a series regular role on HBO’s “Deadwood,” but after violating the terms of his probation in 2010, the work dried up. He hasn’t appeared in a film or television show since 2014.

As Puck, the meathead best friend of Cory Monteith’s Finn on “Glee,” Mark Salling became a heartthrob to the show’s legion of devoted fans. His popularity suffered a serious blow when he settled a charge of sexual battery out of court, but he was still scheduled to appear in “Adi Shankar’s Gods and Secrets” last year when he was arrested for possessing a massive amount of child pornography. Salling is now facing up to seven years in jail.

The precocious child star of Nickelodeon’s “All That” and “The Amanda Show” appeared to be successfully managing the transition to adult stardom with hit movies like “She’s the Man,” “Hairspray” and “Easy A.” The trouble started in 2012 with a DUI arrest, and snowballed with bizarre outbursts in public and on social media. Bynes hasn’t worked since 2010, but let’s hope that, with the proper counseling, she’ll be able to resume her once promising career sometime soon.

As the protestant minister Eric Camden on “7th Heaven” from 1996 to 2007, Stephen Collins was one of television’s most trusted dads. That façade was shattered in 2014 when audio of Collins admitting to past sexual abuse of a minor leaked to the media. Later that year, in a People magazine interview, Collins subsequently confessed to three separate instances of “inappropriate sexual conduct” with underage girls. He hasn’t worked since.

Best known as the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Raoul Walsh’s World War II film “Operation Burma,” Alvah Bessie (pictured left) was a celebrated intellectual and anti-fascist journalist before he made his lucrative move to Hollywood. His film career was just taking off when his association with the Communist Party landed him on the Blacklist as part of the Hollywood Ten. Nedrick Young fronted his script for the western “Passage West,” but Bessie’s screenwriting career was effectively over. He subsequently found success as a novelist with the Marilyn Monroe-inspired “The Symbol.”

CeeLo rose to prominence as a member of the Atlanta-based hip-hop crew Goodie Mob, but he didn’t become a superstar until he teamed up with Danger Mouse to form Gnarls Barkley. The song “Crazy” topped charts all over the world, which led to him being named one of the four celebrity judges for NBC’s singing competition show “The Voice.” In 2012, CeeLo performed for President Obama. In 2014, he took to Twitter to incoherently defend himself against a two-year-old rape allegation, and practically incriminated himself. The damage: CeeLo’s 2015 LP, “Heart Blanche,” bombed with fans and critics. It’s not officially “over” yet for CeeLo, but it’s not looking good.

Ingrid Bergman’s career didn’t end when she had an affair with director Roberto Rossellini while filming 1950’s “Stromboli,” but the scandal certainly placed a temporary pause on her Hollywood employment. Here’s how backwards the 1950s were: the American public’s reaction to Bergman’s infidelity was so severe (she was actually denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate), that she didn’t return to the country for several years. She won an Oscar for 1956’s “Anastasia,” but that was filmed in Europe. She did eventually return, and received a formal apology from the U.S. Senate in 1972.

For a tantalizingly brief eleven years, Clara Bow transfixed moviegoers with her indefatigably perky persona. She was confident, ambitious and prime tabloid fodder due to her “bohemian” lifestyle. While not all of the rumors were true (e.g. that frequently cited tryst with the entire USC football team), she did, according to screenwriter Adela Rogers St. Johns, live “entirely in the moment.” Sadly, the “scandals” took an emotional toll, forcing Bow to retire from acting in 1933 at the age of twenty-eight.

Onscreen, John Garfield was the tough guy’s tough guy. He was a popular star of war movies, early films noir (like “The Postman Only Rings Twice”) and the boxing classic “Body and Soul.” But behind Garfield’s rough-and-tumble exterior was a thoughtful and articulate champion of liberal causes. Garfield denied any Communist affiliations to HUAC, but he drew the committee’s ire by refusing to name names. For this, he was blacklisted. He made his last film in 1951, and probably would’ve struggled to find work for years to come had he not died unexpectedly in 1952.