A friend of mine posted a link in Facebook to a page someone put up featuring "Rare Photos of Famous People". Naturally they are people everyone recognizes.
Here's 15 photos of people of enormous talent, who produced great works of art, who today most people wouldn't recognize. Unlike a lot of the "famous" people on the other list, who got famous by saying "look at me," the ones I've selected were chosen by me because they said, instead: "see what I've done."
Some of them struggled in obscurity, and remained there. Others were tremendously successful, as famous in their time as any star is today, but now most people would simply say, "never heard of 'em."
There aren't any murderers or people who are "famous for being famous" here, as there are on the other list, so some may be disappointed.
These people made my list because they offered something unique, irreplaceable, and, yes, "rare": talent.
Actor I don't want to be a star. If you have to label me anything, I'm an actor - I guess. A journeyman actor. I think "star" is what you call actors who can't act. Thus spake our first "rare" talent. Academy Award winner, one of the most respected actors of his time, a man who would "disappear" into his roles, who, ironically now, made a specialty of playing "famous" people—he's pretty much unknown to those "celebrating" the folks on the other list. I doubt he'd consider it an honor to be on the same page as Charles Manson anyway. |  |
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 | Musical Duo These two labored in obscurity their entire careers. They fell in love, in life and in music, and never looked back. They adapted over time, changing with the seasons and the fashions, but they stayed true always to their vision and their integrity. Sadly the male half passed away a few years back, so the songs are over, but these two kept going right up to the end. I only discovered them recently, doing a "double take" upon first hearing their unique mix. I've a lot to catch up on and will savor every moment. And any photo of these two, is "rare". |
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Singer This songbird was one of the top sellers of the 40s and 50s. She and her husband, whose inventive arrangements defined a new kind of popular music, had a long career together, were surrounded with success. Which is probably why now and then they would assume their alter-egos of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards and mock the heck out of themselves. She wasn't a beauty, which mattered little in the days of radio, and mattered even less when she sang, her voice so lovingly expressive. American soldiers put up Betty Grable's legs on their walls—and addressed their letters to "G.I. Jo". |  |
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 | Author 100 years from now when everyone's forgotten who Madonna is (the day can't come soon enough for me!), people will still be traveling from all across the world to visit the place where this author's imaginary character never lived, Prince Edward Island. They'll come to see what was never there, what only existed in the imagination of the beautiful little girl of this photograph. The "Anne-girl" (as "Miss Josephine" aptly calls her) is more famous than all the other "famous" people under consideration, if one judges by how many take the tour (just like they do in Hollywood!) to see her non-existent "home". |
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Singer, Movie Star Speaking of Canadian child prodigies—a real, as opposed to fictional, one this time—this young lady was one of the biggest movie stars of her time, yet the studio she raked in the bucks for can't be bothered releasing most of her films in their country of origin, the good ol' U.S.A. In order to get her movies on DVD I had to order them from Amazon UK. As for fame, she's another who has a lesson in her story for the few who would pay attention: she simply walked away from it. Got married, settled down. No child star whining from her—she did the smart thing and grew up. Never looked back, still alive-and-well and very happily "forgotten"! |  |
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 | Singer/Songwriter Okay, one more Canadian prodigy. This "plain Jane" curiously adorned her never-heard album "Teenager" with this picture of her at a much earlier stage of development. She couldn't look more determined, could she! Fame has proved fleeting for her, and perhaps it hasn't helped that she changes her name about as often as Lady Gaga-me-with-a-spoon changes wardrobe. Just this fall she changed her name back to her birth name and has begun touring again, even offering via email to play in your living room, if you like. Just don't ask for an autograph—she'd forget what name to sign! |
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Musician His former bandmate shows up on the other list, as might be expected, but this talented multi-instrumentalist doesn't. And as he isn't known to most people it's true they probably don't need to see him in his diapers. You could say he continues to wait in a place where the sun never shines. My insoluble problem is deciding which of his albums I've worn out multiple copies of—recorded at the same time as the "famous" guy's "classics"—I should set aside as a "desert island disc". I can't take them all on the island with me, can I? |  |
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 | Songwriters Once upon a time people could be songwriters and avoid basking in the dubious glow of the spotlight. You could pen the songs of Busby Berkeley films filled with astounding visual displays—and never break a sweat or bother 'bout a costume change. In short, you could simply be great and forego the paparrazi and screaming fans. You might not be instantly recognizable but you could get more work done! These two exemplify this bygone career choice. Some things become "rare" simply because they become extinct. |
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Musicians Speaking of extinct, so are the two jokers in this pic along with the ideology and/or movement they're mocking. Andy Warhol shows up numerous times on the other "fame" list. Which is fitting, I suppose. If they ever need to recast Faust for a more modern period they couldn't go too wrong if they selected Andy Warhol to fill his shoes. But either of these guys, each painting on a more limited canvas, was a superior artist to Warhol. No one played drums like the chap on the left; no one celebrated the banal better than the bloke on the right. If you're gonna elevate the banal to art, best make it funny. Warhol wasn't funny. |  |
As for how they led their lives, perhaps they were no better than Warhol: no one lived more dangerously than the chap on the left; no one would want to live with the demons that haunted the bloke on the right. And as for what they're up to in the photograph, I have no idea. Do I approve? Probably not. This is as close to "notorious" as I get in this post about "fame", not considering it germane as noted above. I'd surmise it's some kind of ironic statement they're purportedly making here but with these two you can never be too sure! | |
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 | Contralto Fame can be fleeting, especially if you die too soon. There was just a brief decade within which this woman's tremendous talent could be experienced by the general public. Like something out of today's "American Idol" this telephone operator turned housewife turned operatic composer's muse astounded public and critics. But time was working against her and suffering from severe breast cancer that penetrated her bones she could sing no more. Despite all that, "Klever Kaff", as she was affectionately known to family, never lost her love of life—or music. |
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Actress This beautiful creature is probably not known to many this side of the pond, but over in the UK they don't give a tuppence: she's enjoyed a long career at the top. Everyone including herself knows she's gorgeous but that's not why we love her: we love her 'cause she's such a great actress. It's just icing on the cake that we get to keep our eyes fixed on her enchanting, inscrutably-smiling face the whole while she plies her trade! |  |
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 | Actress Here's one "famous" person the friend who posted the link to all the other "really" famous people will know. I've included her for one reason only: If the people fascinated with all the "stars" celebrated over there saw this picture, they'd want her for their own list. They should discard one of the many pictures of Madonna—maybe even knock her off the top spot on that list—and give this blond[bombsh]ell her due. |
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Actress Since I'm on an "actresses with pluck" roll, guess I've got to include "Red". This pic is before she dominated the box office in the 50s with her Oscar-winning portrayals of fallen stars and caged women. "Red" was determined to be a star and made it to the top pretty much through sheer will. That determination informed her most successful roles. She didn't get to play the role of Scarlett O'Hara—she lived it. |  |
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Singer/Songwriters These two nameless gnome-like tree-huggers are unknown to most people, individually or even under their "group" name. Yet without them Led Zeppelin might still be just a blues band, since it was the music of these two eclectic explorers that inspired Plant and Page to find the roots of their musical heritage and branch out, as it were. Think of them as "shamans"—that's how they thought of themselves. | |
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Singer/Songwriter Last but not least, another great talent who tragically died too soon. Who knows where the time goes? Some stars who perish too soon become immortalized, their reputations never tarnished by "lost weekends" and other career lows which might have followed had they "survived". They're forever burning their guitar on stage, at dawn, at Woodstock—forever young, as the song would have it. Others fade away before they are really recognized, and it's only much later they are celebrated for what and who they were. Perhaps Sandy is somewhere inbetween. Sandy never sang a false note. She could be off-key, but never false. She didn't know how to sing any way but true. |  |
There are only a few photos of her; they get endlessly recycled. In all of them she presents herself in as simple and as straightforward a manner as possible. She was never particularly concerned with how she looked, only how she sounded. And she sounded beautiful. | |
