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Two from the silent era come to mind Mary Fuller and Olga Petrova both were big for a period then nothing.

Aileen Pringle was a major Star for a short run after the success of THREE WEEKS. Shortly afterward, HIS HOUR was also a big hit, and her other movie with John Gilbert, WIFE OF THE CENTAUR seemed to do pretty good business in 1924. Maybe in 1926 she was still having some solid success with pictures like TIN GODS. But by 1928 seems to have vanished off the radar. I have seen very little of Aileen Pringle. Tod Browning's THE MYSTIC from 1925, and that's about it. Would like to see more, especially HIS HOUR, And CENTAUR, if it exists? I'm I mistaken about her? Not many of her films seem to be still around, but if the Russian Gosfilmofond Archive really has a print of THREE WEEKS (1923), and it is complete that would be huge. I guess overall, she had a pretty decent run, so Aileen probably doesn't qualify for this thread.

Aileen Pringle (1895-1989) worked well into the 1940s, what i was saying was someone who had success 2-5 years then just disapeared, the two i mentioned did that, I believe Olga Petrova wrote plays and books and Mary Fuller was mentally ill.

Geraldine Farrar, perhaps? Although she certainly didn't need the movies to boost her, Carmen, The Woman God Forgot and Joan the Woman were probably the high points. Of course, Lou Tellegen was driving her career into the ditch, rather than she falling out of favor with audiences, so perhaps she doesn't really belong on the thread.

Someone who had big fame and then went uncredited the rest of her career was Mary MacClaren (1895-1984) She ended up being very poor and looked like a bag lady when they showed her on Entertainment Tonight on Estelle Winwood's 100th birthday. I'm amazed how many once big silent stars couldn't get a credited role anymore, some spent the years from the era of talkies beginning till the 1960s without one credited role, very strange. My own feeling is that Louis B. Mayer and the other studio heads saw the arrival of talkies as a way to bring down salaries and the studio system took hold where they had you stuck before lawsuits from the likes of Olivia Da Havilland and Bette Davis broke the hold. In the silent era there was soo much freelancing and many stars set up their own film companies by the early 1930s though the studio heads who had whined about the Edison Trust now had a hold on the industry themselves.

Yes Geraldine Faarrar still is a good example though she had her opera to fall back on.

Well, Helen Mundy only made the one film. STARK LOVE in 1927. That same year, Molly O' Day Sister of Sally O'Neil, was leading lady to Richard Barthelmess in his very popular feature THE PATENT LEATHER KID. The two were reunited in THE LITTLE SHEPARD OF KINGDOM COME the following year. What happened to her after that? Helene Costello appeared in a few films including briefly in DON JUAN, . Co-Star IN OLD KENTUCKY (1927) with James Murray, (released before THE CROWD), but I don't think had the success that Sister Dolores did.

Harry Houdini had a short film career but he couldn't give away too many tricks on film or the people wouldn't have come out to see him live.

salus wrote:Yes Geraldine Faarrar still is a good example though she had her opera to fall back on.

I hope you're being ironic. Farrar's films were a minor part of her entire career. First and foremost she was a singer.

salus wrote:Harry Houdini had a short film career but he couldn't give away too many tricks on film or the people wouldn't have come out to see him live.

Houdini had a short film career because he couldn't act. The parts of his films which don't involve action sequences are laughable. Had he lived he'd never have made it in talkies- the few recordings of his voice display a heavy Brooklynesque accent which he tries to cover up by o-ver e-nun-ci-at-ing his syl-a-bles.

Houdini like Caruso didn't need films their names became synonomous with their professions.