by Frank Calvillo
Welcome to the Fandor Files, a six-part monthly series featuring the best from Fandor.com, one of today’s top streaming sites showcasing the best of classic titles, independent films, and insightful documentaries. Each month, we’ll take a look at a pair of selections linked by a common thread, illustrating important parts of history and society.
Show business is littered with the hopes and wishes of many young women who dream of making it big. Whether it be on the Broadway stage or the silver screen, the idea of devoting one’s life to a profession built on the likes of illusion, imagination, and fantasy seems like a prospect too good to be true. As countless aspiring actresses have found throughout history, it most often is. In this edition of the Fandor Files, I offer up two examples of actresses with all the necessary ingredients needed for stardom and acclaim, whose goals and aspirations were thwarted by real life. New York stage and TV actress Brandy Burre and 20th Century Fox B-movie star Debra Paget prove fascinating case studies on how drive and ambition are only part of the ingredients needed for making the dream come true.
Debra Paget, For Example
In the documentary Debra Paget, For Example, director Mark Rappaport examines the career of Hollywood actress Debra Paget, one of the most striking performers who never quite reached the kind of fame that was expected, despite an undeniable combination of beauty and talent.
Rappaport traces Paget’s career from its early days in the film noir title Cry of the City, in which she showed a natural ease in front of the camera and was undoubtedly an instinctive performer. Paget would go on to be directed in key roles by the likes of Cecil B. DeMille and Fritz Lang, and share plenty of screen time opposite leading men such as Jimmy Stewart and Elvis Presley. However, her career never took off in the same way that Marilyn Monroe’s or Kim Novak’s did. Rappaport attributes this to the closed-mindedness of studio executives at 20th Century Fox, who never really knew what to do with Paget. As years went by, Paget’s career dwindled into roles in an assortment of B-movies where she was often cast as exotic princesses and heroines and made to perform a number of dances, which, plot-wise, were meant to reflect the film’s ethnic tone, but were really just choreographed to show off the actress’s alluring figure, leading to her being labeled one of the queens of kitsch. Debra Paget, For Example proves more than just a Hollywood documentary, but shows how even an actress who comes complete with the entire package still isn’t guaranteed the moon.
New York actress Brandy Burre proves a decidedly polarizing, yet incredibly watchable subject in Robert Greene’s documentary Actress. Burre found success appearing in various stage productions and in a recurring role in HBO’s The Wire. However, after finding she wasn’t even being considered for roles she was perfect for, Burre moved to upstate New York and had two kids with her partner Tim. Following a few years of domestic life, she has decided to re-enter the world of acting, which leads to one of the most difficult periods of her life.
The story of an actress giving it all up to start a family is nothing new. But I love the idea of exploring what happens when said actress decides she wants back in. Greene’s film answers this question through a highly revealing and upfront look at a woman who, while content with the life she’s made for herself, still yearns for something more. The cameras follow Burre as she packs lunches, runs errands, meets with agents, and gets new headshots taken. Watching her manage the stress that comes from trying to have it all provides little surprise, but it’s the frustration and the desire to be seen as both an actress and a mother which provides the documentary with its true essence. Greene shows the hardships of his subject’s journey, such as a highly sobering moment when she opens up a residual check from The Wire for a mere 66 cents. Burre’s behavior and choices may not be the same as everyone else’s, but they are hers and she owns up to them at every turn. Upfront and honest from beginning to end, Actress shows that while it may be possible to have it all, the struggle to achieve it is far from easy.
