The Mummy's Hand director Christy Cabanne launched a Hollywood icon
Hint: It's not the guy standing next to him in this picture!
We've all got to start somewhere. And in the case of many future stars and legends of the screen, that first role can be unexpected. Sure, lots of actors show up fully-formed in some incredible debut role, blowing minds from their first moment onscreen. There's Alan Rickman, cementing his legacy immediately as Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Edward Norton was hailed straight away for his acting when Primal Fear premiered, and looking back, it seems like the guy had been in movies for years, even though that was his first big-screen role. And you could do a lot worse than the True Grit remake if you're a child actor on the rise like Hailee Steinfeld. She was just 14 years old and made her feature film debut alongside Jeff Bridges in the Coen Brothers' epic. Not too shabby.
Other actors just feel like they've been onscreen forever, and thinking about their first baffles the mind. What do you mean, there was a time before Dustin Hoffman was a known commodity, the world over?
For nearly the past century, Shirley Temple has been a stand-in for all things Hollywood. Even people who have never seen a single Shirley Temple movie still know who she is. She's made her way into the American subconscious, like Bugs Bunny and the McDonald's arches. It's strange to think of her having a movie debut. Shirley Temple just sort of... is.
But, again, we've all got to start somewhere. And for Temple, that somewhere was 1932's The Red-Haired Alibi, a pre-Code adaptation of the same-named novel by William Collision.
Here's one we're sure will come up on Jeopardy someday: The Red-Haired Alibi was the 85th movie directed by Christy Cabanne, who horror fans will surely know directed The Mummy's Hand. He'd squeeze another 23 movies in between those two features. What a workhorse!
