Look Before You Leap!

Every hit TV series these days seems to spawn would-be movie stars. But as onetime TV cowboy Clint Eastwood might say, "Do you feel lucky?" As the eight case histories presented here show, the successful leaps to the big screen read in retrospect as bizarre studies in improbability, and the failures are sobering cautionary tales.

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CASE HISTORY #1:

LUCK COUNTS

For many years, Steve McQueen stood taller than all the rest of the TV stars who'd followed him, lemming-like, up onto the silver screen. No one had started lower than the laconic McQueen (on TV's "Wanted: Dead or Alive") or risen to greater heights. McQueen was the reigning action superstar of his day, and a legend in his own time. These days it's Tom Hanks's ascension from lowbrow TV comic to double Oscar-winner that seems so inspiring. No doubt many young actors laboring in TV dreck that frustrates their notions of their range and genius look to Hanks and think. "If he can do it, so can I." Wrong, wrong, wrong. Hanks's triumphant journey from television to the movies serves as a textbook example of Deceptive Simplicity. His film career did not begin with a bold launch off the small screen, and he nearly crashed and burned so many times that you have to believe he has either an asbestos-coated belief in himself or a guardian angel with astounding clout, or both. In other words, don't try this at home.

In the early '80s, there was nothing to suggest that Hanks was any likelier a future screen icon than either of his equally genial, low-watt costars on "'Bosom Buddies," Peter Scolari and Donna Dixon. Putting the two male stars in drag, à la Some Like It Hot, was a neat way to disguise the fact that "Bosom Buddies" was a shameless "Three's Company" knockoff, but Hanks never did anything more exceptional than squeeze a few chuckles out of painfully obvious jokes. He quickly moved toward the big-screen escape, but his first couple of films-- He Knows You're Alone and Bachelor Party--deserved to be his last. A lucky break made the difference after "Bosom Buddies" ended. Fellow sitcom survivor Ron Howard, who'd saved himself from post-TV obscurity by becoming a movie director, gave Hanks the lead in an unpromising high-concept no-brainer called Splash. Hanks carried off the odd combination of wise-guy one-liners and naive romance with such assured aplomb and such pleasing runs-cool/runs-warm likability that overnight he became a household name. His rubbery features, the kind one might have thought would not come off on a huge movie screen, generated mass affection.

Then came six movies that could have ended anyone else's career: The Man With One Red Shoe, Volunteers, Every Time We Say Goodbye, Nothing in Common, The Money Pit and Dragnet. You'd have to go back to Jack Lemmon--himself a TV-to-big-screen case who'd also had to don a dress--to find as unlikely a case of a comic charmer managing to survive his own starring vehicles. Hanks might well have run his luck dry at this point, but he got another lucky break from another sitcom-survivor-turned-director: Penny Marshall cast him in a high-concept no-brainer called Big. Hanks's sustained act of boyish winsomeness in that hugely successful (and respected) film made him at last an authentic star.

Looking to widen--and, in some cases, darken--his range, Hanks once again headed straight off a cliff with a movie skeet shoot that, excepting Turner and Hooch, made a return to sit-coms look attractive. Punchline, The 'burbs, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Joe Versus the Volcano: all different, all terrible. Marshall again came to Hanks's rescue by casting him against type as the grouchy coach in A League of Their Own. And there, after an extraordinary history of big-screen bungling, began a string of back-to-back hits so impressive that the peculiar phenomenon of Hollywood amnesia made it possible for people to think of Hanks as that remarkably versatile actor who'd waltzed off TV into instant big-screen success. Did he learn to select scripts more carefully? Grow miraculously as an actor? A run that includes Sleepless in Seattle (big hit), Philadelphia (Best Actor Oscar), Forrest Gump (gigantic hit, Best Actor Oscar), Apollo 13 (huge hit, Oscar nomination) and Toy Story (massive hit) bears no explanation. This is such a long, strange way from dressing up in women's clothes on TV that it's best just to appreciate the glorious improbability of it all and remember: don't try this at home.

CASE HISTORY #2:

MAKE HAY WHILE THE PAPARAZZI'S FLASH-BULBS SHINE

Here we have the strange case of a TV celeb too consumed with being famous to worry about becoming more famous. There's a price to pay for such recklessness, but onetime child actress Shannen Doherty so obviously enjoyed graduating from costarring on forgettable series like "Little House: A New Beginning" and "Our House" into full- blown teen tartdom on a hit of her own, "Beverly Hills 90210," that she failed to snag even a single feature film during her four-year run on the show. Big mistake, for, as Doherty can now tell you, it's all well and good if you were featured in the beloved cult classic Heathers before you got famous on TV, but you're still in big trouble if the best theatrical flick you can manage afterwards is Mallrats.

What was Doherty doing instead of making features during the "90210" years when she had a prime shot at the big time? Making merry, making headlines and making enemies. For years, not a week went by when Doherty wasn't on the front page of one tabloid or another. She was Young Hollywood's hard-living, club-hopping party doll. Her on-screen character inspired the "I Hate Brenda" newsletter and her offscreen character inspired costars to complain, "I hate Shannen." Big on attitude and short on talent, some people thought, but talent doesn't figure into TV sizzlers getting a shot at the big screen--as Doherty's "90210" love interest, Luke Perry, proved by making several features before anyone cared if he could act or not. Are we to believe that Doherty, at white-hot heat, couldn't have scored roles to at least equal Perry's in, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Pshaw! It's not that Doherty didn't have time to make movies. She just seems to have had terrible taste combined with confidence that her celebrity would never end--a dangerous cocktail. What else but poor judgement could explain the made-for-TV quickies she did choose: Obsessed and Blindfold: Acts of Obsession? Or the one she made when it was clear the "90210" party was over, at least for her: A Burning Pas-sion: The Margaret Mitchell Story? Shannen as Scarlett, maybe--c'mon, she wouldn't have been worse than Joanne Whalley-Kilmer--but as Mags Mitchell, never. Then it was on to another cheesy TV flick, Jailbreakers, and thence to Kevin Smith's disappointing follow-up to Clerks, Mallrats.

Current TV stars, take heed: learn from Doherty's failure to grab the brass ring while still on the carousel -- or you, too, may one day face a future of being lucky to land an episode of "Red Shoe Diaries."

CASE HISTORY #3:

SHOOTING STARS SPUTTER OUT

It's not like I'm coming back." Eddie Murphy was heard to say on TV last summer in the midst of his career come-back with The Nutty Professor. "Y'all are comin' back to the theaters. I've been there every season--just alone." Can you hear the deluded strains of Norma Desmond in this remark? If it's hard to recall now how popular Murphy really was in his '80s heyday, perhaps that's because a lot has changed for African Americans in Hollywood in the past 15 years, and because the tone of African-American comedy is so different now from Murphy's unrancorous, I'm-laughing-so-hard-I-can't-breathe shtick. Still, before there was Whoopi, before the brothers Wayans, Hudlin and Hughes, before such other brothers as Lee, Singleton, Snipes and Smith, there was Murphy, He rose out of TV to reign over Tinseltown, and he's a prime example of how achieving such an improbable feat can lead to head-swelling and reality-deprivation so severe you can kill your own luck. Doesn't matter if you're black or white.

Murphy's launching pad had been, of course, "Saturday Night Live." Back in 1981, he'd resurrected the show back up to essential viewing--he was just that funny--and, like other "SNL" cast members, he decided to try Hollywood. He promptly stole 48 HRS from Nick Nolte with his patented rude-quipster routine. The following year, he took the gem Trading Places away from Dan Aykroyd. Murphy's home studio, Paramount, saw he could any movies on his own, so a Stallone vehicle was rewritten for him: Beverly Hills Cop. The combined take on these three hits made Murphy look, from any angle, like the biggest cash cow in the history of TV-to-movie stars. Thus, he left "SNL" for good and established himself--in those long-ago days before studio toppers voluntarily paid actors S20 million per picture--as one of the highest-salaried, and most demanding, players the industry had ever seen. His arrogance about who he'd work with and about how many family members and friends he needed on the payroll rapidly gave him a poisonous rep. Audiences didn't care; but studios do care. Only huge hits allow this kind of aggravation to be forgiven.

The Golden Child wasn't funny, but made money on the audience's desire to think it was funny. Beverly Hills Cop II wasn't funny, but made money on the audience's desire to repeat the experience of Beverly Hills Cop. The Eddie Murphy Raw concert film revealed a dark, sexist side to Murphy's humor that had been, till then, neatly downplayed, and for the first time, people were put off. But they came back yet again for Coming to America, which wasn't funny. The costly vanity production Harlem Nights didn't even try to be funny, and it bombed. The slide started. Murphy's reverting to his known persona for Another 48 HRS didn't fool anybody. Boomerang, a modest success, showed that Murphy's appeal had retreated from crossover paradise and resided now mostly with black audiences. The Distinguished Gentleman came straight from hunger. Things got desperate when few takers were found for the too-little-too-late Beverly Hills Cop III. Last year, when Murphy tried his hand at a horror comedy, Vampire in Brooklyn, he was simply regarded as a has-been.

But desperation can be a good thing. The long-talked-about remake of The Nutty Professor was recast in post-_The Mask_ special effects. Cast as a low-key bumbler, actively trashing the edgy persona which made him famous, Murphy hit big. Now what? Ego dies hard in Hollywood--it's likely Murphy will immediately start to push his pushy self around again, and he now lacks the can't-miss aura that surrounded him on his magical, blinding ascent from TV. If he can't ring the bell next time out, can "The Eddie Murphy Show" be far off in the future?

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