Linda Darnell - Later Career

Later Career

Aside from her co-starring role opposite Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier in the groundbreaking No Way Out (1950), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, which she later called "the only good picture ever made," her later films were rarely noteworthy, and her appearances were increasingly sporadic. Further hampering Darnell's career was the actress's alcoholism and weight gain. Her next film was a western, Two Flags West (1950). Due to her allergy to horses, she loathed making westerns, and in addition to her complaints about her "colorless" role, she disliked her co-stars Joseph Cotten and Cornel Wilde. She was even less enthusiastic about her next film The 13th Letter (1951), which reunited her with Otto Preminger, and she only took the role because it was an unglamorous one. Shortly after its release, she was put on suspension for refusing a role in the film The Guy Who Came Back (1951) opposite Paul Douglas and Joan Bennett, because it felt "too similar." She later consented to take on the glamor role, but she refused to bleach her hair for it.

On March 21, 1951, Darnell signed a new contract with 20th Century Fox that allowed her to become a freelance actress. Her first film outside 20th Century Fox was for Universal Pictures, The Lady Pays Off (1951), after Douglas Sirk requested her for the lead role. She was responsible for putting the film behind schedule, because on the fifth day of shooting she learned that Ivan Kahn, the man responsible for her breakthrough, had died. After The Lady Pays Off, Darnell headed the cast of Saturday Island (1952), which was filmed on location in Jamaica in late 1951. There Darnell fell ill and had to be quarantined for several weeks. Because her contract required her to make one film a year for the studio, she reported to the lot of 20th Century Fox in March 1952 and was cast in the film noir Night Without Sleep (1952). It was the only time that she had to live up to this part of her contract, though, since she was released from it in September 1952, most likely because the competition of television forced studios all over Hollywood to drop actors.

This news initially excited Darnell, because it permitted her to focus on her film career in Europe. She soon realized, though, that the ease and protection enjoyed under contract was gone, and she came to resent 20th Century Fox and Zanuck:

Suppose you'd been earning $4,000 to $5,000 a week for years. Suddenly you were fired and no one would hire you at any figure remotely comparable to your previous salary. I thought in a little while I'd get offers from other studios, but not many came along. The only thing I knew how to do was be a movie star. No one expects to last forever in this business. You know that sooner or later the studio's going to let you go. But who wants to be retired at twenty-nine?

Before traveling to Italy for a two-picture deal with Giuseppe Amato, Darnell was rushed into the production of Blackbeard the Pirate (1952), which — much to Darnell's distress — went far behind schedule. She arrived in Italy in August 1952 and started filming Angels of Darkness (1954) in February of the next year. The second collaboration proved disastrous, and the next film was never released in the United States. Due to a delay in the middle of production, she was sent back to Hollywood, and there accepted an offer from Howard Hughes to star in RKO's 3-D film Second Chance (1953), filmed in Mexico. Afterwards, she flew back to Rome to complete Angels of Darkness, in which she spoke Italian. Upon returning to New York, she was under the misunderstanding that she would portray the title role in Mankiewicz' The Barefoot Contessa (1954), believing that the role could carry her to dramatic heights. Through trade papers, she learned that Ava Gardner assumed the part.

Because of her then husband, Philip Liebmann, Darnell put her career on a hiatus. She returned to 20th Century Fox in August 1955, by which time the studio had entered the television field. Darnell was eager to appear on Ronald W. Reagan's General Electric Theater. In 1958, Darnell appeared in the episode "Kid on a Calico Horse" of NBC's Cimarron City, along with a cast of other guest stars, including Edgar Buchanan. That same year, she held the guest-starring title role in "The Dora Gray Story" of NBC's Wagon Train. Dora is an attractive young woman trying to reach San Francisco and has inadvertently joined with a gun runner played by John Carradine to reach the west. Robert Horton carries the cast lead in the segment, and Mike Connors appears as Miles Borden, Dora's erstwhile love interest but a corrupt United States Army lieutenant bitter over his meager $54-per-month pay. Dan Blocker, more than a year before Bonanza, also guests in this segment.

In addition to television, Darnell returned to the stage. Darnell's last work as an actress was in a stage production in Atlanta, Georgia in early 1965.