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AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars

 
Wikipedia: AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars
AFI 100 Years… series

100 Movies – (1998)
100 Stars – (1999)
100 Laughs – (2000)
100 Thrills – (2001)
100 Passions – (2002)
100 Heroes and Villains – (2003)
100 Songs – (2004)
100 Movie Quotes – (2005)
100 Film Scores – (2005)
100 Musicals – (2006)
100 Cheers – (2006)
100 Movies (10th Anniversary) – (2007)
AFI's 10 Top 10 – (2008)

Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars is a list of the top 50 stars of American cinema, 25 male and 25 female. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on a June 16, 1999 CBS special hosted by Shirley Temple, with 50 current actors making the presentations.

The list

# Male Legends # Female Legends
1. Humphrey Bogart 1. Katharine Hepburn
2. Cary Grant 2. Bette Davis
3. James Stewart 3. Audrey Hepburn
4. Marlon Brando 4. Ingrid Bergman
5. Fred Astaire 5. Greta Garbo
6. Henry Fonda 6. Marilyn Monroe
7. Clark Gable 7. Elizabeth Taylor
8. James Cagney 8. Judy Garland
9. Spencer Tracy 9. Marlene Dietrich
10. Charlie Chaplin 10. Joan Crawford
11. Gary Cooper 11. Barbara Stanwyck
12. Gregory Peck 12. Claudette Colbert
13. John Wayne 13. Grace Kelly
14. Laurence Olivier 14. Ginger Rogers
15. Gene Kelly 15. Mae West
16. Orson Welles 16. Vivien Leigh
17. Kirk Douglas 17. Lillian Gish
18. James Dean 18. Shirley Temple
19. Burt Lancaster 19. Rita Hayworth
20. The Marx Brothers 20. Lauren Bacall
21. Buster Keaton 21. Sophia Loren
22. Sidney Poitier 22. Jean Harlow
23. Robert Mitchum 23. Carole Lombard
24. Edward G. Robinson 24. Mary Pickford
25. William Holden 25. Ava Gardner

The legends were presented by 50 current actors:

Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, Jacqueline Bisset, Ernest Borgnine, James Caan, Jim Carrey, Chevy Chase, Cher, Kevin Costner, Billy Crystal, Geena Davis, Laura Dern, Matt Dillon, Richard Dreyfuss, Clint Eastwood, Mia Farrow, Bridget Fonda, Peter Fonda, Morgan Freeman, Teri Garr, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeff Goldblum, Woody Harrelson, Richard Harris, Goldie Hawn, Gregory Hines, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Michael Keaton, Martin Landau, Jessica Lange, Shirley MacLaine, Marsha Mason, Marlee Matlin, Mike Myers, Edward Norton, Edward James Olmos, Miss Piggy, Lynn Redgrave, Julia Roberts, Gena Rowlands, Kevin Spacey, Sylvester Stallone, Rod Steiger, Sharon Stone, Barbra Streisand, Billy Bob Thornton, Lily Tomlin, Emily Watson, and James Woods

Additional information

  • Lillian Gish has the longest film career - 75 years.
  • Laurence Olivier has the longest career among the men - 59 years.
  • There are four living female stars (Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Lauren Bacall and Sophia Loren) and two male legends (Kirk Douglas and Sidney Poitier).
  • Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier and Sophia Loren all had screen debuts in 1950, the cutoff year chosen by the AFI.
  • Ten screen legends made up five famous duos: Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. The Marx Brothers are the only group on the list.
  • Thirteen legends made the transition from silent to sound films: Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Lillian Gish, Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton and Edward G. Robinson. However, of these, Stanwyck, Lombard, Gable, Copper, Wayne, Robinson and the Marx Brothers were little more than extras during the silent period, each with no more than two or three credits. As such, the only legends who were stars both during the silent and sound eras are Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Gish, Pickford, Keaton and Chaplin's careers went into decline very quickly during the 1930s. Garbo's career ended in 1942. Only Joan Crawford managed to forge a career as an actress and star of continued note, ending her work as an actress in 1976, the year before her death, giving her a career span of fifty-five years as a star of stage, film and television.
  • Thirteen legends were born outside America: Audrey Hepburn in Belgium; Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo in Sweden; Marlene Dietrich in Germany; Claudette Colbert in France; Vivien Leigh in India; Sophia Loren in Italy; Mary Pickford in Canada; Edward G. Robinson in Romania; and Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, and Laurence Olivier in England. Eight were born in New York: Barbara Stanwyck, Mae West, Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster and the Marx Brothers.
  • Two films featured the largest number of listed legends. In How the West was Won, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, John Wayne, and Gregory Peck acted, while Spencer Tracy narrated. The lesser known Slippery Pearls (or Stolen Jools), a 20-minute short film made to benefit a sanitarium for tuberculosis, includes Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Buster Keaton and Edward G. Robinson.

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