Whatever happened to....?

I've always been fascinated by the transience of fame and, in this age of information overload, with every factoid seemingly at your fingertips, I'm especially keen on the curious disappearances of those who were once seen by millions (or at least thousands) on cinema and television screens. These actors and actresses who had a fleeting brush with fame but have since slipped between the dusty pages of reference books and the all-encompassing reach of the internet search engine.

My first such curiosity was Luise Rainer, the two-time Oscar winner whom I discovered as late as 1998 when she appeared at the Academy Awards. I was, at that time, unaware of her career and her astonishing life so I went online... and discovered nothing. My life changed that day. I started to research and 15 years later I now run www.luiserainer.net and have a collection of material related to her life and work that cannot be found anywhere else online. Luise is no longer an obscurity, but there are thousands of others who have vanished from the public eye, whose contribution to the history of film amounts to nothing more than a credit or two on the IMDb. I want to find these people.

There are only a handful of 'rules' I have set myself, a small set of criteria for each person I include here. Firstly, they must have at least one film credit. Secondly, they must have really disappeared. I don't have time to be asking 'where are they now?' of 1980s child stars who are still working in straight-to-DVD terrors, or ex-actors who have their own website, or those with diaries full of appearances at conventions. I'm talking about those who have no trace, whose results from a cursory Google search is just an ever decreasing list of websites feeding off their IMDb page. Secondly, there must be a chance they are still alive. I don't want to waste our time chasing ghosts. I may, from time to time, add a celebratory post for those who still merit a Tweet or a blogpost from admiring film fans despite not having worked in decades, the Mary Carlisles and Carla Laemmles of the world, but, in the main I shall be concentrating on those who have really gone off the radar

I would be honestly and genuinely grateful for any advice, insight and news about those whom I choose to pursue. Please do leave comments if you have any information to add to any post (the contents of which, by the very nature of the subjects, may be scant, to say the least).

And so the trail begins....