20 Classic Hollywood Stars Who Walked Away From Fame

In 1954, Grace Kelly was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in “The Country Girl.” In 1956, at age 26 and just finishing work on “High Society,” she retired to marry Prince Rainier III, monarch of the tiny European principality of Monaco. Monaco’s royal protocol prohibited her from returning to the screen. When director Alfred Hitchcock wanted her to star in “Marnie” some years later, protests by the Monégasque public compelled her to decline. Kelly’s film career spanned only four years.

Greta Garbo, a Swede born in Stockholm, moved from silent pictures to talkies in “Anna Christie,” and she quit at the age of 36 in 1941, after mixed reviews for her film, “Two-Faced Woman.” MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer tried to keep her under contract, sending her new offers for decades. Garbo rejected them all and lived in seclusion in New York. Her famous line “I want to be alone” was actually in the script, though she later said her real feeling was “I want to be let alone.”

As a child star, Shirley Temple was the top box-office attraction, saving 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy. At 22, Temple was tired of playing adult roles, so she retired from film, saying she’d “had enough of pretend.” A financial audit soon revealed that her father had mismanaged much of her money, leaving Temple with only $44,000 from the more than $3.2 million she’d made. Temple recovered from her financial troubles and went on to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and to Czechoslovakia.

William Haines was MGM’s top comedy star and America’s No. 1 male box-office draw in 1930, when he was living openly with his partner, Jimmie Shields. Then studio head Louis B. Mayer wanted Haines to go through a phony marriage to cover up their relationship. Haines refused, saying he and Shields were already married in every sense but by law. MGM axed him in 1935. He and Shields went on to build one of the best interior design businesses in Hollywood, and they remained together for 47 years.

Clara Bow, “The It Girl” after her hit “It,” also appeared in “Wings” for Paramount, which won the first Academy Award for Best Picture, and was voted the top money-making movie star of the late 1920s. The Brooklyn-born star got good reviews for her voice in “The Wild Party.” But after years of grueling shooting schedules, constant anxiety on set, and intrusive newspaper coverage, she married an actor named Rex Bell and completed her last contract with Paramount before retiring at age 28 to live on her ranch in Searchlight, Nev.

The most famous female comic star of the silent and early sound period was Marion Davies, who starred in popular films such as “The Patsy” and “Show People” with the financial backing of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. After her film “Ever Since Eve” in 1937, Davies retired at the age of 40 to manage her real estate investments and sold over $1 million of her own jewelry to help bail out Hearst’s newspaper empire during the Depression. She also donated about $1.9 million to organizations that served sick children. A few years later, Orson Welles’s movie “Citizen Kane” loosely borrowed her story for an untalented singer who bore little resemblance to the real, accomplished Davies.

Mary Pickford was “America’s Sweetheart,” the first true global movie star, earning $10,000 a week at her peak, and one of the founders of United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith. But when she won an Academy Award for “Coquette,” she knew her sweet-faced, wide-eyed young heroine persona wasn’t what the Depression public wanted anymore. With “Secrets,” Pickford had the perfect vehicle to retire from acting at age 41. She became a producer, ran United Artists, and two decades later, sold off her last remaining interest in the company.

Luise Rainer, an Austrian-born stage actress, was the first person to win consecutive Best Actress Academy Awards for “The Great Ziegfeld” and “The Good Earth,” both made in the late 1930s. She chafed under what she saw as the assembly-line system of MGM, later describing herself as “a tool in a big factory.” When studio head Louis B. Mayer refused to offer her dramatic roles worthy of her talents, she broke her contract at 28 and headed for New York and Europe. Rainer, who lived to be 104, holds the record as the longest-lived Oscar winner in history.

Alice Faye was in the top ten box-office stars of her time and 20th Century Fox’s No. 1 musical star. Hoping for more dramatic roles, she co-starred in Otto Preminger’s “Fallen Angel.” When she arrived for the preview screening, she found that her key scenes were gone. Studio chief Darryl Zanuck had secretly cut her scenes to favor co-star Linda Darnell. Faye drove off the lot, gave her keys to the gate guard, and quit at the age of 30. She later hosted a successful NBC radio program with her husband, Phil Harris.

Colleen Moore embodied the 1920s flapper image in such films as “Flaming Youth” and “Ella Cinders.” At the peak of her popularity, Moore was Hollywood’s top box-office draw. She wisely reinvested some of her movie income in stocks. When her first talking picture, “The Power and the Glory,” was well received, Moore knew she didn’t have to act anymore. At age 34, she retired from movies and wrote two popular books about investing. Later, she joined the firm of Merrill Lynch & Company as a partner.

Janet Gaynor took home the first Best Actress Oscar ever awarded for her roles in “7th Heaven,” “Sunrise,” and “Street Angel,” and she would end up as Hollywood’s highest-paid actress in 1934. She had been nominated for a second Oscar for “A Star Is Born” before retiring at 32 after the release of “The Young in Heart.” She married MGM costume designer Adrian, moved to a ranch in Brazil, and became an accomplished oil painter whose work was widely exhibited.

When Deanna Durbin made “Three Smart Girls” at 14, she saved Universal Pictures from bankruptcy. She became one of the highest-paid female stars in the world. Tired of playing “fix-it girls,” Durbin allowed her contract to run out in her late twenties, married a French director named Charles David, and retired to a farm in rural France. She turned down all offers to return to the screen, including a starring role in the stage musical “My Fair Lady.” She died more than six decades later.

The actress Jean Arthur, famous for her roles in screwball comedies of the 1930s, including “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” suffered from terrible stage fright and hated publicity, but director George Stevens talked her out of semi-retirement to make “Shane” in 1953. After that film became a huge critical and box-office success, she quit movies for good at 52 and taught drama at Vassar College.

The “First Lady of the Screen” during the 1930s, Norma Shearer won an Oscar for “The Divorcee” and was among MGM’s top stars in hits such as “The Women.” Widowed when her husband, MGM production chief Irving Thalberg, died in 1936, she stayed one of Hollywood’s biggest draws for several more years. But after “Her Cardboard Lover” in 1942, Shearer, unwilling to take on old lady roles, married a ski instructor, Martin Arrouge, and retired at the age of 40, spending the next 40 years on Thalberg’s money.

In 1931, David Manners became an overnight star as Jonathan Harker opposite Bela Lugosi in Universal’s “Dracula,” then appeared in “The Mummy” and “The Black Cat.” He made $2,000 a week, four times Lugosi’s salary. Realizing that studio filmmaking was too shallow and chaotic, he walked out on his contract in 1936 at age 36, still being actively sought for leading roles. He bought a ranch in Victorville, California, with his partner, Bill Mercer, and spent decades writing novels and studying philosophy.

In the middle of the 1930s, Warner Bros. studio was paying Kay Francis $4,000 a week for films such as Ernst Lubitsch’s “Trouble in Paradise.” Wearied by contractual negotiations and desperate for anonymity, she said to journalists near the peak of her popularity, “I can’t wait to be forgotten.” She made and starred in three independent movies for Monogram Pictures before retiring in 1946, declining all public engagements, and establishing a charitable trust that paid for guide dogs for the blind.

Charles Farrell made a dozen romantic pictures for Fox with Janet Gaynor, his co-star in “7th Heaven,” billed as “America’s Favorite Lovebirds.” Knowing his career had reached its zenith, Farrell purchased property in Palm Springs, Calif., and co-founded the Palm Springs Racquet Club, a haven for Hollywood’s elite. He withdrew from movie-making, became a U.S. Navy officer during World War II, and was elected mayor of Palm Springs, where he served several terms.

Ruby Keeler became an overnight icon in Busby Berkeley’s “42nd Street,” which led to more Berkeley-directed musicals, including “Gold Diggers of 1933” and “Footlight Parade.” Following her divorce from singer Al Jolson and marriage to real estate broker John Lowe, she opted to step away from the frenetic studio schedule and remain at home with her five children in Orange County. Keeler didn’t appear on screen for three decades until she returned to the stage in a Tony-nominated role in “No, No, Nanette” on Broadway.

The young Betty Bronson caught the eye of J.M. Barrie, the Scottish playwright and author who created Peter Pan, in 1924 when he viewed several of her screen tests and chose the then-17-year-old to star in Paramount’s silent film adaptation. An overnight star, Bronson was cast in a series of films including Ben-Hur and A Kiss for Cinderella. When she married executive Ludwig Lauerhass in 1933, Bronson chose domestic life over studio contracts to stay home and raise her son in New Jersey, returning to Hollywood only for occasional small roles decades later.

After starring in French director René Clair’s “Le Million,” Annabella (born Suzanne Charpentier in France) was signed by 20th Century Fox and won a Best Actress Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival and starred in “Suez” and “13 Rue Madeleine.” Married to fellow star Tyrone Power for most of the 1940s, Annabella pulled away from film after their divorce. She made her final movie a few years later and retired to Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, turning down offers to return to film for decades.

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