The Classics

Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne are some of my all-time favorite actors. By today's standards, their movies aren't flashy with computerized special effects or budgets in the unheard of millions. They just brought raw classic acting to the screen. They were loved for their own styles, each different from one another. Yet all of them legendary leading men. Every now and then, I pop an old classic on and enjoy simpler times by the likes of films such as The Maltese Falcon, The Man who shot Liberty Valence, or El Dorado.

These days I myself occasionally feel like a classic. A throwback from days gone by. I am part of a startup community and I am over the age of 40 years old. This is counter culture to the entrepreneurs of today. There is an expected formula to follow for big box office hits and large startup successes today. My profile doesn't fit, simply because I am considered too old and haven't done it before now. Yet the actors I mentioned are considered iconic, even to this day. They are legends who proved themselves time and again to defy the odds in film after successful film.

• Humphrey Bogart was short and had a lisp, flunked out of Phillips Andover and didn't break into the A-list of actors until the age of 42. Yet in 1999, the American Film Institute named him the Greatest Male Star in cinematic history.
  
• Jimmy Stewart was a boyish-looking, skinny unlikely leading man some have referred to as even biographically boring. Yet he is one of the more highly decorated award winners in film history starring in more than 100 films and considered one of the more beloved leading male actors ever.
  
• John Wayne began his acting career as an injured football player losing his scholarship and with an unlikely screen name of Marion Morrison. However, he went on to act in a reported more than 175 films. His work on the Searchers has been singled out by filmmakers and actors alike as the greatest performance by an actor on film, ever. When you want to watch an epic western, there is no equal.
  

Each of these men in spite of their drawbacks were reportedly driven, hard-working men of high integrity. These men of the past are inspiring to me. They give me the courage to be my own self and take all of my own experience and pour it into the stage I am given. I may not hit it big right away. My first few startup efforts might not be blockbuster hits. However, perhaps with persistence my own Oscar awaits. I share the highly driven, hard-working and high integrity philosophy of these leading men. And if I am discarded by some because I do not fit the profile, I am all the more fueled to become a leading man in my own style just as these men did.