“Scream Queen” — Jamie Lee Curtis in the 1970s

After the Beatles called it quits in 1970, Paul McCartney retreated to his farm in Scotland with his young family. At the time, he and his wife Linda had only been married for less than a year and here he was depressed and drinking while brooding about the lack of possibilities in his life following the breakup of his band.

Linda was raising their young child, Mary, while helping Paul get his confidence back as he slowly started working on new music. He ended up recording what became “McCartney” in secrecy on a Studer four-track tape recorder at his house in St. John’s Wood.

The biggest song on the album is “azed,” an ode to Linda, the woman who helped him get back on his feet.

Take a look at this shot of Jamie Lee Curtis, filmed here looking cool, looking like a star, but before her big, accidental break in 1978’s Halloween she was worried that she was about to be bounced out of Hollywood after her first series failed to hit.

Curtis says that at the time she was severely disappointed to be fired (who can blame her), and that she agreed to take Halloween because it was something to do – even if it was a cheap horror movie. She told the New York Times :

My mother was protecting me from being a child in the movie business. Later, I got a part on the ABC sitcom Operation Petticoat. I was fired, and I was devastated. Had I not been fired, I wouldn’t have been available for Halloween. As my Jewish family would say, it was bashert – meant to be. I didn’t give it a second thought that it was a horror movie, and my mom had been in a horror movie.

Pam Grier and Juanita Brown — 1970s

Pam Grier has had a long and storied career, and even though she’s beautiful and talented in a natural way she hasn’t always gotten the roles that she deserved. But to hear Grier tell she’s not broken up about losing roles, she knows she’s good.

While speaking with the New York Times she said that she knows she’s been kept out of films for ridiculous reasons, but she doesn’t care. While speaking about how she was almost cast in The Witches of Eastwick she explained:

It would’ve been a breakout mainstream film for me. I tested. I think the studio was basically trying to make a deal with Bill Murray to star in it, and they couldn’t close it, so the next person was Jack Nicholson, who was dating Anjelica Huston. She was dark and exotic. So they tested her, and it didn’t work out. And then there was Cher, and they gave her the role. That was that one mainstream film that would have given me a broader audience. But there were no bad feelings.

An Italian Girl from Tunisia — Claudia Cardinale

Even though she’s a beloved star of Italian and American cinema, Claudia Cardinale barely made any money early in her career in spite of make something like four of them a year all because of a terrible contract that she signed.

Cardinale says that after she signed a contract with Vides Cinematografica, a production company that was run by Italian producer Franco Cristaldi who married Cardinale shortly after signing her to his production company. After their marriage he took all of the money from her film word and kept it for himself. She told the LA Times :

I was doing four movies a year. I was paid almost nothing. When I met the father of Claudia [director Pasquale Squitieri], he saw that I had nothing in the bank.