Written By: Ben Cosgrove
There’s nothing quite like being there at the earliest emergence of a new Hollywood star, and as the premier pictorial weekly of its era, LIFE magazine was uniquely positioned to feature more than a few famous faces at the start of their careers, well before they became bona fide legends.
Here, LIFE.com offers a gallery of some of moviedom’s most celebrated (and gorgeous) young talents on the very brink of life-altering fame, from Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn to Kim Novak, Ann-Margret, Liz Taylor, Rita Moreno, Barbra Streisand, Catherine Deneuve and others who would go on to dazzle audiences for years.
Marilyn Monroe posed in 1947. The next year, she’d get a six-month Columbia Pictures contract.
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Seen here in a 1954 photo that ended up on the cover of LIFE, Rita Moreno debuted on Broadway at 13 before making it big years later in the film version of West Side Story.
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Rita Moreno, 1954.
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.Kim Novak, 1954
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Kim Novak, 21, posed with crystal figurines in 1954. The Chicagoan started off as Miss Deep Freeze for a local refrigerator company, and was recruited by Columbia Pictures to be a more manageable replacement for Rita Hayworth.
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Elizabeth Taylor in 1947, at age 15.
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Sophia Loren posed in 1957, the year she began to make a name for herself in America in such movies as Boy on a Dolphin (her U.S. debut) and Legend of the Lost.
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Audrey Hepburn in 1951—two years before her film breakthrough in Roman Holiday—posing under a theater marquee for the stage version of Gigi.
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Catherine Deneuve in 1961, at age 18.
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Margarita Carmen Cansino, soon to be Rita Hayworth, modeled tennis fashions in 1939. After her small turn in Only Angels Have Wings that year, fan mail started pouring in. She was soon a major star.
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Cyd Charisse, seen here in 1945, was best known for her dancing roles opposite Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.
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Nineteen-year-old Ann-Margret belted out a tune during a screen test for the movie State Fair in 1961.
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Esther Williams, the famed synchronized swimmer (seen here in 1943), got her start in movies when MGM wanted a female sports star to rival Fox’s figure skater, Sonja Henie.
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Eva Marie Saint opened a prop door during a TV shoot at NBC studios in 1947. The Newark, N.J.-born actress started her career as an NBC page.
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Eva Marie Saint (in 1949) got her film break in 1954’s Oscar-winning On the Waterfront.
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Actress Jeanne Crain took a bubble bath for her role in the movie Margie in 1946.
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Jane Fonda was a well-regarded actress by the time this shot was taken in 1959, when she was 22, but it took the screwball Western Cat Ballou (1965) to turn her into a movie star.
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Jane Fonda, 1959.
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The actress Gene Tierney posed in 1941. Best remembered for 1944’s Laura, Tierney left New York’s socialite life to be an actress.
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Mickey Rooney kissed co-star Judy Garland at the premiere of Babes in Arms in 1939. The two starred in nine movies together, among them the popular Andy Hardy series.
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Barbra Streisand sang in the musical that was her Broadway debut, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, in 1962.
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Shirley MacLaine sang on the TV program Shower of Stars in 1955.
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Debbie Reynolds, circa 1950. She’d won a film contract just two years earlier, after winning the Miss Burbank pageant at age 16.
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Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews ran lines in My Fair Lady rehearsals, 1956. Though the stage musical helped launch Andrews’ career, she was replaced in the big-screen version by Audrey Hepburn.
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