13 historical figures who were considered failures until the very last chapter of their life

Failure isn’t always the end of the story, and no matter how many years of rejection or dead ends they experienced, some historical figures never gave up.

A road out of Corbin

Harland Sanders did actually manage to build a decent little restaurant business in Corbin, Kentucky. But then the road moved, literally. A new highway pulled traffic away, meaning that his restaurant lost a lot of business. Sanders was 65 years old in 1956 when he was forced to sell the property for barely enough money to cover what he owed. 

But he refused to give in. No, Sanders decided to drive from restaurant to restaurant, offering his chicken recipe for a small royalty. It was thanks to these travels that he was eventually able to create Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yes, that KFC. He died aged 90.

Sixty years at the easel

Carmen Herrera painted for over 60 years, yet somehow, she couldn’t sell a single work. She showed her paintings and got some good reviews, but was considered a failure because she didn’t get any commercial success. One gallery owner apparently told her he liked the work.

He refused to show it, however, because she was a woman. It took until 2004, when Herrera was 89 years old, for her to finally sell her first paintings. That was when major museums and collectors started paying attention, leading to prices for her work climbing sharply.

The manuscript that finally sold

Writing sure is difficult, and Harry Bernstein spent most of his adult life doing the thing writers aren’t supposed to do. He wrote books that nobody published. It’s unclear exactly how many he wrote, as Bernstein himself said he’d lost count. The Los Angeles Times estimated it was around 40.

Most of these were destroyed because they never got published. But then, after his wife died, Bernstein decided to write about his childhood in England, and this writing was eventually published as a memoir titled The Invisible Wall. He was 96 when it was released. He’d suffered decades of rejection, but finally, he became the author he’d been trying to be all along.

Starting again at 70

Mary Wesley was another writer who struggled a lot. Her husband died in 1970 and left her with no regular income, so she sold jewelry and knitted items to get by. Wesley had been writing for years, yet it never went anywhere. She even threw some of it away.

She wrote her first adult novel called Jumping the Queue, but it was rejected several times. Finally, though, it was published in 1983 when Wesley was 71 years old. Several other books came shortly after, including the best-selling novel The Camomile Lawn.

A mother on Broadway

It took until Estelle Getty was close to 60 years old for people to learn her name. She’d spent years auditioning and taking on small stage parts, but there were no signs that she would have any major success. She seemed destined to be a small-time actor only.

But then came her big break with Torch Song Trilogy on Broadway in 1982. She auditioned for The Golden Girls a few years later and landed the role of Sophia Petrillo. She won an Emmy for the role.

The Yankees’ unlikely hire

Many baseball players and fans had a lot to say about Casey Stengel before the Yankees hired him. They weren’t saying anything nice. He’d managed many major-league teams across nine seasons, yet none of his clubs finished in the top half of the standings. He became known as a failure, as well as an eccentric baseball manager with no chance of winning.

Yet the Yankees still decided to hire him in 1948. It was a decision that confused a lot of people, right until his team ended up winning five straight World Series championships from 1949 through 1953. He was miles away from the loser people once thought he was.

A name found on an old record

Mississippi John Hurt was someone who made a few records in 1928. But he vanished from the music industry shortly after, as he couldn’t find any success as a musician. He decided to return to Avalon, Mississippi, where he worked ordinary jobs and farmed. He had no plans to become a musician again.

But in 1963, folk music enthusiasts tracked him down after they noticed that one of his old songs mentioned Avalon. It didn’t take long for Hurt to begin playing festivals and appearing on television at the age of 71. He even recorded music again.

Thirty years between sessions

It seemed that Skip James only had one proper shot at recording, and that came in 1931. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Despite cutting 18 sides for Paramount Records, including Devil Got My Woman and I’m So Glad, the Great Depression killed any chance at record sales.

He made very little money from the recording. So, James spent the next three decades preaching and doing labor, right until blues fans found him in a hospital in 1964. They pulled him back into the music scene, and he started recording music again. It was thirty years after his debut, yes, but he still made it.

Before the yellow brick road

You might be surprised to learn that L. Frank Baum actually tried a bunch of things that failed before The Wizard of Oz. His variety store in South Dakota failed, and his newspaper failed, too. He tried working as a reporter and traveling salesman, but those didn’t fare too well, either.

Baum spent time trying to find something that stuck. That ended up being children’s books. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was released in 1900 when Baum was 44, and it became the work that made him internationally popular.

The role meant for someone else

The thing with George Burns was that he’d already been famous once. But when his stage partner and wife Gracie Allen died, Burns’ career lost its center. It seemed that Hollywood wasn’t interested in him, and he went 36 years without appearing in a movie.

Actor Jack Benny died before he was able to make The Sunshine Boys, so the studio began looking for a replacement. They found Burns. He stepped into the role at 79 and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The old vaudeville star had a movie career again.

The invention nobody wanted

Over 20 companies looked at Chester Carlson’s copying ideas. They all passed, even though Carlson had already made a successful copy back in 1938. Still, Carlson refused to give up, and Battelle Memorial Institute agreed to work with him in 1944.

A small company called Haloid ended up licensing the process a few years later. Carlson’s machine eventually became the staple machine in every office, aka the Xerox. The Xerox 914 came in 1959. Carlson had been trying to sell the idea for over 20 years by then.

The album left in the vault

It’s kind of funny how many times Bettye LaVette’s career almost took off. She scored a Top 10 R&B hit while she was still a teenager and recorded for several labels. She made an entire album, but Atlantic refused to release it. 

It only got worse, as she ended up releasing scattered singles and facing stalled opportunities for years after. LaVette’s fortunes finally changed when she was in her 50s, and she released the album The Scene of the Crime. She got her first Grammy nomination for it.

Too late, according to the labels

Sharon Jones heard for years that she wasn’t what record companies were looking for. She was too heavy, too short, and too dark-skinned, apparently. Jones kept singing through it all, despite the fact that music wasn’t paying the bills.

She also worked as a correction officer and an armored-car guard to support herself. Then her real opening came. She was in her 40s and was connected to musicians who became the Dap-Kings. Jones began touring internationally and recording albums with them in her 50s.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

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