It's iconic time at CCC (dunno why, it just is)
BEN & MRS R
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And what better icons to start with than … no, not Scarlett and Rhett …but Benjamin Braddock and Mrs Robinson from The Graduate in 1967. Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, of course.
Well, not of course…
Producer Lawrence Turman wrote a wish list of nine actors (Beatty, McQueen to Peppard, Redford) for Ben. Broadway genius Mike Nichols, complained: “You got me into a movie that can’t be cast!”
So Mike saw, tested, auditioned and sometimes called back (Jack Nicholson certainly) almost every guy of the right age. From Norman Bates to Robin (Anthony Perkins, Burt Ward) - and the kid from Shane (Brandon De Wilde, 25 by then). Plus Keir Dullea, Harrison Ford, George Hamilton, Michael Parks, And the prerequisite Great Outsider: MGM contract player turning director, Lee Stanley.
As for the Mrs R of “you're trying to seduce me… aren't you?” fame - despite his hots for Ingrid Bergan, Deborah Kerr and Jeanne Moreau, Nichols knew Hoffman’s seductrice had to be American. Turman wanted Barbara Stanwyck. She had no wish (like Doris Day) to so drastically change her image. And so the first $1m director ploughed through Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Patricia Neal, Geraldine Page, Eva Maria Saint, Lana Turner, Shelley Winters. And another Great Outsider: Grayson Hall, from Dark Shadows Oh, and Rita Hayworth. Except Mrs R - alcoholic, intelligent, cynical, predatory, cool, bitter, ironic, dangerous, in a deep pool of sadness - was a tad too close to home for Rita. So it goes.
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JOHN McCLANE
HAD OLD BLUE EYES ...
You only know Bruce Willis, yet there were 15 possible John McClanes for Die Hard in 1987. Richard Dean Anderson, Tom Berenger, Charles Bronson, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Don Johnson, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone … and Frank Sinatra? Yes, well, Roderick Thorpe’s book, Nothing Lasts Forever, followed up The Detective - and that 1967 film starred Sinatra as Joe Leland and, contractually, he had first dibs on any sequel. At age 73, Old Rheumy Blue Eyes wisely passed. Otherwise it could have been Dooby-dooby-do in place of Yippee-ki-yay!
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JACK RYAN
MARK IV
Tom Clancy’s CIAnalyst hero, Jack Ryan, has been around since The Hunt For Red October, played in turn, by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck. Time, then, for a third reboot… the clumsily titled Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Chris Pine (above) copies Ford’s why-not-more-than-one-franchise credo by following Captain Kirk with Ryan. George Clooney had been a front runner until Clancy judged him too old - at 49. That’s odd. Clancy never objected to Harrison being Ryan at age 50 in Patriot Games … and 52 in Clear and Present Danger. Pine’s boss is Kevin Costner - first choice for the Red October Ryan in 1989. So it blows.
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BIGGEST ICON OF 'EM ALL
Among the intricate avenues of my website is a section called Surprises. This lists the kind of people (not counting Singers who have their own section) you’d never imagine being close to movie roles… Muhammad Ali, Michael Chrichton, Martin Luther King, C Gordon Liddy of Watergate infamy (and one of my best interviewees). And the latest is… Barack Obama! For Lee Daniels' The Butler, the director (the titular Daniels) had planned a climactic scene between Forest Whitaker’s White House butler and the 45th POTUS playing himself. Impossible: he was in the new Presidential race. Therefore, Orlando Eric Street (right) played Obama - and his scene was axed from the final cut.
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SHORT MEMORIES
Jesse Eisenberg, best known as Mr Facebook in The Social Network, turned up last autumn in a thriller, The Double. And no critic, no journo – nobody! - recalled the problems Roman Polanski had trying to film the same Dostoievski tale of a man and his doppleganger some 17 years earlier (when Jesse was 12). John Travolta turned his back on $8m for the movie in June 1995. Anthony Hopkins had no time (booked for Nixon, Picasso, etc). Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino (him again!) weren’t keen. Steve Martin was… but the project collapsed when Isabelle Adjani quit followed by Polanski himself.
PS: Also, no one recalled that the tale had already been told by Bertolucci as Partner in 1968.
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WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS
There are nearly 6,000 actors examined here. Some have missed/passed a single film Others, many more. Then. there are the champions. Who?
These are the top five champions …
- Brando - 133 lost movies.
- Nicholson - 125
- Cary Grant -111
- De Niro - 101
- Hoffman - 97
Highest dame is Liz Taylor at 58, followed by Julie Christie and Jodie Foster, 56; Katharine Hepburn, 53; Madonna, 52; Meryl, 50;
New Brigade: Kidman and Paltrow tie on 42 each; Leo and Natalie Portman, 40; Clooney, 29; Downey passed on 27 (including Clooney’s Gravity hit). Amazingly, Lindsay Lohan totals 27; Scarlett 25; Keira, 23; Michael Fassbender, 21 and he only started making movies last week, no?
Finally, a fistful of anomalies… Bollywood’s Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is as high as 41 - three more than Marilyn! BB and GG (Bardot and Garbo) tie on 43… Clint and Gable (and Belmondo) are on 42.
(You’ll find the full list at Champions in the Main Menu.)
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WELCOME to a unique directory of what you never saw on-screen. The films the stars did NOT make. The movies that never were.
The most definitive collation of casting stories ...
Check up on all the films - of yesterday, today and tomorrow - that your favourite stars never made ... A cast of thousands - well, some 5,634 stars to click on ... More than 40 years in the making!! With 1,576,540 words of spirited text.
The ultimate in movie trivia ... Better! Exactly the kind of history that Hollywood deserves. Back to front. Upside-down. Inside out. Full of flashbacks, close-ups, tracking shots (and, alas some badly edited sequences - sorry about that!) forming a fascinating, new and often bizarre flip-side perspective on your treasured movies ... and stars.
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ACTORS GET REJECTED
... for all manner of reasons. Too tall/small/fat/thin/ill/old/young. Plus vengeance, jealousy, drunk, in jail, duck-hunting, lactating… dead! Then there’s Rachel Weisz. She lost another screen icon - Bridget Jones’ Diary, in 2001, because she was… too pretty. (Doesn’t say a lot about poor Renée Zellweger). |
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Rachel had no complaints. “If someone says: You’re pretty - you say: 'Thanks very much'.”
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| Before Redford chose Hoffman and Redford! |
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| Lanky Irishman Peter O’Toole was first choice for The Man Who Fell To Earth. For exactly the same reason that David Bowie succeeded him. Director Nic Roeg wanted “a definite, pointedly stark face.” Or indeed... an extra-terrestrial. |
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| The Godfather needed the world's best actor - Brando or ... Olivier. |
| NEW ARRIVALS |
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| As promised, Quentin’s Django has ridden into the Special Movies section. And, as unpromised, so has The Two Jakes. Coming soon: Hobbit I & II and Hunger Games II. |
WHAT IS GOING ON?
You will find some of our pages have muddling changes of typefaces, colours, spaces, etc. Extremely sorry about this. As Valmont put it: “It's beyond my control.”
It follows transferring CCC to a new Joomla system. All (well, most) will be corrected as and when possible over the next months. Meantime, I trust it will not spoil your pleasure.
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