THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW ...
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New Hero ... Coming your way soon: Doctor Strange ... The Vincent Price was right for Marvel-lous Stan Lee as far back as 1986! After all, Lee and Steve Ditko based their hero’s look upon Price and even gave Stephen Strange the middle name of ... Vincent. Among those flown up Marvel’s 21st Century flagpole for the rôle were Patrick Dempsey, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jon Hamm, Tom Hardy, Ethan Hawke, Jack Huston, Oscar Isaac, Jared Leto, Matthew McConaughey, Ewan McGregor, Keanu Reeves, Justin Theroux. Finally, production wisely waited until after Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet stage triumph in London. |
Halo! HALO! HALO!
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Old Hero … Roger Moore played Simon Templar for 118 tele-chapters and stayed with the company making Return of the Saint with Ian Ogilvy. Moore’s 80s and 90s plans were to produce a Saint Pierce Brosnan (!) or being the ageing hero, finding his illegitimate son - nearly Saint Ralph Fiennes for director Sydney Pollack. “It was a troubled production,” said Moore. By 1996, director Philip Noyce was in and Moore was out - “first time I was paid not to act in a film” - and junior Saints were scouted. George Clooney, Kevin Costner, Daniel Day-Lewis, Johnny Depp, Ralph Fiennes, Mel Gibson, Hugh Grant, even Schwarzenegger. Plus a certain James Healey, the Irish-born Aussie who actually rejected Mad Max for its sparse dialogue (!) in 1978, leaving the superstar route clear for Gibson. And finally, horrendously, ego-trippingly, Val Kilmer. He later admitted to Moore: “We really screwed that up, didn’t we?” We?! |
UNITED STATES OF POTTER
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| Way back in 2001, Warner Bros wanted to Americanise Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. As if a Hollywood director wasn’t bad enough, the Burbank suits seemed determined to ruin its potential franchise by also considering a US cast. Liam Aiken as Harry, Rose O’Donnell as Ron Weasley’s mum and (almost inevitably) Robin Williams as Hagrid. Wiser heads prevailed, mainly author JK Rowling’s. Incidentally, other Harry possibles were Gabriel Thomson from the UK sitcom My Family - too old at 14! - and Jack Whitehall, ex-classmate of a certain Robert Pattinson … Cedric Diggory in 2002. |
YEAR OF THE ROBBIE
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Remember Margot Robbie, the Australian dazzling Leo in The Wolf of Wall Street? This is her year … with Goodbye Christopher Robin, producing her noir Terminal and the Tonya Harding bio plus a Harley Quinn solo feature to follow Whiskey Tango Foxtrot in Afghanistan, Jane in The Legend of Tarzan and blowing everyone away as Quinn in Suicide Squad. This is her second film with Will Smith. I love the story of how she won the first: Focus in 2014.
Margot was on holiday on a Croatian island when called to an New York audition. She packed in 20 minutes, took a catamaran to the main island, a bus to the airport where waited six hours, then flew to France where she waited another six hours for a plane to JFK - where her luggage was lost. She was only wearing denim shorts and shirt - no make-up. She got to the audition on time. Smith did not. “Hey, I was coming from Queens,” he said. “Yeah?” snapped Margot. “Well, I just came from an island off Croatia and I’m here on time.” That outburst won her the movie. |
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MUCH ADO ABOUT MITCHUM
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| Robert Mitchum made Desire Me in 1946. "Nobody desired anybody," he said about the MGMess. It was bad enough when Robert Montgomery was Greer Garson’s husband betrayed by Mitchum, but when Bob 1 quit (to play Phillip Marlowe - a Mitchum rôle 30 years later!), Bob 2 took his place, Then, director George Cukor quit, Mervyn LeRoy took over, followed by Jack Conway, until it became Metro’s first film without a director credit. That, Mitchum told me, is when he gave up being serious about movies ... "Around the time Greer Garson took 125 takes to say: No." |
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TELE WOODY
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HIT RECIPE
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| Woody Allen on his first TV series: "It's not going to start any new religions, I can tell you that." |
For a guaranteed hit, director Billy Wilder always said: "You need a love story between Paul Newman and Robert Redford in a Boeing on fire flown by Barbra Streisand." |
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DEAD WRONG
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| Looking for a partner for Don Johnson in Dead Bang in 1990, director John Frankenheimer told me how he was "just bowled over by this beautiful girl who can act." Sharon Stone! “I had a terrific fight with my producer. He said: You can't use her. She looks exactly like Don Johnson. I said: "You're crazy. If Don Johnson looked like that, I'd be married to him! ” |
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THE ASPHALT MARILYN
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Came across an odd tale about how Marilyn Monroe won her famous Asphalt Jungle breakthrough in 1949. Goes like this ... director John Huston was forced into giving the unknown Marilyn a second test or his Irish stallions would be sold off to cover his $18,000 stable bill to rancher Lucille Ryman Carroll ... who also happened to be MGM’s chief talent exec! Fascinating. Except for one little detail ... Huston already knew Marilyn. And her agent-lover Johnny Hyde, and had tried to feature her in his previous film, We Were Strangers, 1948. What is true is that Huston did test eight other starlets. Including Georgia Holt ... future mother of Cher. |
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| How could Travis Bickle be played by any other than Robert de Niro? |
Taxi Driver is 40 ..! I was there at the 1976 Cannes festival when we were all pulverised by the Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro tsunami. Dustin Hoffman regrets refusing the classic - but he thought Martin Scorsese was crazy! (Most people thought Hoffman crazy for rejecting Bergman and Fellini offers).
There were 22 other candidates for Travis Bickle. From the obvious (Brando, Jeff Bridges, James Caan, David Carradine, Richard Dreyfuss, Elliott Gould, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Jon Voight, Christopher Walken) to the unlikely: Alan Alda, Warren Beatty, Robert Blake, Peter Fonda, Ryan O’Neal, Burt Reynolds, Roy Scheider, Martin Sheen. And a couple of … you-say-what?! Like Alain Delon and Neil Diamond!! Such thoughts (and of Brian De Palma directing) vanished when the producers saw Marty’s Mean Streets and told Scorsese the gig was his. If he brought De Niro with him.
Melanie Griffith was first choice for Iris, the under-age hooker. Except momma, Tippi Hedren, said it would ruin her career. You know, the way it totally messed up Jodie Foster’s! Like Marty and Bobby, Jodie also returned to the Cannes in May, two Oscars and 40 years later, as the director and star of Money Monster. |
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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 - 7,000 actors to click on ... More than 40 years in the making!! And 1.8 million 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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"What's the role?" said Peter Sellers. "All of them!" said Stanley Kubrick. Peter The Great settled for four. Dr Strangelove, of course, the US President and the RAF officer. And then, not wanting to be a freak show, he - er - injured his ankle and could not be USAF Major 'King' Kong riding the H-bomb.
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'Twas Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty for "Woodstein" before Hoffman and Redford brought Nixon down.
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After lavish tests, producer David O Selznick couldn't decide if Shirley Temple was right for Meg in 1949's Little Women. So he sold out the whole deal to MGM - which preferred Janet Leigh to Shirley.
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What Tom Selleck's Indiana Jones would have looked like - from his 158th Magnum episode called ... Legend of the Lost Art, in 1988. An Indy parody complete with hat, whip, booby traps and a McGuffin that everyone was after.
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Suddenly, Raquel Welch had erupted! And everyone wanted a piece of her. But she was under contract to Fox and the studio was not about to let her dally with Bond in Thunderball when Fox had it’s own kinda-Bond on hand: James Coburn as their man Flint. She didn’t join either spy, although in her Fantastic Voyage duds here, she looked hot to trot - or scuba - as Domino.
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Albert of Arabia. When Brando said no, Albert Finney said Maybe. And shot a four-day, test as TE Lawrence (costing £100,000). Everyone said: Yes! Albie said: No, thank you.
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WHERE TO FIND
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FULL METAL HALL
For the full story of why Anthony Michael Hall did not make Stanley Kubrick's 'Nam classic, go to Hall's page. (The chunky blue section).
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THE PERFECT GRYSHENKA
How Hollywood ruined Marilyn Monroe's dream role in The Brothers Karamazov is on Marilyn's page - item #17.
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TORN APART
Why didn't Rip Torn make Easy Rider - see his blue section on his page.
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STREEP KONG
Meryl v Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis. Read all about it – in her first tale.
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Photo ©redits:
All The President’s Men montage: Reg Oliver, 1976.
Doctor Strange: Marvel/Disney, 2015.
Fantastic Voyage: 20th Century Fox.
Albert Finney: Horizon Pictures (II)/Columbia Pictures, 1961.
The Godfather montage: Reg Oliver, 1976.
Margot Robbie: Working Title, 2013.
Tom Selleck: Belisarius Productions/Glenn A Larson Productions/Universal TV, 1988.
Peter Sellers: Hawk Films/Columbia Pictures, 1963.
Taxi Driver: Columbia Pictures, 1976.
Shirley Temple: Selznick International Pictures, 1946.
Plus enormous thanks to The Man: Daniel Bouteiller.
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