- Akim Tamiroff, The Corsican Brothers, 1940. Producer Edward Small wanted Dekker as Baron Colonna. If he wrapped MGM’s Honky Tonk in time. He didn’t.
- Albert Basserman, Fly-By-Night, 1941. Stupid title (the axed Dangerous Holiday was better) for a pretty nifty Hitchcock wannaB which saw Dekker, Patricia Morison and Robert Preston churned into Basserman, Nancy Kelly and Richard Carlson. Basserman, the Ibsen player from Germany, had been here before, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent.
- Akim Tamiroff, For Whom The Bell Tolls, 1942. . The stage actor, director, university lecturer, politician and future suicide was still too typed, it was said, asthe 1940 Dr. Cyclops for the film of Ernest Hemingway’s book. Also sidelined were Wallace Beery, Lee J Cobb, Charles Laughton, Thomas Mitchell , Edward G Robinson. Plus two graduates of Vienna’s Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts: Oscar Homolka and Fritz Kortner – and the Spanish-born opera singer-playwright-novelist-composer Fortunio Bonanova
- Alan Baxter, China Girl, 1942. Dekker was about to be borrowed from Paramount for Bill Jones in the WWII drama about the building China’s Burma Road.
- Steven Geray, Night Plane From Chunking, 1942. For Dekker and Veronica Lake read Geray and Ellen Drew in Robert Preston’s last film before going to a real war. (He was back in The Macomber Affair, 1946). Yes, Harry Hervey’s story wasn’t new. In 1931, it formed the basis of Marlene’s Shanghai Express.
- Lionel Barrymore, It’s A Wonderful Life, 1946.
- Ward Bond, On Dangerous Ground, 1950. Dekker, Lee J Cobb, Howard Da Silva plus the unknowns Jamews Bell and Rhys Williams were up for Walter Bent in the snowy mountains thriller – co-directed by Nicholas Ray and an un-credited Ida Lupino…who also played the blind girl Mary. In all, London’s Lupino helmed 41 films and TV shows during 1949-1968 when Hollywood women were just supposed to pout, pirouette and pucker up.
- Chill Wills, Giant, 1955.
- Charles Watts, Giant, 1955.
Birth year: 1904Death year: 1968Other name: Casting Calls: 9