Crawley's Casting Calls

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Allan Jones

Posted on 6 November 2023by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

Nelson Eddy, Naughty Marietta, 1934. With one big MGM hit behind her – The Merry Widow – McDonald started behaving like her other self, The Iron Butterfly, and the soprano made it clear that she wanted Jones as her next partner. Impossible! He was having having A Night at the Opera with the Marx brothers. OK, that other guy… And Marietta became the first of the eight Nelson Eddy-Jeannette MacDonald musicals. Destiny!
Robert Taylor, The Broadway Melody of 1936, 1935. Change of co-star for Eleanor Powell… And, yes indeed, the working title was Broadway Melody of 1935… ie after The Broadway Melody, 1928, and before Broadway melodies of 1937 and 1939. A fifth project – of 1943 – never happened.
James Stewart, Born To Dance, 1936. Jim’s only musical. Cole Porter picked him I’m and he sang Easy to Love superbly. No need to dub in the the bought and paid for bartione called Jack Owens. “Yeah, the song became a huge hit,” Jim recalled during the MGMusical treat, That’s Entertainment, 1973, “even my singing wouldn’t hurt it.” Stewart and Jones co-starred in Rose-MarIe, 1936.
Harry Stockwell, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937. Jones, Felix Knight, Douglas McPhall, Dennis Morgan were beaten to voicing The Prince who would some day come – by the future father of actor brothers Guy and Dean Stockwell. The toon classic was the fourth of Stockwell’s eight movies… in 38 years.

Birth year: 1907Death year: 1992Other name: Usual occupation: SingerCasting Calls: 4

WELCOME

to 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 - 8,063 actors - to click on... More than 40 years in the making! And 2,777,633 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

HE SAID

“They’re doing stuff, but not with me. I’m not doing any more.” – Adam Driver on no more Kylo Ren/Ben Solo ... Or is it that there will be no more Star Wars?

“I’ve been acting for 42 years and then you make one cocktail…” – Stanley Tucci on his new fame as a TV food and cookery expert.

"The point is it's very hard work and you have to really want to do it. It has to be something that you're burning to say." – Martin Scorsese on directing at 80 and thinking “possibly only one more”.

“Whether you are a competent actor, or an artist, is incidental. The main business is: you’re product. I had a hard time steadying myself against that stuff.” – Robert Redford.

“I’ve never done the same thing twice and how many people can say that?” – Tom Hanks… forgetting his two successive Oscars.

“I was so excited when I got the script for Silent Night. There’s no dialogue in the entire movie! I thought this would be very good for me because it lets me use my gifts for telling a story visually. – John Woo on his Hollywood comeback at 77.

“I’ve gotta be nice about Marvel movies, because I named myself after a Stan Lee character named Luke Cage. What am I going to do, put Marvel movies down? Stan Lee is my surrealistic father.” – Nic Cage.

“The man who invented mornings was no Christian.” – Peter O’Toole.

“The moustache did the acting.” – Anthony Hopkins on Howards End.

“It’s very difficult to get 100 million people to watch anything,” – writer-director Joe Russo.

“I gave him a little part in Looper, where he got to be shot in the face by Bruce Willis. He was just so overjoyed… like a little kid.” – director Rian Johnson on his father.

“I'm not an actor - and I've got 64 films to prove it!” – Victor Mature.

“If you cast it right, you don’t have to tell the actors what to do.” – John Huston.

CCC CLIPS

>> Name Game. James Spader really started something with his Blacklist series. He played – remember? – Reddington. And now we have Austin Butler and, Emma Stone are in making Eddington… and newbie Glenn Powell is Huntingdon, his tenth gig since Top Gun: Maverick. Perhaps it’s time to re-issue Carrington… with, among others, Steven Waddington!

>> Christopher Nolan says “No, sadly no – no truth to those rumours.” About making the next Bond. So, no Cillian Murphy as Jimbo, then?

>> Rolling Stone. Those Poor Things, Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, are – naturally – in the next release of their Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s Emma’s third Yorgos collaboration. Most likely she’ll be in his next one, too, a re-make of the South Korean hit, Save the Green Planet. That was a comedy. But one can never categorise a Lanthimos experience. After all this one was first titled… And.

>> Taylor Swift’s guy, US football superstar Travis Kelce, is making moves on movies. To be as famous as Dwayne Johnson. Although people are now beginning to ask: Dwyane Whosis?

>>Brandon Routh was Superman back in the day. Today he’s in…Ick.

>> A star sure was born! Lady Gaga now getting $10million for Joker 2…

>> Sean Ono Lennon says Emma Stone should play his dad. Now there’s a thought. After all, Cate Blanchett played Bob Dylan…

>> Sly Stallone has come this far without bothering with serial killers but that’s what he’s chasing in The Epiphany. He plays a retiring cop - what else at 78?

>> Thirty years after the first, Neve Campbell returns in Scream 7. She refused #6 over a money row…

>> Beatles director Sam Mendes made Skyfall and Spectre and another actor who has played John Lennon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, might yet be the next 007…

>> Ryan Gosling tipped to be join the Marvelverse. (They need him more than he them). Henry Cavill may follow – so definitely no Bond then. Not after Argylle. If anyone witnessed that accident, could they call the appropriate authorities.

>> Will Smith comes back (or so he hopes) in an almost suicide squad blasting drug dealers in Sugar Bandits… while Colin Farrell settles for just Sugar – back to his usual smoothie looks after The Penguin…

>> White Lotus 3 resurrects Parker Posey, Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Charlotte Le Bon, Scott Glenn and introduces Patrick Schwarzenegger. But which one is going to flash…something?

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