- Lynn Bari, Sun Valley Serenade, 1940. Wright, Linda Darnell and Carole Landis were up for the singer with Glenn Miller Orchestra, no less – in Sonja Henie’s favourite icecapade. It was known as Hitler’s favourite Hollywood movie alongside King Kong and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
- Mary Beth Hughes, The Cowboy and the Blonde, 1940. Taming of the Shrew as a Western… Wright passed the shrew (a spoilt movie star) to Hughes. George Montgomery was the rodeo star taking up film-making.
- Frances Farmer, Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake, 1941. Isabel was a jinxed role in Tyrone Power’s thud ’n’ blunder romp. Farmer’s friend, Ida Lupino, was chosen, then pushed into Moontide, replaced by Maureen O’Hara, hit by appendicitis, subbed by Cobina Wright, struck down with strep throat.. . The night Frances finished shooting she was arrested for drunken driving. (She took amphetamines as diet pills). Her career was toast leading to a series of arrests, jaili and psychiatric confinements until 1950. She, alas, never made another movie until The Party Crashers in 1958.
Birth year: 1921Death year: 2011Other name: Casting Calls: 3