- Barbara Hershey, Last Summer, 1968. Locke surprisingly rejected Sandy, in Frank Perry’s coming-of-age drama about four teens playing the truth game. The wounded seagull scenes affected Hershey so much, she changed her name to Barbara Seagull for a bunch of films even after Playboy boss-cum-producer Hugh Hefner lowered her $50,000 salary for The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder, in 1973. He insisted he was paying for Heshey (once nude in his magazine with her lover David Carradine in Boxcar Bertha scenes) and not Seagall – that name was zero a the box-office.
- Kim Darby, True Grit, 1968. The memorable debut of the newcomer from Shelbyville, Tennessee in The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter was still being edited but the word was so good that producer Hal Wallis was keen to co-star her with John Wayne. She surprised Wallis; she knew her own mind. Mattie Ross was too much like Heart’s Mick Kelly. “Let’s wait for the right thing.” (She did – and it was called Clint Eastwood…) Wallis then surveyed Geneviève Bujold (who became Wallis’ Anne of the Thousand Days), singer Karen Carpenter (a Duke idea), Mia Farrow (who kicked herself for refusing), Sally Field, Jaclyn Smith, Tuesday Weld. Plus past and future Duke co-stars Michele El DoradoCarey and Jennifer Rio Lobo O’Neill. And Duke’s teenage daughter Aissa. Well Mattie was supposed to be 14.
- Liza Minnelli, The Sterile Cuckoo, 1969. No one had seen her debut and she was running out of money when she auditioned as Pookie for a delighted director Alan J Pakula.“That was the best audition I’ve heard,” he told her. “I only wish I had met you six months ago.” That’s when Minnelli was booked. “Liza’s Pookie was a very different Pookie than mine… Losing out to someone with so much talent reduced my disappointment.”
- Patty Duke, My Sweet Charlie, TV, 1970. Somewhat unwisely, Locke rejected director Lamont Jophnson’s invitation to head the tele-film that became a triple-Emmy-winning tele-film – ibncluding one for Duke.
- Kay Lenz, Breezy, 1973. First meeting of Clint Eastwood and a future lover.His Play Misty For Me co-star Jessica Walter thought Sondra would be perfect for his second directing gig. Scenarist Joe Heims agreed and told Eastwood. And he just kept chipping golf balls around his office during their meeting. “I’m not sure he ever actually paid any attention to me, whatsoever.” (He says he told an associate: “She’s an interesting type, very good actress – I’d certainly like to use her someday.” And he did – in six films during their 15-year affair). Heims was even more disappointed and realised he didn’t really “get” her May-December romance. “Sure enough, the final film was a predictable, run-of-the-mill story about a man in his late 50s who chases a young, teenage chick with lots of T & A.”
- Geneviève Bujold, Earthquake, 1974. Female roles were had little significance when Charley Hero (aka Charlton Heston) was busy saving the world. Or, at least some American parts of it. Locke would later recommend Bujold to her lover Clint Eastwood for a film.
- Sissy Spacek, Carrie, 1976.
- Carrie Fisher, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, 1976.
- Jane Alexander, City Heat, 1983. The beginning of the end of the Clint-Sondra affair… (He had others). Praising her work in Bronco Billy (works every time!),director Blake Edwards called Sondra about playing the socialite.Wanting out of Clint’s shadow, work-wise, she agreed. As an afterthought (!), he suggesting showing Clint the script.They had meetings about him joining Burt Reynolds.. .and then, poor Sondra was “simply out of the mix. And forgotten.” Edwards had used her to get to Clint. She was deceived, dismissed, crushed… Clint’s version: He had already refused the script as too talky, so “Blake was kind of a bad boy.” Eastwood got rid of him and gave it to Richard Benjamin – who was scared stiff of the boss and couldn’t spice up the dead meat. “How do travesties like this get made?” asked Chicago critic Roger Ebert.
- Geneviève Bujold, Tightrope, 1983. As Clint Eastwood told his lover and often co-star on his previous venture: “I can’t make my career decisions on whether or not you get some job!” Sondra rejected this scenario (as he should havedonel, he was no up to the complexities of the role) and Sondra suggested Bujold… and, indeed, Carrie Snodgress for his next Western, Pale Rider.
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Frances Conroy, Mountain Rest, 2017. If she had been in better health – swansong at 74 – as retired movie actress being visited in her mountain cabin by her daughter and film-stealing grand-daughter (Natalia Dyer from Stranger Things, 2016-2019). From 1989-1999, Locke made more court appearences than films, following abusive treatment by Warner Bros and Eastwood. She won a $1.5m directing-development deal. Or non-development, as all her 30 projects were rejected and/or given to other directors: Ivan Reitman got Junior, 1993, and actor Griffin Dunne was allowed to make his his helming debut with Addicted to Love, 1996. She later discovered that Eastwood was reimbursing the studio. Both, therefore, had sent a message “to the film industry and the world at large” that she was not to be taken seriously. Finally, in May 1999, a settlement was agreed just before the jury was chosen and Eastwood called as a – if not, the – material witness. In her 1997 book, she called Eastwood a control freak, a monster and sociopath. “I discovered he was a liar and a cheat who was leading a double, no, a triple if not a quadruple life, and who was terrified of being found out.” And she added: “Others who knew Clint said that I had been far too kind to him.”
Birth year: 1944Death year: 2018Other name: Casting Calls: 11