- Cathy Downs, My Darling Clementine, 1945. Anne Baxter, Vanessa Brown, Jeanne Crain and Linda Darnell were shoo-ins for the girl Doc Holliday left in Georgia when he went West in 1873 and took over Tombstone. No, no, no cried head Fox Darryl F Zanuck. Their fans will be upset because Clementine is a small role and he gave John Ford a total unknown… previously credited as Clothes Model, Girl on Carousel and Miss Cream Puff, etc. Linda was made Doc’s hooker-lover, Chihuahua. Downs won 45 other screen roles. Nothing memorable. Two years after being Jane in Tarzan and the Slave Girl, 1949, Vanessa had an IQ was 165 and created Marilyn’s rôle in the Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch.
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Peggy Ann Garner, Thunder in the Valley (aka Bob, Son of Battle), 1946. The unashamedly sentimental Lassie-esque tale. flopped under three titles – and three changes of the heroine, Maggie, from the British Cummins to Vanessa Brown to PAG. Brown and Cummins switched to being Ronald Colman’s niece and daughter in The Late George Apley.
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Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday, 1952. Frank Capra (and George Stevens) wanted Liz Taylor, William Wyler liked Suzanne Cloutier (the future Mrs Peter Ustinov) for the runaway Princess Ann. A further 28 actresses were seen, the good, bad and risible – like the current sex-bombs Yvonne De Carlo Diana Dors, Gina Lollobrigida, Sylvana Mangano, Shelley Winters. Apart from, perhaps, Vanessa Brown, Mona Freeman and Wanda Hendrix (even though her real name as Dixie), the Hollywood hopefuls – singer Rosemary Clooney(George’s aunt), Jeanne Crain, Nina Foch, Janet Leigh, Joan Leslie, June Lockhart, Dorothy Malone, Patricia Neal, Barbara Rush – were soon discarded, lacking the stature of Euro-royalty. Idem for the Euros – Swedish Bibi Andersson, and the French Capucine, Leslie Caron, Jeanne Moreau. Which left several perfect Brits Claire Bloom, Joan Collins, Glynis Johns, Kay Kendall, Deborah Kerr, Angela Lansbury, Moira Shearer, and, of course, Audrey, … soon gracing the Time cover, hailed by the New York Times as a “slender, elfin and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike” with, added Variety, a “delightful affectation in voice and delivery, controlled just enough to have charm and serve as a trademark,” (And, Indeed, it did for evermore).
- Anne Baxter, The Ten Commandments, 1954
Birth year: 1928Death year: 1999Other name: Casting Calls: 4