- John Gilbert, Love, 1927. The retitled Anna Karenina started with Garbo and Cortez, directed by Russian Dimitri Buchowetzki. MGM’s house geniuis, Irving Thalberg hated it, threw it out and had it made over by Edmund Goulding with Norman Kerry as Garbo’s lover, Vronsky. Hmm, not much better. OK, Take Three – get Gilbert (Garbo’soff-screen lover since The Flesh and the Devil, 1926), and his favourite camerace William H Daniels. Thalberg was delighted. So were the posters:. John Gilbert Greta Garbo in Love.
- John Gilbert, Queen Christina, 1933. This Latin Lover was born Jacob Krantz in Vienna. Garbo obviously remembered he was the only actor to have had his name above hers – in her US debut, The Torrent, 1926. Besides, she wanted her ex-lover Gilbert and she would accept no one else.
- Stuart Erwin, After Office Hours, 1934. Director Robert Z Leonard had a change of heart about Cortez and added the funnier Erwin to the mix of MGM’s answer to It Happened One Night. Gable was a humble reporter there but a New York city editor here, falling – understandably – for society belle Constance Bennett.
- Paul Lukas, The Casino Murder Case, 1934. Four films as SS Van Dine’s (actually, Willard Huntington Wright’s) snobbish, cynical, bored, supercilious, dilettante detective Philo Vance was enough for William Powell. He refused this one, planned by MGM for him and Myrna Loy (aka The Thin Man and his wife). This news put Metro into a panic. Did they have another Philo? Well, Basil Rathbone had Vanced once in 1929. But that was then, this was now… Otto Kruger topped the list, followed by Cortez (the original Sam Spade in the 1930 Maltese Falcon), Columbia’s magician-actor Fred Keating, Warren William (he had Vanced the previous year) and, finally, Lukas – with Ted Healy succeeding Eugene Pallette as NYPD Sergeant Heath. Raymond Chandler was no fan of “the most asinine character in detective fiction.” And funny poet Ogden Nash added: “Philo Vance/ Needs a kick in the pance.”
- Fredric March, Anna Karenina, 1935. Irving Thalberg wanted Garbo’s clout to help make a star of Cortez. The public howled with protest, wanting more of Garbo-Gilbert. Thalberg threw in the towel… and March.
- Chester Morris, The Gay Bride, 1934. MGM first planned a Red Dust reunion of Gable and Jean Harlow for this fast-moving comedy about a gold-digger widow and a bodyguard. Whan Gable quit – the script wasshredded by the new Production Code – potential successors included Cortez, Richard Arlen, Russell Hardie, Lyle Talbot. Finally, the couple was Morris and Carole Lombard… who wed Gable in 1939.
- Donald Woods,The Case of the Stuttering Bishop, 1937. Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Garner disliked Cortez so much in The Case of the Black Cat, that the brothers Warner replaced him with Woods for Mason’s fifth movie case. He was no better. Dull as ditchwater – he killed the series! At least Cortez had some bejazz. He’d been the first Sam Spade, after all. Warren William was Mason in the first four films, 1934-1936. (Errol Flynn played a corpse in the second!).
Birth year: 1899Death year: 1977Other name: Casting Calls: 7