- Charmian Carr, The Sound of Music, 1964. Five years before True Grit, Darby was in director Robert Wise’s loop for Liesel Von Trapp – her test is in the same Fox studio’s Hollywood Screen Tests: Take 1, 1999. Also seen: Patty Duke, Teri Garr, Sharon Tate and Lesley Ann Warren. Plus four daughters of the famous: Charlie’s Geraldine Chaplin, Judy Garland’s Liza Minnelli, Maureen O’Sullivan’s Mia Farrow and Ann Sothern’s Tisha Sterling. Critic Pauline Kael famously tried to bury “the sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat” but it saved Fox from the near bankruptcy of the Cleopatra debacle.
- Olivia Hussey, Romeo and Juliet, UK-Italy, 1967. The first version where the stars were close to the ages of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers. Leonard Whiting and Olivia were 17 and 15. At MGM, circa 1935, Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer were, ridiculously, 43 and 35! Italian director Franco Zeffirelli saw 500 hopeful Juliets, including Hollywood’s Kim Darby, Anjelica Huston and Bernadette Peters and the UK’s Jenny Agutter, Angela Cartwright, Sarah Douglas, Pamela Franklin, Susan George, singer Lulu (Phil Collins and Paul McCartney had been seen for Romeo!), Jane Seymour, Madeline Smith, Sally Thomsett and the model Twiggy. He then fell (literally) for the Argentine-born Hussey: “the unrequited love of my life.” Zeffirelli had to obtain permission for the scene as Olivia was 15. “But in Europe a lot of the films had nudity,” she said. “It wasn’t that big a deal. Leonard wasn’t shy at all! and I just completely forgot I didn’t have clothes on.” And yet, (a) she found herself legally banned from seeing her own nudity in the London premiere as she was under 18 and (b) by 2023, Hussey and Whiting (in their 70s) were suing Paramount for having their “child abuse” nude scenes and causing them suffering all their lives!!! . Olivia grew up to join the Stars Wars, play the mothers of Jesus and Norman Bates and the life of Mother Teresa.
- Ryan O’Neal, What’s Up Doc? 1972. Began life as A Glimpse of the Tiger with an exhausted Elliott Gould in no condition to work and, according to rumours, threatening co-star Darby with all kinds of mortal mayhem… and walked off the et on thew fourth day. Kim was “emotionally shattered by the experience.” When the cancelled film was resuscitated, director Peter Bogdanovich changed the sex of The Couple.Gould’s ex-wife Barbra Streisand took over his role and O’Neal played Kim’s character..
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 2