- Shelley Winters, The Young Savages, 1961. Burt Lancaster’s manager and business partner, Harold Hecht, asked her to play a delinquent’s mother. Sure, she said, $100,000 and co-star billing. Hecht rang back: Money’s fine but Burt gets solo top billing. “Good for him,” said Shelley. “I pass.” Weeks later Hecht calls about huge rows with Burt. “He really wants you. Would you please do this part?” Hecht calls. Same deal, said Shelley, only now there were theatres to buy out due to her tour of Two For The See-Saw. Director John Frankenheimer was desperate. ”We’ll try to do what you ask.”And so, while also rehearsing and, indeed, opening her stage tour, she made the film. “I just wanted to force Burt Lancaster to give me co-star billing.” She’d earned it. They had been lovers in the ’40s.
- Joanne Linville: Star Trek#57:The Enterprise Incident,1968. (Stardate 6027.3). Casting directorJoseph D’Agosta’s first choice for the Romulan commander passed… allowing Linville to turn Romulan.
- Norma Crane, Fiddler on the Roof, 1970. “Her finely chiseled features seemed inappropriate for a Slavic peasant matriarch,” said producer Walter Mirisch when considering Lee for Tevye’s wife, Golde, after Anne Bancroft passed. When winning the role, Normalearned she hadbreast cancer- a fact she revealed only to a few, including her close friend, Natalie Wood… who paid Norma’s hospital and 1973 funeral bills.
- Joanne Woodward, The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds, 1972. Obvious change of plan once the director became a fella named Paul Newman.
- Beatrice Arthur, The Golden Girls, TV, 1985-92. At 58, she thundered:“I’m not playing anyone old enough to be a graaaaaandmother.” Matching the Edith Evans’ delivery of… handbbbaaaggg!!! Bea Arthur was 62.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 5