- Jon Voight, The Odessa File, 1973. Before Voight, there was Griem but he would have similar trouble, losing out to Oskar Werner for Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) in 1981. The film’s journo hero, unlike author Frederick Forsyth’s, gets his ex-SS man who , “is such a seedy thug that either his survival or his demise seems equally irrelevant,” said web critic Richard T Johnson at Parallax-view.org. Griem was known at the time for Cabaret and two Visconti films: The Damned and Ludwig. Yes, that handsome!
- Klaus Löwitsch, Rosebud, 1974. One German star for another when Griem didn’t fancy the script – the penultimate project of producer-director-ogre Otto Preminger. His temper was more foul than usual. During the German locations, , he hated working in the areas of his traumatic times evading Nazis in WWII. He even directed from inside his car, roiling down the windiow to yell sa Cut!. Or worse. Griem’s replacement was famous for films made with Berlin director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (I interviewed Preminger in 1979 during his next, 43rd and final film, The Human Factor, in London. And he was, to my surprise, a pussycat!)
- Christopher Cazenove, Royal Flash,1974. Griem was in the Eric Hansen mix for Dick Lester’s film of the second Flashman book George MacDonald Fraser. He hated it so much he banned all other versions of his 12 book-series in his lifetime.
- Jurgen Andersen, The Riddle of the Sands, 1979. Bad memories of the son of York? The German actor refused the UK film – headlined by Michael York as the decadent Maximilian. Griem had trysted with York and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, 1972. And so, the Hamburger passed Kaiser Wilhelm II to a Berliner.
- Michael Gothard, Lifeforce, 1984.
Birth year: 1932Death year: 2004Other name: Casting Calls: 5