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Alfred Pasquali, Entrée des artistes (US : The Curtain Rises), France, 1942. When first released in 1938, Dalio was playing the magistrate. When re-released in 1944, during the Nazi occupation of France, his scenes had been re-shot by realisateur Marc Allégret with Pasquali. Dalio was Jewish and, therefore, all his films were banned by Hitler’s Third Reich. Rather courageously, a defiant Allégret kept Dalio’s voice from the original soundtrack. By 1940, Dalio has escaped to Hollywood, where he won the majority of his 186 screen roles.
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Robert Barron, The Razor’s Edge, 1946. An earlier choice – more by the original director George Cukor than Head Fox Darryl F Zanuck and eventual helmer Edmund Goulding – for the French criminal investigator in the W Somerset Maugham classic. Final casting was delayed until the film’s star, Tyrone Power, completed his WWII military service in January 1946. Dalio was lucky to lose out to Barron… Who was not even accorded a credit.
- Herbert Lom, Chase a Crooked Shadow, 1957. Musical chairs time for police commissar Vargas in the thriller made by Douglas Fairbanks Jr’s London combine, Associated Dragon Films.
- Paul Meurisse, L’armée des ombres (US: Army of Shadows), France, 1969. Pity poor Marc Allégret. In 1946, the Paris realisateur found it easier to finance a Fernandel and Dalio film, Pétrus – than the Joseph Kessel book about the French Resistance. Jean-Pierre Melville made the masterly ’69 film. Dalio deserved to be in it.
Birth year: 1900Death year: 1983Other name: Casting Calls: 4