- Tyrone Power, Brigham Young, 1939. Having made a bright new star out of the too handsome Tyrone Power, head Fox Darryl Zanuck toyed with the idea of doing the same with the UK import, Greene. Not. This. Time.
- Tyrone Power, The Mark of Zorro, 1939. Fifteen years before he became the Britsh Zorro, Robin Hood, for five TV years, Greene was seen for Johnston McCulley’s masked hero. Co-star Basil Rathbone, pretty good as sword-fencing himself, kindly said that Power “could fence Errol Flynn into a cocked hat!” (More like his double could. Albert Cavens!).
- Lloyd Nolan, The Man I Married (aka I Married a Nazi), 1940. The newsman explaining Nazidom to I, alias Joan Bennett, was switched from Greene – as her husband was another suave Brit, Georeg Sandrs. Enter Noland and, indeed, exit Sanders, delayed on Foreign Correspondent, Francis Lederer became the Mr Bennett!
- Tyrone Power, This Above All, 1941. King George VI’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the future UK queen, donned uniform during WWII, so why not Joan Fontaine as the aristocratic Prudence Cathaway… falling for an AWOL soldier offered to Greene, Robert Donat, even Laurence Olivier. Title stemmed from the Polonious soliloquy in Hamlet: This above all: to thine own self be true… As John Wayne could have told you; he could recite the entire play.
- John Sutton, Hudson’s Bay, 1940. The birth of Canada, Hollywood style… A story about the Hudson Bay Company had been on head Fox Darryl Zanuck’s mind since 1936. He cancelled it in 1939 because “the feature would have a weak box-office pull at the present time.” Which explained the later change of Lord Edward Crewe from Greene to Sutton.
- Stewart Granger, The Prisoner of Zenda, 1951. Leaving Fox for MGM, Greene was no better off – or not with his fellow Brit around. He was syphoned off for The Black Castle (with Boris Karloff!) when Metro used the same 1936 script, score, and most of the camera angles. Plus a ’36 actor, Lewis Stone, promoted from bishop to cardinal. Greene only made good back home as the star of UK TV’s The Adventures of Robin Hood series, 1955-1960. Many a Brit can still sing the signature tune…
- Anthony Sharp, House of Mortal Sin (US: The Confessional), 1976. Peter Cushing passed on being, as Time Out put it, a crazed old Catholic priest terrorising a young girl after hearing her confession… He was too busy and not, as rumours insisted, hating the scenario. UK schlocker Pete Walker then offered Father Xavier Meldrum to Harry Andrews, Stewart Granger, plus (said Steve Chinball’s Walker book), Greene and Lee J Cobb.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 7