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Mary Murphy, Main Street to Broadway, 1952. Leachman (a future Oscar-winner), Peggy Anne Garner and Elinor Randel luckily escaped the MGMusical savaged by the esteemed New York Times criticc Bosley Crowther as “unworthy of either the theatre or the screen… The whole picture has a faintly vulgar air.” Owch!
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June Lockhart, Lasssie, TV, 1958-1964. Lassie stayed put, but her owners kept changing… First, Broadway’s Jan Clayton and her young son, Tommy Rettig for 117 episodes, 1954-1957. Teenage Tommy soon got bvroed with pkaying a mere kid – and Tommy became Timmy when Jon Provost was the adopted son of the Martins: Cloris Leachman and Jon Sheppod, during 1957-1958. Leachman hated her role – and most likely, the dog, not to mention Timmy – and certainly didn’t gell well with the crew. So these Martins were axed for Lockhart and Hugh Reilly (also from Broadway) during 1958-1964. Soon enough Provost reprised Rettig’s let-me-go plea… after 249 shows. That meant a new change of the humans. And a new rule: Colour in, kids out! Robert Bray became Lassie’s owner, a Texas… no, Forrest Service Ranger. Bray had a booze problem and had to replaced by Jed Allen and Jack De Mave, as the series declined and disappeared up Lassie’s ass in 1971. Over her 366 chapters, Lasssie was played by boy-dogs, Pal and Pal Jr, trained by Rudd Weatherwax.
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Cher, Mask, 1984.
“They came to me with this picture called Mask,” recalled director Peter Bogdanovich in 2015. “Not a very good script but it surely was an interesting story because it was a true story. And then I remembered how Dorothy [his mudered lover, Dorothy Stratten] felt about The Elephant Man on Broadway… very moved by it. After she was killed I figured it out… because her beauty was as much of a source of alienation as his ugliness. and I thought, “Well, I’ll make it for her.” For Rusty, mother of the disfigured Eric Stojlz, Peter obviously thought of Leachman and Ellen Burstyn from his 1970 Last Picture Show, Plus Jane Fonda. “Anybody with a name!” He then noticed Cher in the suits’ suggestions. “Interesting. I can see her [playing] a druggie and riding a motorcycle, and I can’t see Jane Fonda doing it. She’s too sophisticated. Cher and I didn’t get along that well… She he had such a negative attitude. But she’s very good in the picture. I don’t think I’ve ever shot more close-ups – she’s very good in close-ups and not that good in playing the whole scene through, because she loses the thread of it. So I shot it that way, and she should have won an Oscar.” She did win on Best Actress at Cannes… and nd Bogdanovich never got over it. “I’m sick of her mouthing off about me. I worked hard on that performance with her and she knows it… She’s excellent in it. But the studio didn’t want her, they wanted Jane Fonda. I fought for her. No one thought of Cher for the part except me.” Not so. Scenarist Anna Hamilton Phelan had pinned a photo of the chanteuse to the script she handed to Bogdanovich. -
Anjelica Huston, Lonesome Dove, TV, 1989. Director Peter Bogdanovich planned a Last Pictgure Show reunion to back up John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda in another Larry McMurtry tale, Streets of Laredo. However, it died when John Ford told Duke not to sign on and the rest backed off. McMurtry turned his script in to a novel and then, a golden TV mini.
- Estelle Harris, Toy Story 2, 1998. This time Don Rickles’ Mr Potato Head had a wife. But who should voice his bride…? Leachman, Carol Burnett, Doris Robert, Betty White, Marcia Wallace (aka Mrs Krabappel in The Simpsons,1990–2014). Just as Roberts was famous for being Ray Romano’s mother in Everybody Loves Raymond, 1996-2005, the winner was best known as Jason Alexander’s mother in Seinfeld, 1992-1998.
Birth year: 1926Death year: 2021Other name: Casting Calls: 5