- Natalie Wood, The Great Race, 1964. Director Blake Edwards’ first choice, Jane Fonda, was shooting a better comedy, Cat Ballou. Second notion, Lee Remick, was committed to Broadway. Wood accepted the suffragette Maggie DuBois while Edwards wanted Hartman or Patty Duke and did not take kindly to the diva-ish Wood. He got his revenge during the largest ever custard pie scene (4,000 pies over five days), hurling them with relish in her face!
- Natalie Wood, Inside Daisy Clover, 1964. Wood told author Gavin Lambert that she’d kill fo the Daisy role. No need, said he, you’re everyone’s #1 choice. Why? OK, it’s similar to her story (or Gypsy’s), quirky Mama and all. But Daisy is 15 when her Hollywood ascension begins. Wood was 27. There were better contenders. Hartman was 21; Patty Duke, a kid star, herself, was 18. Major flop, then. After one more (also with Robert Redford), Natalie quit movies for three years.
- Katharine Houghton, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, 1967. After her Oscar-nominated debut as the blind girl in A Patch of Blue, she got 20 scripts about blind/deaf/crippled girls. “And she was a wonderful comic actress,” said ex-husband, screenwriter Gill Dennis. But even with Spencer Tracy, Kate Hepburn and Sidney Poitier, this was “just another alternative on the white girl/black man theme offered to “Biff” with Hollywood’s usual lack of imagination.” So, it was Hepburn’s niece who played Hepburn’s daughter.
- Dyan Cannon, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, 1969. “I wouldn’t take any part because of the money.”
- Liza Minnelli, The Sterile Cuckoo, 1969. She set her heart on it, read for director Alan J Pakula who told her: “No, you’re just not Pookie.” She never argued, she went back home. “In a way, I expected to fail. Everybody wants to see if you live up to your big success. Well, the parts that followed [A Patch of Blue] just weren’t good enough.” Mentally ill, she threw herself from her a fifth floor Pittsburgh apartment block in June, 1987.
- Mia Farrow, The Last Unicorn, 1981. Hartman, Janet Leigh and Shasi Wells were the mixed bag (and ages) to voice the unicorn in the toon based on the book (and script) by Peter S Beagle. Farrow as a unicorn… but no – no comment. The tragically, mentally ill Hartmanthrew herself from her a fifth floor Pittsburgh apartment block in June, 1987.
Birth year: 1943Death year: 1987Other name: Casting Calls: 6