- Evelyn Keyes, Mrs Mike, 1949. June Allyson was suggested for the lead. Of course, she was. Her husband, Dick Powell, was the star. And producer! Also considered for his Mountie’s Bostonian wife: Barbara Bates, Barbara Bel Geddes, Peggy Cummins, Betsy Drake, Diana Lynn.
- Charmian Carr, The Sound of Music, 1964. Two years after her Miracle Worker Oscar, Duke was in director Robert Wise’s loop for Liesel Von Trapp – with Kim Darby, Sharon Tate and Lesley Ann Warren. Plus four daughters of the famous: Charlie’s Geraldine Chaplin, Judy Garland’s Liza Minnelli, Maureen O’Sullivan’s Mia Frrow and Ann Sothern’s Tisha Sterling.
- Marie Windsor, Little Big Horn, 1950. A B-Western about Custer’s last stand. But whaty interests me just just how John Ireland explained to his wife, Joanne Dru, that she lost the role she tested for and, therefore, could not have an affair… with her own husband!
- Gloria Grahame, The Cobweb, 1954. James Dean, Grace Kelly and Robert Taylor nearly made it, too.
- Evelyn Keyes, Hell‘s Half Acre, 1953. Too convolutewd for its own goods. Maybe that’s why Dru gave up the Hawaii locations. Keyes took over, looking as lost as most everyone else in the B (almost Z) enterprise.
- Fran Bennett, Giant, 1955.
- Dana Wynter, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956. Lost: a second classic.
- Debra Paget, Omar Khayyam, 1956. In the Persian frame for Sharain were Dru, Joan Collins, Yvonne De Carlo and Donna Reed. Persia was played by California’s Indio and Palm Springs.
Birth year: 1922Death year: 1996Other name: Casting Calls: 8