- Jean Peters, Viva Zapata, 1952. The story of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was on the Fox shelf for at least three years. (Well, it was then called Beloved Tiger!). Marlon Brando agreed to a test – not of himself but of Harris, another Actors Studio member, as Zapata’s wife, Josefa. Fox boss Darryl Zanuck did not even want Brando! He preferred Tyrone Power! Or Anthony Quinn. Result: Marlon got $100,000. Harris got nothing. Jean, naturally, got Brando – taking her turn on location between Marilyn Monroe and Movita. Julie finally worked with Brando in Reflections In A Golden Eye. Only took 15 years.
- Donna Reed, From Here To Eternity, 1953.
- Ruth Roman, The Far Country, 1954. One year earlier, Harris had been top choice for James Stewart’s co-star in his favourite Anthony Mann Western.
- Vera Miles, Jovanka e le altre (US: Five Branded Women, Italy-US, 1959. With their heads shaved for sleeping with German soldiers during WWII, five Yugoslav women then bravely fought for their homeland with the very partisans who had humiliated them. And that’s why Miles had to wear a wig in her next film that year. Psycho. Also seen for the five heroines: Claire Bloom, Ava Gardner, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Shirley MacLaine, Barbara Nichols, Lee Remick.
- Judy Garland, Judgment At Nuremberg, 1961. Producer-director Stanley Kramer already had Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster (replacing first choice Laurence Olivier), Montgomery Clift, Maxmilian Schell, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich and wanted Julie Harris as one of the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany. Instead, the 18-minute scene was her first film since A Star is Bornn 1953. Kramer was delighted with her. “There’s nobody in the entertainment world today, actor or singer, who can run the complete range of emotions, from utter pathos to power… the way she can.” Iironically, Tracy was first choice for her next film, A Child Is Waiting, 1962.
- Anjanette Comer, The Loved One, 1964. “The motion picture with something to offend everyone…” Comer, 25, won the young embalmer, Aimee Thanatogenous (“death by bleeding” in Greek) from such unlikely candidates (and ages) as Carroll Baker and Claire Bloom, 33; Diane Cilento, 32; Joy Harmon, 24; Julie Harris, 39; Shirley MacLaine, 30; Nina Shipman, 26; and Elizabeth Taylor, 32, when Richard Burton was up for the British poet hero. Based, badly, on Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 satire of the American funeral home business, this is the only Hollywood movie that Jayne Mansfield was cut out of! Two years later, Joy Harmon washed a car in Cool Hand Luke. Remember? As if you could forget.
- Kim Hunter, Planet of the Apes, 1968.
- Piper Laurie, Tim, Australia, 1979. Tim was an unknown called… Mel Gibson.
Birth year: 1925Death year: 2013Other name: Casting Calls: 8