- Angela Lansbury, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1944. Lockhart was close to winning Sybil Vane, until actor Michael Dyne tested as Gray and mentioned Lansbury. (Londoners stick together). She won both Gaslight and and Dorian on the same day, but lost the supporting Oscar to Anne Revere… as her mother in National Velvet, 1943. Her real mother, Moyna MacGill, played the Duchess. (I happen to be writing this a few days after Lansbury won her first Olivier Award in London as Best Supporting (stage) Actress of 2014… at age 89.
- Vanessa Brown, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, 1946. Change of the adult Anna in the phantom comedy aimed at director John M Stahl before Joseph L Mankiewicz.
- Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday, 1952. Frank Capra (and George Stevens) wanted Liz Taylor, William Wyler liked Suzanne Cloutier (the future Mrs Peter Ustinov) for the runaway Princess Ann. A further 28 actresses were seen, the good, bad and risible – like the current sex-bombs Yvonne De Carlo Diana Dors, Gina Lollobrigida, Sylvana Mangano, Shelley Winters. Apart from, perhaps, Vanessa Brown, Mona Freeman and Wanda Hendrix (even though her real name as Dixie), the Hollywood hopefuls – singer Rosemary Clooney(George’s aunt), Jeanne Crain, Nina Foch, Janet Leigh, Joan Leslie, June Lockhart, Dorothy Malone, Patricia Neal, Barbara Rush – were soon discarded, lacking the stature of Euro-royalty. Idem for the Euros – Swedish Bibi Andersson, and the French Capucine, Leslie Caron, Jeanne Moreau. Which left several perfect Brits Claire Bloom, Joan Collins, Glynis Johns, Kay Kendall, Deborah Kerr, Angela Lansbury, Moira Shearer, and, of course, Audrey, … soon gracing the Time cover, hailed by the New York Times as a “slender, elfin and wistful beauty, alternately regal and childlike” with, added Variety, a “delightful affectation in voice and delivery, controlled just enough to have charm and serve as a trademark,” (And, Indeed, it did for evermore).
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