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Mona Freeman, Mother Wore Tights, 1946. PAG’s substitute made a great impression in the hokey bio-musical about her screen parents, Betty Grable and Dan Dailey as the vaudeville duo, Burt and Rosedale. Connie Marshall played the younger sister, Mikli – who got $23,000 for writing the book the film was based on.
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Mary Murphy, Main Street to Broadway, 1952. PAG, future Oscar-winner Cloris Leachman 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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Audrey Dalton, Titanic, 1952. The ex-child star (with a special Oscar), had talks – indeed, lunch – with writer-producer Charles Brackett about returning to movies at 20. However, Dalton won the daughter of Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb – about as bad as giving an Oscar to the over–dramatic script, As if the sinking wasn’t dramatic enough. Next week; Lusitania.
- Natalie Wood, Rebel Without a Cause, 1955. PAG, Carroll Baker, Patricia (later Pat), Crowley, Peggy Ann Garner, Jayne Mansfield, Margaret O’Brien, Lee Remick, Debbie Reynolds, Lois Smith, Susan Strasberg were in the Judy mix – only Baker was recommended by James Dean and Elia Kazan. She tested for Nicholas Ray and then her husband, Jack Garfein, ordered her back to New York, knowing how Ray was testing oters (Wood and Jayne Mansfield) in bed. Baker later co-starred with Dean in Giant, the delay of which, due to Elizabeth Taylor’s pregnancy, made it possible for Dean to play rebellious Jim Stark. (Sidney Lumet had launched James Dean, Sal Mineo and Paul Newman (up for Jim Stark) in his New York TV shows.)
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 4