- Pierre Fresnay, La Grande Illusion, France, 1937. He had enough trouble locating a producer, then director Jean Renoir was rejected by the first three actors he asked to be the aristocratic POW Captain De Boeldieu. Fresnay helped make the film a classic.
- Annibale Ninchi, Scipione l’africano(US video: Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal),Italy,1937. An infamouspeplumbasically “produced” by the Italian dictator Mussolini. Sheer propaganda for his troops, showing how, in 202 BC, the titular hero defeated Hannibal and all his elephants – some of which were papier-mâché pushed around by extras, some of whom wore visible wrist-watches! This second Il Duce mess was offered to Blanchard and Fredric March. Mussolini then aimed his aborted third film, Rigoletto, atLaurel and Hardy. They would have fit better with the pachyderms. (Decades later, Fellini chose Niinchi for Marcello Mastroianni’s father in both La Dolce Vitaand 8½).
- Louis Jouvet, Un tel pere et fils, France, 1943. Charles Spaak wrote the script for Jean Gabin, Françoise Rosay and Blanchar. Realisateur Julien Duvivier went with Raimu, Suzy Prime, Louis Jouvet. Banned in France by Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels, the film first opened in America in ’43 – and two years later at home, after all hostilities ended in ’45.
Birth year: 1892Death year: 1963Other name: Casting Calls: 3