HarryGoldfarb wrote:By the way, does somebody know why Harvey Fiernstein didn't reprise his role as Edna in Hairspray?
I'd imagine the producers of the film were excited to get Travolta, especially with him singing and dancing in drag.
Never saw the stage production and I am sure Firestein was good. But I thought Travolta was a lot of fun. My thirteen year old daughter put on the DVD a couple of weeks ago and it was one of my most pleasant surprises of 2007.
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. Oliver Wendell Holmes
LOL... I forgot your "thing" towards Miss Martin! But that's the point... We'll never know how would those movies be had their actors been different...
I heard a lot of years ago that Angelica Huston was begging for the role of Loretta in Moonstruck... and that later Cher was after Morticia Adam's part back in 1990... I don't know if that's true...
Demi Moore was going to play Katherine in The English Patient at the instance of the producers... It was Minghella who refused that suggestion... thank god...
"If you place an object in a museum, does that make this object a piece of art?" - The Square (2017)
It probably would have sucked, Harry...McConaughey is completely void of talent, Bale doesn't have the range for romanticism...Ricci's just too bizarre looking to be a romantic lead and don't get me started on the waste of space Gwyneth Paltrow (she's probably my version of Damien's Uma Thurman and Penelope's Hilary Swank).
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
flipp525 wrote:I'd like to know the countless number of actors who passed up on Brokeback Mountain and are now kicking themselves. You just know there must've been quite a few.
Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenyx are the known ones...
As a side note, Titanic would have been quite different with Matthew McCounaghey or Christian Bale as Jack, Rob Lowe as Hockley and Christina Ricci or Gwyneth Paltrow as Rose...
"If you place an object in a museum, does that make this object a piece of art?" - The Square (2017)
I agree totally about Streisand. She came on like gangbusters in the stage version, and later in the film of Funny Girl( still don't believe she tied Hepburn--Hepburn must have been livid!) , but she had already made a name in I Can Get It For You Wholesale. She believed that she is larger than life, and maybe that is why she got Dolly, and by that time was playing The Star with Attitude. I saw Channing's performance, and she gave it a certain warmth that Streisand lacks completely, and Dolly was a nicer person than Streisand played her.
I would have loved to see Colbert in All About Eve in the film.
I saw Julie Andrews on Broadway back in the dark ages. I was in love instantly, and was crushed that she didn't get the film version, and subsequently I did not like Hepburn, who did a serviceable job. Julie winning for Mary Poppins, I have always thought, was a gesture on the part of Oscar voters for Andrews not being cast to play Eliza in the film. Probably , MFL was the best musical of the last century.
BTW: The best scene on the stage was The Ascot Gavotte, and the director of the film was wise to use the wonderful colours - black, mauve, white, grey - of the stage play in this number.
flipp525 wrote:What was the story with Claudette Colbert and All About Eve? Did she bow out due to illness, pregnancy, disagreements with the production team? As much as I love Bette Davis' performance, I've always thought how interesting Colbert's interpretation would've been, especially with her resemblence to Anne Baxter.
Back problems caused by doing her own stunts as the real life POW in Three Came Home.
What intruiges me about the casting is that Bette Davis is always accused of imitating Tallulah Bankhead when she is basically playing herself. Someone once said that had Colbert played the part, they would have accused her of imitating Ilka Chase. I think it would still have been a great film with Colbert, but it's Davis' performance that makes it one of the all-time greats. She sinks her teeth into her first good role in years whereas Colbert would likely have brought her customary consummate skill to the role, but probably not as much passion as the then down and out Davis rising from the depths of Beyond the Forest.
When Wicked inevitably makes it onto the big screen, will they go with Idina Menzel, who of course won a Tony for the role, or with some more well-known actress? Menzel's odd looks actually work for the part of Elphaba, but I could easily see them replacing her with someone more "marketable" and conventionally attractive. Kristen Chenowith makes the quintessential Galinda as well and has been building up her film resume so she ought to be considered as well.
I'm sure Olivia de Havilland would've done wonders with the role of Blanche, but, like kaytodd, I have a particular affinity for Leigh's performance. It's just so damn good. I don't think Jessica Tandy was considered a great beauty in her younger years which is one of the reasons she might've been passed up when casting for the film.
I'd like to know the countless number of actors who passed up on Brokeback Mountain and are now kicking themselves. You just know there must've been quite a few.
What was the story with Claudette Colbert and All About Eve? Did she bow out due to illness, pregnancy, disagreements with the production team? As much as I love Bette Davis' performance, I've always thought how interesting Colbert's interpretation would've been, especially with her resemblence to Anne Baxter.
Holly Hunter would've made Carol the waitress more scrappy and hard-nosed, I think. I don't have a problem with Helen Hunt's version. I think she and Jack had great chemistry and she was even better with Greg Kinnear who stole the show for me.
Edited By flipp525 on 1197307885
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
The original Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady is wonderful. Julie sounds like she is really acting while singing the songs. Marni Nixon is just singing, albeit with a very nice and strong voice. But things obviously worked out very well for Julie. Would she really have preferred to be Eliza Doolittle one more time if it meant she could not have been Mary Poppins? She played Eliza hundreds of times on Broadway and in London (and probably lots of other cities) to great accalim. Eliza then brought Julie even more fame when Jack Warner decided to cast Audrey Hepburn in the film. And his decision freed Julie up to win an Oscar in a film that was a huge hit.
But I must admit, I would like to have seen Julie play Eliza just once.
I am sure Jessica Tandy was a wonderful Blance Dubois but Vivien Leigh's Blanche is one of my all-time favorite female film performances. Jessica strikes me as a fragile little thing. I can see how Blanche was a fragile character but I like how Vivien gave her backbone, a survivor after a lot of reversals until her breakdown at the end. She really fights back against Stanley and Mitch. "The Tarantula Arms! That's where I brought my victims!" When Vivien delivers those lines she sounds almost like a predator. I wonder if Jessica delivered lines like those with the same venom.
Edited By kaytodd on 1197216542
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. Oliver Wendell Holmes
HarryGoldfarb wrote:- Streisand over Carol Channing... Mmm... I'm not sure, but at the Tony's, didn't Channing won over Streisand. Guess Streisand was up for Funny Girl... I may be wrong...
Yep.
The reason of course is money. In every case the star chosen for the film role was a potential bigger box office draw.
In the case of Leigh in Streetcar, she played the part in London. She was actually the second choice for the film, though, after Olivia de Havilland turned it down. De Havilland had recently won her second Oscar and was considered a bigger draw than either Leigh or Tandy at the time.
Mary Martin was too old to play Maria von Trapp, just as she was too old to play Nellie Forbush in South Pacific.
Streisand was all wrong for Hello, Dolly! Every actress of a certain age was considered for that role including Irene Dunne who at 70 when filming began would have been perfect but she had been retired for almost two decades and Stresiand was the hot new singing sensation in the movies at the time.
Jack Warner's dreamcast for My Fair Lady included not only Audrey Hepburn as Eliza, but Cary Grant as Henry Higgins and James Cagney as Eliza's father. Cagney turned him down outright and Grant famoulsy told him not only wouldn't he play the part, if Warner cast anyone else in the role but Rex Harrison he wouldn't even go see it.
Speaking of Holly Hunter, she got her breakout role in Broadwcast News when Debra Winger had to bow out due to pregnancy.
Grace Kelly's role in The Country Girl was supposed to have been played by Jennifer Jones who also had to bow out because of pregnancy.
Bette Davis would have killed to do Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opposite Henry Fonda, but Warner (again) went for the then bigger names of Taylor and Burton. Uta Hagen, who created both Kelly's and Taylor's Oscar winning roles on Brodway had no chance of being cast in the film versions.
Probably the most controversial casting, at least in Ethel Merman's mind, was the casting of Rosalind Russell in Gypsy. Merman for years entertained guests with recordings of Russell's shrill attempts at singing the songs for the film that were subsequently overdubbed by Lisa Kirk - what you hear on the soundtrack is a blending of Russell's and Kirk's voices. Rhino's CD of the soundtrack includes the original Russell versions which are painful to listen to.
Yesterday, after a hideous day at work, I came home and I started watching My Fair Lady... what a delight indeed... "The rain in Spain is mainly on the plains..." Pure delight... But while watching it I remember that the voice I was hearing wasn't Audrey's... and inmediatly a tried to imagine Julie Andrews face and suddenly I tried, for some reason, to watch a different movie... and immediately my mind was thinking about Hello Dolly and how young Barbara looks to couple with Walter Matthau!
To translate a script from Broadway (or theater in general) to the film screen is not a new issue, of course not, by no means... but the process of doing so has always been quite controversial... specially the decissions concering the actors and actresses to redo a role. Can we remember these changes... of course we can,,, how would life be if Julie Andrews had got the chance to play Eliza?? Maybe this would have been a better world... we never know...
Here there are some examples that comes to mind...
- Amadeus: F. Murray Abraham is one of the best things from the 80's as Salieri, but how would it look like had Ian McKellan played the role? or Even Paul Scofield? Maybe McKellan right now, wouldn't be an overdue actor waiting for an Academy Award...
- A Streetcar Named Deisre: Poor Jessica Tandy. She had to wait 37 years in order to grab a statuette as the one that Leigh won (her second one!) for playing a role that was so hers. Being the only one dispatched in the process of making the film that must have hurt. Can anyone explain a little bit about this...
- Streisand over Carol Channing... Mmm... I'm not sure, but at the Tony's, didn't Channing won over Streisand. Guess Streisand was up for Funny Girl... I may be wrong...
- Julie Andrews over Mary Martin in The Sound of Music...
- Of course Audrie Hepburn over Julie Andrews...
Can somebody explain some of these choices? And does somebody remember another controversial choice?
Last minute note: I just found out that the leading role in As Good as it Gets was goint to be played by Holly Hunter! Even though I love the odd chemistry between Hunt and Nicholson, that would have been a great thing to see! That might lead to another topic... people that turned down roles and now they regret it!
"If you place an object in a museum, does that make this object a piece of art?" - The Square (2017)
