Posted on 12/01/2012 6:09:35 AM PST by PJ-Comix
Even good actors sometimes get horribly miscast in the wrong roles. The case most often cited is this first one in which John Wayne played an odd role for him...a Mongol warrior.
John Wayne: Miscast as Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror," the Duke had to utter lines like: "My blood says, take this Tartar woman."
Susan Hayward: Co-starring as the tartar woman love interest in "The Conqueror." Yeah, an Irish chick from Brooklyn as a Tartar woman on the Asian steppes. The closest thing about Hayward to a tartar is that she had a tart tongue.
Chuck Connors: Tall, blond, blue-eyed, Connors somehow was chosen to portray an Apache Indian barely five feet tall. Does not compute!
George Peppard: I really enjoyed watching "The Blue Max." My favorite aerial movie about WWI. However, one person just did not fit the role...George Peppard as Lt. Bruno Stachel. Peppard was simply too American to convincingly portray a German. Oh, and you don't have to be a German to portray a German since two English actors in the same movie were very convincing as German officers: James Mason and Jeremy Kemp.
Laurence Olivier: Yes, even actors at the top of the acting profession can be horribly miscast as Olivier was as General Douglas McArthur in "Inchon." Thankfully very few people have seen Olivier in his completely miscast role.
Leslie Howard: I recently saw "Gone With The Wind" again for the umpteenth time and noticed that Leslie Howard was quite long in the tooth to be playing the youthful Ashley Wilkes. And did Southern gentlemen talk with British accents?
Jimmy Stewart: Stewart was almost twice the age of the 25 year old Lindbergh when he flew solo across the Atlantic. Sorry, but mere hair dye does not make one convincingly youthful in "The Spirit of St. Louis." Actually, George Peppard would have been good in the role of Lindbergh...if he mastered Lindbergh's slightly sing-song upper Midwest accent.
Richard Burton: As Leon Trotsky in "The Assassination of Trotsky."
Charlton Heston: His miscasting in "A Touch of Evil" was so horrible that it was even referenced in "Ed Wood" when Wood ran into Orson Welles at a bar and after telling Welles about being forced to miscast roles, Welles replied: "Tell me about it. I'm supposed to do a thriller for Universal. They want Charlton Heston as a Mexican."
And Tony Curtis as the slave/sidekick in "Spartacus." "Yo dere! I'm Spahtacuss!"
I'll second that one. That had to be just about the WORST performance I've ever seen an actor give. He should have been fired after the producers screened the first day's rushes.
What was the name of that medieval costume drama in which Tony Curtis uttered the immortal line "Yondah is da castle of my faddah"?
LOL! Yeah, I know the one you’re talking about but I can’t put a name on it. Try IMDB ...
It has been a while since I’ve seen it...maybe it has developed a campiness quality over the years...
Tom Cruise plays “Tom Cruise” in every movie he’s ever been in.
For example:
“Top Gun” = “Tom Cruise Goes Flying”.
“Days of Thunder” = “Tom Cruise Goes Racing”
“War of the Worlds” = “Tom Cruise Runs from the Aliens”
“Valkyrie” = “Tom Cruise is a Nazi”
you get the idea....
RLTW
Turn's my stomach, Fonda as Reagan.
That’s not necessarily wrong, it’s just ironic....
Really belongs on Broadway as an usher.
How about Anthony Hopkins in “Nixon”? Hopkins is a Welshman who didn’t get the American accent quite right.
Dirty Harry (Eastwood) in Paint Your WAgon.
LOL.... The “ I “ should have been a “he”
I know...but I still like the film. Ernest Borgnine stole every scene IMHO. Kirk Douglas was good too.
For the most part I agree with you, but I would give him credit for a couple of really good performances in No Way Out, and with Eastwood in A Perfect World.
Robin Hood himself would not have spoken with what we today call a British accent. He would probably have spoken Anglo-Saxon, a language as different from modern English as modern English is from modern German, Dutch or Swedish.
“depraved oedipal act?”
OMG LOL and all that.
The single funniest line I have read on FR.
And in Post #69 to boot(ie)!
I got a kick out of that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.