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."
I seriously doubt that. First,Streep is a liberal fruit bat - but she is a very good actress. Fonda never was and still isn't.
Second, the producers of “The Iron Lady” thought we would all be appalled at her “unbending”, her “unwillingness to seek consensus”, her “refusal to reach across the aisle” and all the other buzz phrases for conservatives giving in to liberal BS.
Of course the conservatives that watched the movie were instead cheering and yelling, “yes, stand your ground, don't give into these idiots” and wishing we had even one Republican front runner with the same size “attachments.”
Well, you already got the big one I was gonna lead with (Palance as Castro in “Che!”), but here’s a few others I think were miscast:
Sean Penn as Willie Stark in the remake of All The King’s Men. So bad it’s funny. I actually like Penn as an actor (if not as a person), but he just could not have been more wrong for the part of Stark.
Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. She’s the one part of the movie that just doesn’t work for me. I could see Bogey being torn up and played for a sucker by Lana Turner, or Lauren Bacall. But Mary Astor? She just didn’t bring the beauty or the screen presence to play a femme fatale. A good actress, but wrong for the part (IMHO).
Jack Nicholson. Yeah, The Shining is a scary masterpiece, and Nicholson plays an amazing psycho. The thing is, Jack seemed unbalanced from minute one in the film. The idea is that the weird going ons in the hotel drive him nutty. I don’t buy that he was ever really sane in the flick.
Jason Robards as Al Capone in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Good movie, and Robards played the part pretty well. The problem for me is, he didn’t. look a thing like Capone. Capone was heavy set and swarthy. Robards was rail thin and built like a stork. It would be like having John Kerry play Jake Gusik.
A few that could have happened, but mercifully didn’t:
-Molly Ringwald was considered for Laura Dern’s role in Blue Velvet.
-Alex Karras was considered for the part of Carlo, Connie’s weasly husband in The Godfather.
-Joan Crawford, Mae West, Lucille Ball, and Marlene Dietrich were all seriously considered for the part of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.
Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher is unimagineable. Let’s see, for those who have not read the “Reacher” novels; Jack Reacher is an ex-MP - 6’ 5”, 250lbs and beats the crap out of everyone that doesn’t toe the line.
Cruise will have to wear 12” heels and gain 100lbs to begin remotely looking like Reacher.
How in the you-know-what did Cruise ever get this role?
Bruce Willis
Tom Hanks
Melanie Griffith
Hell, the entire cast of ‘Bonfires of the Vanities’.
Tom Wolfe had written a great novel on the Kabuki theater of a hit and run blossoming into major lawsuits. That was ruined by Political Correctness for the big screen.
Kirk Douglas
Harvey Keitel
In ‘Saturn 3’ Douglas was way too old. And Keitel with a British accent???!
Meryl Streep
As Margaret Thatcher in ‘The Iron Lady’. Why is an American in a role tailor made for Helen Mirren?!!!
Ding, Ding, Ding, we have the winner!!!
This was at the height of his..uh..career..yeah, he was such a big star at the time he had his own butt double for Robin's nude scene. I guess they thought it might bring in the women for the movie. Costner didn't even attempt a British accent, which was a shame because that would probably have been the most entertaining part of the movie.
Rex Harrison as Caesar?
David Bowie as Pilate??? Wait...you said good actor...
Edward G. Robinson in the 10 Commandments...
Halle Berry...Catwoman
Middleaged Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson in Pride and Prejudice (1940), playing characters half their age. Every character in that film was also off, but that may have been writing/direction, not actual miscasting.
Pride and Prejudice (2005), also miscast in that the leads were too attractive. Lizzie is not supposed to be the most stunningly beautiful woman in the room and Darcy should appear to have an arrogance that requires £10,000 a year to compensate. That said, Knightly hit the role, MacFadyen not so much.
But the real miscast was Mr Bennett, who has taken to his library and sarcasm in refuge from reckless marriage to incompatible spouse. His one concern is to guard Lizzie from making the same mistake he did as a foolish youth, 20 odd years ago. And they cast 70 year old Donald Sutherland!
Costner’s lack of even attempting a British accent for that movie always mystified me until recently. I read that, when the film was being made, there was another Robin Hood movie in production-—I think with Patrick Bergin and Uma Thurman. Both movies were in a race to be finished, because the first one done would be shown as a theatrical release, while the loser would be shown on TV. They filmed Costner as is to save time, planning to dub in the British accent later, but in the rush decided to skip the dubbing. Costner’s movie finished first and got the theatrical release.
Sean Connery in "Zardoz". WTH?
He was perfectly cast in "Rat Race".
Marlon Brando as an Okinawan in “Teahouse of the August Moon” and Mickey Rooney in “ Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. It’s just a mistake to cast white guys as Asians.
Tom Selleck as Eisenhower in “Ike:Countdown To D-Day”
Ingrid Bergman as Gladys Aylward in “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness”
Uncanny. Okay, but I just wish he would have TRIED for a German accent. I don’t know.
I know Costner is not a great actor, but he did have “Dances with Wolves,” but he was miscast as Robin Hood.
Oh, I see Costner was already named. How about Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin?
LOL! Cinematic tour de farce.
I was wondering if anyone would mention Edward G. Robinson as Dathan with a New York accent.
I seriously doubt that Robin Hood would have had a British acent. The Saxons spoke a dialect of German, and the Norman nobility spoke a dialect of French.
And while we’re on the topic of accents, Romans rarely spoke English with a British accent.
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