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 disagree with that one, I like Selleck as Ike.
Honestly, except for “Good Morning, Vietnam” and “Good Will Hunting” has Robin Williams ever been good in anything?
I would disagree in part. Though Heston may have been miscast in Touch of Evil, he did what was expected and the movie is regarded as by far the greatest film noir ever made.
Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon.
Keanu Reeves in FFC’s Dracula.
Keanu Reeves as Don John and Michael Keaton as Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.Jack Lemmon as Marcellus and Robin Williams as Osric in Hamlet
Max von Sydow as Jesus, Charlton Heston as John the Baptist, and Telly Savalas as Pontius Pilate, in The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon and Guys and Dolls.
John Travolta in Battlefield Earth.
James Cagney as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Martin Sheen (wearing a wristwatch) as Robert E Lee in Gettysburg.
Williams was good in Awakenings and Dead Poets’ Society.
I’ll give you “Awakenings,” I forgot about that one. I never really got what was so great about “Dead Poets’ Society” although my roommates in college loved it.
I love Robert Duval, but him playing “Stalin” didn’t work for me.....Maybe if I wasn’t so familiar with all his other roles, I might have appreciated it more, but I still felt I was watching Duval and not Stalin.
“Zardoz”.....Weirdest. Movie. Ever.
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Were you at home or in the theater when you perfomed this depraved oedipal act?
Connery did ZARDOZ to pay the bills. He hit a post-007 slump and needed the work. IIRC his salary was $70k.
Patrick Bergin played Richard Burton (the explorer) in “Mountains of the Moon.” He was hot.
The worst thing about Martin Sheen as Lee wasn’t his wristwatch or even his accent - it was that he couldn’t ride a horse.
Go back and watch it again...it seems like he tried it early in the movie and they told him to just forget it...it is actually pretty funny.
He also did “Never Say Never Again” to pay the bills.
Anthony Hopkins as NIXON
Tom Selleck as EISENHOWER
Chevy Chase as FORD (Oh, wait... I bought it ‘though.)
Okay, it is not quite a “good actors in bad roles” nomination; but, I just go crazy when Hollywood always has genius science types played by beautiful, slinky blonde actresses. I think Mayim Bialik from The Big Bang Theory is probably closer to the mark.
but this one was bad. Her accent was terrible (from the Connecticut region of the Soviet Union)
Rofl!!
In 1992 I was developing a film that almost happened. I wanted Travolta for the lead and could have had him for $60k. This was before Pulp Fiction. We had Jim Fargo to direct. The now-defunct production company nixed Travolta in favor of.....Harry Hamlin.
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