Good Actors in Horribly Miscast Roles

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.

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."

His anti-Americanism and his contempt for the American people(which he had kept the lid on in his previous novels although there were hints of it even in those) finally boiled over. The villain was as bad of a caricature as a rabid left-winger could concoct. The plotline was just an excuse to try to paint Christians as wacko and just as bad as Muslim terrorists and to spout his views on America’s involvement in Iraq.

And when people on Amazon complained about Child’s injection of leftist politics into the series, Child had this to say on his blog:

“Always nice to be home, if only briefly. With access to my big computer I read the forum and the Amazon reviews. Seems some people aren’t happy. Some aren’t happy with the book itself. But I stand by it. I agree it’s more allegorical and contemplative and less slam-bang than some of the others, so people will react differently depending on their preferred mix of strengths and weaknesses. But I’m happy with it and glad it came out the way it did.

And some chickenhawk dittoheads aren’t happy with the “politics.” Ah, well. Critics say Reacher is the thinking person’s action hero, so I suppose that explains it. Actually I think the issues in the book are way beyond politics. Politics is trivial compared to death and maiming in a nation’s service. And I’m amused to see they think this stuff is “Lee Child’s politics.” For the record all views in the book are taken verbatim from active-service military. They aren’t my views. My views are much worse. They would make Trotsky blush. I’ve always had a soft spot for old Leon. Especially his uncompromising determination. He said, “If you cannot acquaint a fascist with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.” Also he advised, “Spread love and understanding. Use force if necessary.”

But it has been a serene couple of weeks. None of the chickenhawk dittoheads showed up at my events. Just like they didn’t show up in Vietnam, or Iraq, etc.”

I’d been able to overlook the silliness of his writing that occured from time to time, such as people in the next room not being able to hear the report of a gun because it was a .22. I knew he was a Brit and was willing to cut him some slack on firearms related errors because I liked the Reacher character and up until Nothing to Lose Child had been pretty dependable at spinning a good yarn. Child ruined the series for me with the blatant politicization of that novel.

http://leechild.com/tour-blog-events/nothing-to-lose/

Scroll down to the June 13 entry.

Also, Lee Child does not like the 2nd Amendment.

“My position on gun control is that the U.S. Constitution forbids it. Simple as that. I wish it didn’t, but if you like the good parts of the Constitution, which I do, you can’t complain about the bad bits.”

That quote is from this interview:
http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/leechild.html

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