Miscast Characters

Margaret Maron

Who was your favorite Miss Marple?  Margaret Rutherford, Angela Lansbury, Geraldine McEwan, Julia McKenzie or  Joan Hickson?  >>>>>

 

 

 

 

 

So how did you react to the news that Jennifer Garner is going to be the new Miss Marple if Disney has its way?

What about Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock Holmes?   Even though I think Jeremy Britt's twitchy Holmes is the best of the traditional takes, I can suspend my disbelief with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as a modern day Holmes and Watson.

 But a young and sexy Miss Marple?

It's set me thinking about other actors who have—for better or for worse— inhabited iconic roles. 

 

007.  David Niven,  Sean Connery, Roger Moore, or Pierce Brosnan? 

Indiana Jones. George Lucas originally wanted Tom Selleck to play the role, not Harrison Ford.

Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.  Can you imagine any other actor of the time in that role?  Yet Errol Flynn of Robin Hood fame was a serious contender.  Even Jimmy Stewart was briefly considered.  And while Vivian Leigh's southern accent left much to be desired,  she did look like a Scarlett O'Hara.  But so did Paulette Goddard, who would probably have played Scarlett had she not been openly playing house with Charlie Chaplin at the time.   Too much scandal for the studio heads even though Leigh was having an extramarital (but more discreet) affair with Laurence Olivier.        >>>>>>>>>>

I can't imagine anyone besides Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve (sorry, Claudette Colbert), but I never quite bought Ann Baxter as Eve.  Did you?

Think Wizard of Oz and you immediately think Judy Garland.  But Shirley Temple was an early contender for Dorothy and a young singing actress, Deanna Durbin, almost got the role. I've read that the reason she lost out is because the first script called for a singing contest between Dorothy and an opera singer from the Emerald City.

                                                        
Durbin's voice was ruled to be too operatic for good contrast, while Garland's voice was more jazzy.  In the end, that scene was cut, but by then the part was Garland's.

Frank Morgan was not the original choice for the Wizard either.  W.C. Fields would be our image of the man behind the curtain had he not kept dickering over his contract so long that they went with someone less demanding.

For me, the saddest part of that movie is that Buddy Ebsen did not get to play Tin Man.  Jack Haley was barely adequate.  Buddy Ebsen, who was a marvelous song-and-dance man long before he played Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies, was originally cast as the Scarecrow and Ray Bolger was to play Tin Man.  But Bolger was so anxious to play Scarecrow that the amiable Ebsen agreed to switch.  He recorded most of the Tin Man songs that we hear today on the film and that's Ebsen seen from behind when the three friends enter the Wicked Witch's castle to rescue Dorothy.  Tragically, when filming began, the aluminum powder used in his make-up almost killed him.  It coated his lungs to such a degree that he had to be hospitalized and even spent some time in an iron lung.  That's when Jack Haley was brought in.  Haley's make-up used aluminum in a paste that was spread over a protective layer of clown make-up.

I can't watch the movie without thinking how much better Ebsen would have been.

But Jennifer Garner as Miss Marple?  That's as bad as James Cagney with his Lower East Side accent playing Bottom the Weaver in Midsummer Night's Dream.

What gets your vote for the best or worst miscasting of an iconic character?