by Phil Mason
Disney may never have emerged as a separate outfit had MGM supremo, Louis Mayer, accepted advice from his staff to hire Disney. Mayer refused after seeing a preview of Mickey Mouse on the grounds that he feared pregnant women would be frightened of a 10-foot high rodent appearing on the screen.
On that bizarre decision, the entire Disney heritage rests.
Bette Davis turned down the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind because she refused to work with Errol Flynn, whom she thought had been booked for the film. He hadn’t.
Greer Garson starred in the 1942 wartime classic Mrs Miniver only because the first choice, 41-year-old Norma Shearer, had refused the part because she did not want her waning image to be further eroded by playing an ageing mother. Garson was also reluctant as she was just starting out, but had less influence with the studio bosses.
She ended up winning the Best Actress Oscar for the performance, and the success thrust her into the spotlight for a decade.
Humphrey Bogart got his big break with the lead roles in three of Hollywood’s most celebrated classics only because George Raft, the most popular actor of his day, refused each of them. He turned down High Sierra because he did not want to be portrayed as dying at the end and The Maltese Falcon because of the inexperience of the director. According to Hollywood folklore, he turned down Casablanca too because ‘I don’t want to star opposite an unknown Swedish broad.’ He later called it the biggest mistake of his life.
Hedy Lamarr turned down the Ingrid Bergman female lead role in Casablanca because she would not work with an incomplete script. Casablanca became famous in film lore for the writers producing the script in parts as the filming progressed. None of the actors knew how the film ended when they started the shoot: the writers delivered daily scripts to the set.
Bergman had difficulty too – she claimed she did not know whether she would end up going off with Bogart, the old flame, or Paul Henreid (Laszlo), her present husband. ‘How can I play the love scenes when I don’t know which man I will end up with?’ she complained to Howard Koch, one of the scriptwriting team. Koch has said, ‘I told her I didn’t know either.’ He had produced two endings, and did not know himself which one director Michael Curtiz would use.
Boris Karloff secured the role as the monster in Frankenstein in 1931 as his features were so craggy the director James Whale thought he looked like his idea of the monster without make-up. His chief rival, Bela Lugosi, is said to have lost the part because he objected to the heavy make-up required and, as an already more established star, he was not attracted to a role whose dialogue consisted only of a series of grunts.
Karloff proved a sensation and went on to make over 50 more films in Hollywood up until the end of the Second World War, including three Frankenstein sequels and as The Mummy.
Charlton Heston reportedly got the role of Moses in the 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments because of his broken nose. Director Cecil B. De Mille noticed his similarity to Michelangelo’s statue of Moses that has its nose broken in the same place.
Clark Gable’s big break in the 1934 comedy, It Happened One Night, came only because his MGM studio boss wanted to punish him. The film’s director, Frank Capra, working for the least prominent of the studios, Columbia, had been searching for leads for months and the project was on the verge of collapse. Four leading women had rejected the female lead, and Capra’s choice for the male lead had turned it down.
With the film about to die, MGM head Louis Mayer called Columbia boss Harry Cohn asking for a favour. ‘We have a bad boy down here I’d like to punish,’ Mayer is said to have told him. Being sent from MGM to the lesser studio was akin to Siberian exile for rising stars. Gable was loaned to Columbia and had to take the lead.
It Happened One Night turned out to be a roaring success. At the Oscars that year it became the first film to win all five main awards (Film, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay), an achievement not repeated until 1975. Clark Gable was catapulted to fame as a result of his ‘punishment’.
Cary Grant was the producers’ first choice for the role of James Bond. He declined because he did not want to get ensnared in a series of films. Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman then chose Sean Connery to start with Dr No in 1962. Ian Fleming’s verdict on the replacement? ‘He’s not exactly what I had in mind.’ It was Connery’s first major film lead. He would star in the next seven Bond movies over 21 years.
Sylvester Stallone was the initial choice to star in Beverly Hills Cop. When he read the script, however, he demanded the writers put in more action sequences to befit his reputation. The studio objected to the increased budget needed, and looked around for another leading man, and Eddie Murphy got his first full leading role.
Dustin Hoffman, who got his big break as the lead role in The Graduate in 1967, was fifth choice for the part. First had been Warren Beatty. He was unavailable, filming Bonnie and Clyde. Robert Redford tested but was regarded as too mature. Burt Ward (Robin in Batman) chose to commit to that role instead, a choice he openly regretted later as he failed to escape the typecasting and never secured another major cinema part. Hoffman, by contrast, never looked back.
Christopher Reeve was sixth choice to play the lead in Superman. Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and James Caan all turned it down. The films grossed over $300 million at the box office, and Reeve starred in three sequels.
Fifties star, Janet Leigh, whose most famous role was as the victim in Psycho, and who became the wife of Tony Curtis and mother of actress Jamie Lee Curtis, was given her initial chance in Hollywood only through a lucky break in 1947 when another star, Norma Shearer, came across a photograph of the 19-year-old when holidaying at the Californian ski hotel where Leigh’s parents worked. Shearer took the photo back to MGM, which immediately offered her her first part.
Sixties star, Gina Lollobrigida, was approached in the street in Rome in 1946 by film director, Mario Costa. Her initial reaction was to berate him for accosting her. When she stopped insulting him, he offered her a screen test for his film, Elisir d’Amore.
Sultry British actress, Susan George, secured her major career break by deception and perseverance. She tried out for the lead role as a teenage schoolgirl opposite Charles Bronson in a 1969 Lolita-style tale, Twinky. She was rejected. She returned the next day to rejoin the queue of 300 hopefuls, this time wearing her school uniform and using a different name. She got the part.
Dudley Moore, who shot to Hollywood fame in 1979 as the male lead in 10, got the part only because George Segal pulled out after filming had started due to a dispute with the director Blake Edwards. According to one account, he felt that Edwards had over-indulged the demands of the second female lead, Julie Andrews – who happened to be married to Edwards.
Mel Gibson secured his first major film part, the lead in Mad Max, in 1979, because he had been beaten up the night before the screen test. He had not expected to be seen and only went to accompany a friend who was also auditioning.
His roughed-up appearance from the drunken brawl – a swollen nose and heavy bruising – was exactly what director George Miller was looking for. He was told to return in two weeks, by which time the injuries had healed and he looked so different he was not recognised at first. But the decision to cast him was confirmed.
Silent era star, Fatty Arbuckle, was a plumber called to unblock film mogul Mack Sennett’s drain in 1913. As soon as Sennett saw him, he gave him a contract. He went on to become the first actor to be paid more than a million dollars a year.
Other unexpected starts from menial trade beginnings were Clark Gable – a telephone repair engineer who happened to call on an acting coach who took him under her wing; John Wayne – a props removal hand who was spotted by director Raoul Walsh unloading furniture; and Rock Hudson – a postman whose round happened to include an actor’s agent who got him his first opening.
Judy Garland got her first contract break in 1935 by accident when a studio hand misheard Louis B. Mayer
’s instructions. Mayer had just seen both the 13-year-old Garland and 15-year-old Deanna Durbin. ‘Sign up that singer – the flat one,’ Mayer had ordered. He had been referring to Durbin. The assistant thought he said ‘the fat one’ and signed up the then dumpy Garland. Mayer used to refer to her as his ‘little hunchback’.
Another MGM discovery-by-mistake was Greer Garson whom Mayer went to see while in London on a scouting visit. He was seeking a singer and went to her play Old Music thinking it was a musical.
Clark Gable, who had the tag ‘King of Hollywood’ in his prime in the late 1930s, twice failed his initial screen tests. Studio boss, Jack Warner, thought it had been a waste of time testing him, as he behaved like ‘an ape’ and would never succeed with ‘those huge floppy ears’.
James Cagney was on the point of failure in his first film part in 1931 when studio boss, Darryl Zanuck, viewed the rushes of The Millionaire. He performed so badly in the scripted parts that Zanuck thought he had made a mistake in hiring him. Then came the ad-lib that won Cagney his career.
When he thought the cameras were no longer running, Cagney had looked towards the director and sneered, ‘Who wrote this crappy dialogue anyway?’ The tough guy image was perfect, and Zanuck cast him for the studio’s next film, The Public Enemy, which made him a star.
Marilyn Monroe’s provocative bottom-wiggling walk was due to her suffering from weak ankles and bandy legs. She further accentuated her trademark gait by sawing a quarter of an inch off the right heel of all her shoes.
Charles Buchinski is said to owe his stage name to the vagaries of the traffic-light system in Los Angeles. Driving down Hollywood Boulevard, he had to halt when the lights changed to red. He had stopped at the intersection with Bronson Avenue. He liked the sound of it, and Charles Bronson was duly born.
Other famous screen names that were derived by odd chance include:
Carol Lombard, originally Jane Peters, came from the Carroll, Lombardi Pharmacy on New York’s Lexington Avenue.
Lucille Le Sueur, an MGM discovery in 1925, is possibly the only star to have been given her name in a nationwide competition. The studio thought ‘Le Sueur’ sounded too much like ‘sewer’. They ran a contest in a fan magazine and a woman in Albany, New York won $500 for coming up with Joan Crawford.
Judy Garland, originally Frances Gumm, was prompted to change her name when the theatre she was appearing at in Chicago billed her as ‘Glumm’. She took her new surname from the review page of the local newspaper that was written by Robert Garland, and her first name from a popular song of the moment, ‘Judy’.
Doris Day, originally Doris von Kappelloff, was re-christened by a bandleader for whom she had performed ‘Day After Day’.
John Wayne, originally Marion Morrison, was given his new screen name by director Raoul Walsh, who was tasked with finding a more masculine branding. An aficionado of the American War of Independence, Walsh chose his hero ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne, a general with a fiery, all-American reputation. The studio still did not like Anthony (or Tony), both being thought too effeminate, so they plumped for plain John.
Bing Crosby, originally Harry, acquired his curious moniker from his schoolmates as a child because his favourite reading was a popular comic strip, the Bingville Bugle. All the Marx Brothers also got their names – Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Gummo – from characters in the same comic strip.
‘Buster’ Keaton, originally Joseph, was tagged by Houdini, a family friend, when he fell down the stairs at the age of six. Houdini witnessed the accident and exclaimed to his parents, ‘That was some buster your baby took.’
Michael Caine, originally Maurice Micklewhite, had adopted the screen name Michael Scott but speaking from a telephone box in Leicester Square to his agent, he was told that there was another actor of the same name already around. The agent asked him to think of another name there and then. Micklewhite looked around and saw The Caine Mutiny being shown at the Odeon next to him.
A young British actor failed to get his screen chance in 1985 because of his name. Mark Lindsay had been chosen by American network NBC after a lengthy search to play murdered Beatles star John Lennon in a television biopic. It was less than five years since Lennon’s murder.
The producers then discovered that Lindsay’s real name was Mark Chapman – the same name as Lennon’s killer. Lindsay had changed his name when he joined the British actors’ union as there was already a Mark Chapman in it. NBC simply said it was ‘in the best interest of the project’ that another actor be cast as John Lennon.
Over 20 years later, Lindsay eventually got to do the part, starring as Lennon in a 2007 version of the tale.
When choosing the names of the seven dwarfs for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney’s first full-length cartoon, over 50 names were considered. Before he settled on Dopey, Grumpy, Doc, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy and Happy, it is possible they might have been any from a list which included: Awful, Blabby, Burpy, Chesty, Cranky, Dippy, Dirty, Flabby, Gabby, Gloomy, Hotsy, Puffy, Sniffy, Scrappy, Shifty, Sleazy, Tipsy, Weepy, Wistful, and Woeful.
The cartoon dog, Scooby Doo, got his name by accident when creator Fred Silverman, who was trying to come up with a suitable tag, heard Frank Sinatra singing ‘Strangers in the Night’ on the radio. Part of the chorus contained the curious line, ‘Scooby-dooby-doo’.
Jack Nicholson, when he won the 1975 Best Actor Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, used his acceptance speech to ‘thank my agent of ten years ago who told me I’d never be an actor.’
Irving Berlin had his surname coined for him when the publisher of his first composition, in 1907, ‘Marie from Sunny Italy’, got it wrong by accident. The 19-year-old Israel Baline saw his name appear as ‘I. Berlin’ and liked it. He stuck with it.
The song itself had less impact on his future – it is said to have earned him only 37 cents.
In 1952, two British producers bought the film rights to an Agatha Christie story, with only one condition attached – that they had to wait six months after the end of the story’s theatre run before they could make the film. Unfortunately for them, the production was her play The Mousetrap, which, 56 years on, is still running.
Both the producers have long since died.
The creator of the iconic BBC police drama Z Cars, which ran for 799 episodes between 1962 and 1978, got the original idea because he had mumps.
Confined to bed, Troy Kennedy Martin whiled away the time listening in to police patrol messages on his VHF radio. From these, he said, he got a completely different impression of the real lives of police officers than the one coming across from the archetypal 1950s drama, Dixon of Dock Green. Built around the patrol car rather than the bobby walking the beat, the show broke new ground in grittiness and pace, and would herald the later offerings of Softly Softly and The Sweeney (the latter created by his brother, Ian).
The Flowerpot Men, one of the favourites of children’s television in the early years of British broadcasting, originated as three short stories for radio in 1951 written by a Yorkshire-born teacher, Hilda Brabban, for her two young brothers who constantly misbehaved, called William and Benjamin. When one of them had been naughty, their mother would shout, ‘Was it Bill or was it Ben?’, which became one of the catchphrases of the show.
The other curious turn of language that became associated with the pair – ‘Flobadob’ – was based on what the boys said when one of them broke wind in the bath.
The show turned to television in 1952, but Brabban, having received payment of a guinea for each for her original stories, received none of the royalties from the television version. The designer who created the puppets always claimed that she had never heard of the radio stories.
Scriptwriter Jimmy Perry got the idea for Dad’s Army in the course of a walk round London’s St James’s Park in May 1967. He was drawn to the sound of the military band parading out of Buckingham Palace in the Changing of the Guard ceremony. It suddenly recalled in his memory the moment in 1941 when he
had been standing in virtually the same spot watching a troop of the newly formed Home Guard also marching in front of the palace.
The memories suddenly came flooding back (Perry had been in his own Home Guard unit in Hertfordshire as a 15-year-old. Most of the characters in the series would be drawn from this experience). He wrote the first episode in its entirety in just three days.
It became one of the BBC’s most successful comedy series, running for 80 episodes between 1968 and 1977.
The classic 1970s comedy series, Fawlty Towers, would never have been created had the Monty Python team made a different choice of hotel when filming near Torquay in 1972. The one they did stay at, according to John Cleese who scripted the series with his wife Connie Booth, was run ‘by the most wonderfully rude man I’ve ever met. He thought that guests were sent along to annoy him and to prevent him from running the hotel.’ The hotelier criticised an American member of the team for having ‘American table manners’ and threw out of the hotel a briefcase belonging to another for fear it contained a bomb.
In honour of the original inspiration, Cleese placed the fictitious Fawlty Towers in Torquay.
Yes, Minister, the acclaimed political comedy series of the 1980s, was inspired by a single instance of a government minister’s hypocrisy 20 years before. The creators got the idea for exposing how ministers and civil servants influenced each other to get their way by the revelation that a Labour MP, Sir Frank Soskice, had signed a petition calling for a posthumous pardon to Timothy Evans, a cause célèbre victim of wrongful execution. When Soskice later became home secretary in 1964, he received the very petition he had signed, but in his new position, rejected it.
