Unsolved Mysteries of the Casting Department: (Part One) You Can't Win 'Em All

I've talked before on this blog about miscasting. It's one of my eternal fascinations. Not just the plainly ludicrous decisions like casting Susan Hayward as a Tartar princess or Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist. No, I'm more interested in those casting glitches where everything seems like it should perfectly line up and yet it still goes wrong. Why are some of the greatest acting legends of all time so stymied by roles that other, less talented people can carry off like gold medalists? So I decided to draw up a list, focusing not so much this time on just the movies but on the performers themselves. Why are great actors unable to play certain parts?

Please note that I'm aware some of my readers will fiercely disagree with my selections here. I welcome a good debate so feel free to bring up any rebuttal in the comments section. Also, since I never like dwelling too much on the negative, stay tuned for Part Two, where I talk about the times when seemingly miscast actors turned in great performances.

Without further ado, here's my list:
 
Cary Grant Can't Do Costume Pictures

Of all the great film stars, perhaps nobody was as skillful and deliberate in managing their career image as Cary Grant. He turned down roles other actors would have sold their entire toupee collections for and he ended up with a resume that's enough to send the nicest, most easygoing man in Hollywood reeling with sheer envy. He worked with the best directors, the greatest leading ladies. But there was famously one thing that Grant spent most of his career avoiding and that was this: he would not do historical costume pictures. After seeing himself in The Howards of Virginia, a critically reviled flop about the Revolutionary War, Grant said, "I don't belong in costumes." He stuck to that notion for seventeen years, until agreeing to star in The Pride and The Passion, another film that got a sound drubbing from critics and audiences alike.

The standard answer to why Cary Grant just doesn't seem right for costume pictures was that he was too modern. He was to the tuxedo born and nothing else would do. But I'm inclined to take issue with that a little. After all, he does a perfectly good job in Gunga Din and in that one, he was a good twenty years away from the twentieth century and nearly forty years from the nearest cocktail party. The man wore costumes well and while he looks admittedly kind of silly in The Howards of Virginia, if you just look at stills of him in The Pride and the Passion (the performance itself is another matter), he wears the old British naval uniform with perfect dignity. Grant's voice and mannerisms are distinctive of course, but if the public can accept Tony Curtis as a Greek slave and Clark Gable as a Southern gentleman and Robert Ryan as John the Baptist, why then is Grant singled out?

No, I think the reason lies somewhere in the fact that Grant is a natural clown. He needs to kid his surroundings to belong to them. If he tries to be self-serious, he turns stiff. And the problem is that most historical epic films are just that, they're epics. They're trying to preserve history like a monument and Grant is one actor that should never be set in marble. He can fit in just fine when the movie is a historical romp like Gunga Din. But if the subject is weighty, forget it. In short, I think he misfires in costume pictures for the exact opposite reason that Charlton Heston succeeds in them. Because Heston is serious enough to believe himself anywhere and Grant is smart enough to disbelieve himself everywhere.

Barbara Stanwyck Can't Play Ingenues

People who follow my blog know that I'm a firm believer in the "Barbara Stanwyck Can Do Pretty Much Anything" Doctrine. She could do comedy, Western, film noir, drama, crime, soap opera, horror, and do it all with no apparent effort. That alone makes her stand out from the other female acting icons like Crawford and Davis. They could reach her heights but they never rivaled her range.

The one gap I've really found in Stanwyck's career is this: she could never really play the innocent. Even in her earliest movies like Ladies of Leisure and Shopworn, she's already cynical and experienced, a young woman who's had plenty of hard knocks and starts to get suspicious if she can't see one coming. This characterization carried her through most of her career, but even for someone like Stanwyck, there were times when being a tough cookie just wouldn't cut it.

While Frank Capra can be credited as the director who discovered and refined Stanwyck's talent for hard-edged, secretly vulnerable women, he also gave her some fairly awkward roles as well. Take her part as the lovelorn, self-sacrificing heroine of Forbidden. The movie opens with Stanwyck as the shy, bespectacled librarian (!), who only opens up to life after she falls in love with dapper Adolphe Menjou (?). Remember that ridiculous scene in It's a Wonderful Life where we get the dreaded reveal of Donna Reeds, sans makeup, as the town's spinster librarian? Nearly the whole first half of Forbidden plays like that scene. Stanwyck can't even begin to settle into character until the second half, where she gets a new job and starts trading sexy banter with Ralph Bellamy (?). Capra would push Stanwyck's credibility even further by casting her as the naive missionary in The Bitter Tea of General Yen. But this is where it gets interesting. Stanwyck should, by all rights, be utterly wrong for this part. She's no sucker and she's no saint. Despite that though, Stanwyck manages to plow through the role because she plays the missionary, not for gentleness, but for bull-headed, stubborn pioneering spirit. She's deluded, but not soft.

By this point, I've seen fifty Barbara Stanwyck movies and I never cease to marvel at how Stanwyck takes the same tactic whenever they force her to play innocent girls. She plays them like bulldozers. Whether they're sweet wives smiling through their tears (Ten Cents a Dance), power-behind-the-throne spouses (The Great Man's Lady) or feisty Irish tomboys (Union Pacific), they're always 100% determined. It doesn't always fit the role, but it sure as hell fits Stanwyck and that's enough to lift the curse of miscasting.

Claudette Colbert Isn't Motherly

Clearly, Hollywood didn't agree with me on this one since it was happy to cast smiling, purring Claudette Colbert in quite a lot of maternal parts, particularly as she aged. Most famously there was Since You Went Away, with Colbert doing the American version of the Mrs. Miniver character, but there's also Imitation of Life, Tomorrow is Forever, Family Honeymoon, and Parrish. I can only speak for Imitation of Life and Tomorrow is Forever, but I can't help thinking that whenever that potent Colbert charm gets hit with a dose of syrupy sentimentality, the result is like a batch of rock candy. It glitters alright but it's too sweet to eat and too hardened to melt on your tongue. 

In Imitation of Life, Colbert is in top form whenever she has to run her business or trade banter with her friends. She's smart, witty, sophisticated, she's the epitome of everything you want Claudette Colbert to be. But the minute her bratty moppet of a daughter is onscreen, lisping and begging for her rubber duck (bet you didn't know that the actual closing line of Imitation of Life is "I want my quack-quack"), Colbert coos and giggles and plasters a warm, motherly smile on her face. It's about as artificial as it gets. It makes the ending of the film, in which Colbert agrees to postpone her wedding to Warren William until her teenage daughter gets over him, even more risible than it might otherwise have been. I can't watch Colbert getting all trembly and noble without wanting Sandra Dee to teleport in from the 1959 remake and snap, "Oh, mama, quit acting!"

The funny thing is, there is a strong note of "come-to-Mama" in Colbert's love scenes. Watch her in something like Cleopatra or Midnight and it's totally there in her mannerisms, in the way she bends over her leading men. She tends to them, she humors them, and all the time she knows she's wiser than they'll ever be. On her, it works and she's mesmerizingly sexy and confident. But when it comes to motherhood, or rather the oft-times sickly sweet, sentimental vision of motherhood that Hollywood went for in the '30s and '40s, Colbert just can't make it work. After all, it's pretty hard to look like you're burning with the sacrificial flame of unconditional love when you can't even be bothered to turn your head to the left.

Gregory Peck Can't Be Wicked

 
Of all our acting legends, I find Gregory Peck to be one of the most off-and-on in terms of what he can and can't do. Whenever I start to think he's overrated, I'll remember To Kill a Mockingbird and The Gunfighter and ask for forgiveness. Then, I catch a glimpse of him in something like Moby Dick or Cape Fear and gnash my teeth in frustration that these parts didn't go to actors who would make more of them. But just when I've decided that the man is hopelessly stiff and humorless, I'll catch a rerun of Roman Holiday and be enraptured all over again by how charming and romantic he can be. It's Audrey Hepburn's picture, but it's easy to forget how much support Peck gives her and how graciously he draws attention to her side. Really, for someone who came to embody straight-arrow decency in movies, the man is surprisingly mercurial in what he brings to the screen.

So many actors, especially those tagged as bland or boring, shine particularly bright when they get to play evil. Gene Tierney won her only Oscar nomination for playing a child-drowning madwoman in Leave Her to Heaven. Robert Montgomery got some of the best notices of his career for his turn as a psychopath in Night Must Fall. Robert Walker, cast over and over again as a boy next door, turned out to be one of the greatest villains in cinema as the complicated killer Bruno Anthony in Strangers On a Train. But Gregory Peck does not belong to this class. He is never worse than when he plays bad. 

Case in point is his performance as bad, bad Lewt McCanles in Duel in the Sun. He plays the dangerously seductive, totally amoral rancher's son who merrily proceeds to wreck Jennifer Jones' life, just because he can. At this point in his career, Peck was preternaturally gorgeous. He always had incredible screen presence. He looks like a man who could drive a woman to the brink. But his performance in Duel in the Sun is the most unconvincing thing ever, a weird combination of campy, over-the-top line readings and stilted boredom. To be fair, nobody really comes off that well, performance-wise, in Duel in the Sun. Still, I think there's a difference between the acting of Jones, who comes off more like a well-meaning performer undone by over-direction and bad scripting, and Peck, who just cannot fit this role. He's just not the wicked seducer. Having also seen him try to play a more redeemable version of the type in How the West Was Won, I think I can say that with some confidence.  However, I still haven't seen The Boys From Brazil, so maybe Peck finally does manage to unlock his evil self by playing a Nazi. I'll have my fingers crossed for him.

Gene Tierney Isn't Lower-Class

"I suppose you were a model of all the virtues when you were young."
"Certainly I was. I won a prize for deportment at school."

That bit of dialogue comes from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir but it could just as easily come from several other Gene Tierney movies, including nearly all her best ones (Laura, The Shanghai Gesture, Leave Her to Heaven, Dragonwyck, Heaven Can Wait). She belongs to that class of actresses (Grace Kelly is another), who can't help but remind you of the good little girl in the classroom, the one who wins all the prizes and has a stunning debutante ball when she turns eighteen. Onscreen, she's the born aristocrat. Well-bred, well-mannered, and smooth as silk. Tierney was often a harder actress to cast than she seems at first glance. She's not really warm onscreen, but there's a sweetness and mildness to her presence that's difficult to shake. This made her too cool and remote for "America's Sweetheart" roles and too nice for tarts or rebels. Her best parts could turn that to her advantage, letting her play women whose gentle nobility shone through in difficult circumstances. She could play costume parts with ease because that kind of feminine ideal half-belonged to another era anyway. And when she did play villainesses, as in Leave Her to Heaven or The Razor's Edge, she turned them into "good girls gone bad," women who probably had won prizes for deportment in school, women so perfect that of course they had to snap. The Shanghai Gesture takes that idea to a whole new level, giving us cool-as-ice-cream Tierney in the first half and dragging her down into a sullen, opium-addicted slave in the second.

Still, Darryl Zanuck didn't always choose the right parts for his star and Tierney also got miscast quite frequently, having to play everything from Western outlaws to South Seas island girls. But for me, one of the more interesting misfires is Tierney in the screwball comedy Rings on Her Fingers. The movie is a poorly concealed rehash of The Lady Eve, with Henry Fonda once again playing the lovestruck sap and Tierney cast in the Barbara Stanwyck role as the con artist falling for her mark. And you pretty much find out everything you need to know about how wrong Tierney is for this part in the very first scene of her as a wisecracking, cynical shopgirl. She's smacking her gum, she's rolling her eyes and trying out a Brooklyn accent. She's about as convincing as Wallace Beery in drag. Tierney might have been able to play a lower-class character if said character was sweet and polite. But a chip-on-her-shoulder floozy? Forget it. The filmmakers themselves must have figured this out pretty quickly, because they shove Tierney into the role of adoring and reformed spouse only halfway into the movie, dooming any hope of real comedy.

Gene Tierney herself illustrated the nature of her screen persona in an anecdote in her memoirs. She and Groucho Marx were entertaining the troops during World War II and he talked her into coming out on stage and doing a sassy little bump and grind. Tierney was doubtful but did it. The crowd responded, not with catcalls or applause, but with dead silence. When she went back to Marx, he told her, "You were right, you can't do a bump." Tierney ruefully summed it up by saying, "Marilyn Monroe would have done that bump and looked adorable. On me, it was all wrong."

Humphrey Bogart Ain't Upper-Class

Humphrey Bogart had the most perfect sneer in movies. It was perfect because he always aimed it above and not below. Bogart fans know the fun always starts when someone tries to plant their boot on him because that's the moment when Bogart hunkers down, grins, and proceeds to shred them. He knows it's probably a lost battle, he knows they're not worth his busted bones, but he'll do it anyway. Bogart's so good in these moments that it's easy to forget how many miscastings the man had to suffer through in his career. Some are obvious, like the Irish horse trainer in Dark Victory. But there's a less immediate problem that crops up with Bogart, one that kicks the old "Classic Hollywood stars only played themselves" chestnut right down the stairs. He just couldn't play rich men. He couldn't play top of the heap. When he tries to play a self-satisfied businessman in Sabrina, the result is a world of awkwardness. 

This one's a puzzler because in real life, Bogart was upper class. His family was pure New York high society, complete with a fashionable apartment in the Upper West Side, a cottage on the lake, and the money to send their rebellious son to the most prestigious prep schools in the state. Hell, Bogart even started out his stage career by playing the kind of namby-pamby rich dweebs who signaled a change of scene by calling, "Tennis, anyone?" And one look at a photo of young Bogart shows that he polished up pretty nicely. For all that though, Humphrey Bogart never belonged in glittering romantic comedies. He only found his true cinematic self on the rougher side of things. He needed something to fight against. If ever he'd been cast in an Ernst Lubitsch film, which one do you think would've detonated first?

Burt Lancaster Can't Be Repressed

Burt Lancaster's ambition as an actor carried him so far and in so many different directions, from lovelorn thugs to fast-talking con artists to dignified Italian noblemen, that when he actually does manage to hit a wall, it reverberates like a shock. He was nobody's idea of a man who could disappear into a part. And yet, looking back, it's rather remarkable how the man could twist his beaming, tanned presence to suit the requirements of a part; he could be elegant or rough, reckless or controlled, brilliant or brutish. He could even pretend to be intimidated by Hume Cronyn. But the one thing he couldn't do is the one thing that ends up sinking an otherwise decent performance in Come Back, Little Sheba. He can't be insignificant.

Part of the problem with casting Burt Lancaster as the repressed, miserable alcoholic "Doc" Delaney in Come Back, Little Sheba is simply his youth. Even though the movie tries to age him up a bit with grey hair, there is no way to make the handsome, thirty-nine-year-old Lancaster look like any kind of probable mate for fifty-four-year-old Shirley Booth. The whole point of the character is that this man has tied himself down to a lifetime of regret with a dowdy, unappealing woman. The only option left is to find some way of growing old with her. Except that there is not one single frame of this movie in which Lancaster doesn't look perfectly capable of hopping in his car, cruising down to the nearest night club, picking up five or six of the prettiest women, and then riding off into the rising dawn. But even if you try to squint through the age difference, the problem is that Lancaster doesn't seem like an ordinary man. His miseries will never be common ones. He is incapable of convincing me that he would spend any length of time pondering the whereabouts of a dog named Sheba. 

At the time, the movie, adapted from William Inge's play was an example of the '50s fascination with gray, downbeat realism. But looking at it now, J.J. Hunsecker had more realism in the flickering light of his match than anything Come Back, Little Sheba has to offer.

Julie Andrews Can't Play Hitchcock Blondes

People who've grown up watching Mary Poppins and Sound of Music might be tempted to chime in here with, "Well, of course she can't!" This is after all, the most famous nanny in movies, the woman with a song in her heart and a soul of pure sunshine. Her costar Christopher Plummer compared working with her to "being hit over the head with a big Valentine's Day card every day." But still, I can't shake the feeling that there must be a deeper explanation for why Julie Andrews just seems so painfully miscast as the troubled Hitchcock heroine in Torn Curtain. 

After all, nobody excelled at bringing out the buttoned-up sensuality and yearning of blonde actresses like Hitchcock did. He looked at warm, earnest Eva Marie Saint and saw a femme fatale just waiting to break out. He took lovable Doris Day and subtly chipped away at her image in The Man Who Knew Too Much, revealing a woman of buried resentments and animal desperation. But Torn Curtain never finds anything to excavate in Andrews; she just comes across as gracious, pleasant, and hopelessly straight-laced. You'd think it would be near impossible for a woman to be rolling around under the covers with 1966-era Paul Newman without generating some kind of electrical charge. But Andrews' tinkling laugh and repeated titters of "Oh, Michael" just flash freezes the whole thing. Did Hitchcock lose interest in the movie? Was Andrews unwilling to let loose a little? Was it those ugly costumes (surely some of the most unflattering stuff ever put on a Hitchcock leading lady)? Whatever the reason, it makes for some memorable miscasting. The Master of Suspense met his match and it was Mary Poppins.

Vivien Leigh Will Never Be Mousy

We never actually got to see Vivien Leigh take on the role of the shy, shrinking Mrs. DeWinter in Rebecca. She wanted the part very much, more because it offered the chance to play opposite her lover Laurence Olivier than for its dramatic potential. But even though Selznick and Hitchcock humored her with a screen test, they both agreed that she was all wrong. It wasn't even a close call. According to Hitchcock himself, Leigh was "uniquely strong," a bold, determined woman who was "absolutely right to play Rebecca but Rebecca never appears in the film." Instead, Joan Fontaine got the part, winning both an Oscar nomination and an A-list career.

There's a surplus of explanations for why Leigh never fit the role. She was too ravishingly beautiful and raven-haired to be believable as an awkward girl trying to melt into the wallpaper. Her sexual attraction to Olivier was too obvious when they worked together; nobody would buy them as as an estranged married couple. Or, as Hitchcock put it, she was just too strong, too much of a Rebecca. All very good reasons. Except...does it really explain everything? After all, Fontaine herself was the polar opposite of Mrs. De Winter in real life. She was witty, sharp, and more than capable of shoving off her troubles. And while it's plainly ludicrous to imagine Vivien Leigh cursing her lack of beauty, is it really that much more believable when it's Joan Fontaine? 

The other reason I toyed with this one is that Vivien Leigh actually can play an innocent, awkward girl. Anyone who's seen her play Myra, the crushed-by-circumstance young lover in Waterloo Bridge knows she's capable of more than devious minxes and psychotic beauties. I struggled for a long time, wondering why Leigh might find it easier to work her way into the head of the painfully innocent Myra and not the shy, naive Mrs. DeWinter. The conclusion I came to is that Leigh just can't play characters who don't ask for anything. Myra reaches for love with both hands and ends up rushing to her fate. Mrs. DeWinter is terrified of asking for anything from life. When you see Leigh talk to Olivier in the test, she's arch, even amused. She can't sell that timidity. In life she was a woman who never stopped grasping for more and if she was the same way on film, audiences can only be grateful we got the benefit of so many memorable, daring, desperate, impossible female characters.  Characters that remain unforgettable because they want so much and get so little in the end.

A New Year, a New Gatsby

As a new year dawns, I look forward to many things. To seeing new places, to meeting new people, and of course, to seeing many more movies. And one of those movies is Baz Luhrmann's much-anticipated and much-delayed The Great Gatsby. Odd considering I don't really expect it to be a success. While I admit to a weakness for Moulin Rouge, I feel like Luhrmann's bombastic, all-or-nothing style is more likely to smother Fitzgerald's story than to lift it up. But the truth is that I am a Gatsby junkie, I have been since high school, I've seen the 1949, 1974, and 2000 movie adaptations, and I will no doubt go to the Luhrmann film still hoping for the best. The Great Gatsby is a story that feels so cinematic in its concept and yet it's never found a solid footing onscreen. Why?

Because my fascination with all things Gatsby extends to the films, I decided to examine the 1949 and 1974 films and how they went wrong. If you choose to read further, be warned that I assume you've read the book and know all these characters already.

The 1949 Film

 

(directed by Elliot Nugent, starring Alan Ladd and Betty Field)

This movie's been out of circulation for a long time due to copyright issues but a new print came out last year and a fuzzy but passable version is floating around online. It's definitely worth a look for just how strange it is. I say strange because its makers don't treat Gatsby like the great enshrined classic it would become. They appropriate the basic plot and turn it into, of all things, a film noir. It becomes the tale of a noble-hearted gangster and the woman who betrayed him. The writers and director play fast and loose with the story, spending a great deal of time on Gatsby's rise to power and subtly altering Daisy and Tom from callous aristocrats into treacherous and calculating plotters. Their final betrayal of Gatsby becomes a typical noir frame-up, with Daisy agreeing to make her lover into the patsy as Gatsby overhears. It is utterly unreal to see a Gatsby that actually wises up to Daisy's true nature in the end. Perhaps these alterations, bizarre as they feel to a lover of the book, could have worked. But the filmmakers don't fully commit to such a dark reinvention. Instead they put a white picket fence around it by making it a morality tale of lawlessness punished and bland goodness rewarded. You get the sense that this film was constructed from the scraps of other '40s films rather than being carefully crafted as its own story. So it's pretty much a failure as both a film and as an adaptation. And yet there is something interesting about seeing The Great Gatsby treated as just another story. It's something that would never happen again.

 The 1974 Film

(directed by Jack Clayton, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow)

The 1974 movie is every inch the prestige production, including a respected director, the screenwriting talents of Francis Ford Coppola, popular stars, and an all-out, sumptuous recreation of the Jazz Age. Everything in this movie shimmers. The fashions are to die for. The parties are lavish. Unlike the sloppier 1949 version, the 1974 film dutifully repeats most of the original dialogue from the book. It also excises a fair amount of Nick Carraway's narration, instead focusing on the tragic romance of Daisy and Gatsby. You can tell that people were expecting this to be the definitive version, a dreamy, star-studded example of the best Hollywood craftsmanship. And yet this film also fails. Like Gatsby, it tries too hard. Jack Clayon opts for dramatic zooming and high-pitched melodrama so that moments that worked on the page become laughably overdone on film. Everything is categorized so that all love scenes have soft focus and slow music while the sleazy scenes all have a dyspeptic saxophone. And, as if to cap it all off, the film cuts off Nick's final testament to American dreamers for a kicky rendition of "Ain't We Got Fun?" over the credits. It's like a cake made only of stale icing, nothing underneath at all.

And now we move on to the most interesting part of these two faulty films: the casting. 

Jay Gatsby

(Alan Ladd in 1949, Robert Redford in 1974) 

The best reason to watch the 1949 film is because Alan Ladd is really, surprisingly very good as Jay Gatsby. In his day, Ladd was acclaimed more for his style than his depth (Where Danger Lives has a fascinating essay on the star and the tortuous insecurity he felt over his acting) but this film proves that assumption wrong. Ladd feels like a very natural Gatsby, the boyishness of his looks and manner contrasting with the cool confidence that Gatsby the character (and Ladd the actor) had learned how to fake. Ladd is able to utter even the absurdest bits of Gatsby's backstory with utter conviction. It's a great shame that the role never got Ladd the respect he so deeply wanted.

There's an old story Mike Nichols would tell about Robert Redford and the day he was almost cast as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. Nichols asked Redford to describe a time when he had struck out with a girl. Redford didn't understand the question. Whether the story is true or not, it does hit on an essential weakness of Redford the star. You could never buy him as a loser. That supernal golden-haired beauty and distant manner put him on a different plane. And that feeds into his portrayal of Gatsby since Redford never seems fully keyed into the desperation under Gatsby's dreaming or the eager, searching nature of a reinvented man. He is a more melancholy and thoughtful Gatsby than Ladd even while the script keeps trying to cast him as the earnest romantic hero. Overall, a noble failure. He does make for quite the iconic image though, as he stares at that green light.

Daisy Buchanan

(Betty Field in 1949, Mia Farrow in 1974)

The wide-eyed, plaintive Betty Field just feels like she's batting out of her league with Daisy. It's a flat, distracted performance, as if the main star of the show had been delayed and Field was a harried usher sent to distract us, all while keeping one eye on the fire exits. If the intent was to turn the '49 Gatsby into a film noir, then they failed utterly in giving their femme fatale any of the original Daisy's seductiveness, charm, or survival tactics.

If Field's performance is lackluster, Mia Farrow's portrayal has luster by the barrelful, enough to choke you with. At one point, director Jack Clayton literally films her with stars in her eyes. Unlike Elliot Nugent, who rushed through a lot of his Daisy's scenes, Clayton's camera bathes Farrow in shimmering light and loving close-ups. But he also indulges her in a performance that's so neurotic and silly that even the cutest and rootin-tootin-est of the Jazz Babies would have wanted to take an axe to this Daisy. In high school, my English teacher couldn't resist rewinding Farrow's final breakdown for us, calling it one of his favorite bits of bad acting ever. But then, Farrow was so painfully miscast. Daisy's voice should sound like money and Farrow, even at 29, had the cracked, mournful voice of an old woman. Daisy's meant to be the illusive lovely idol of Gatsby's dreams and Farrow, well... it's hard not to think of David O. Selznick's ungallant slap to Katharine Hepburn: "I can't imagine Rhett Butler chasing you around for twelve years."

 Tom Buchanan

(Barry Sullivan in 1949, Bruce Dern in 1974)

Barry Sullivan wins an extra point from me for being the actor who physically looks the most like how I envisioned his character. Handsome and polished but with a lurking coldness in the eyes. It's a performance that emphasizes the menace of Tom's character. He barks orders more like a gangster than a polo player. Going along with the noir-like feel of the film, Sullivan is no golden boy. He's every bit the tough guy.

Bruce Dern is a very different interpretation of the rich, entitled Tom. Instead of emphasizing his violence, the later film emphasizes his comical nature. Dern delivers Tom's rambling comments on the superiority of Nordics and the social order in a reedy, petulant whine. This Tom is weak, childish, and unlovable, his ratty little mustache and irritable manner held up against Robert Redford's golden superiority as if to say, "Creeps like him can still get it all." Again, it gives an interesting angle on the character but as with the Sullivan version, you never get the sense that this Tom is a true aristocrat. The kind of man who can make Gatsby shrivel inside because no matter how idiotic he sounds, he was born to the purple. And Gatbsy is not.

Nick Carraway

(Macdonald Carey in 1949, Sam Waterston in 1974)

When I didn't like Macdonald Carey in Shadow of a Doubt, I told myself it was the contrived nature of his character, the police detective who falls instantly in love with the heroine. When I didn't like Macdonald Carey in The Damned, I said it was just the awkwardness of seeing a man in craggy middle age seduce the sexy young Shirley Ann Field. But it's three strikes now and I have to face the truth. Carey is smarmy. He's bland. There's nothing under the surface with him. And sadly, the '49 Gatsby decided that Nick Carraway should be the voice of the Hays Code so we have to endure Carey's stiff, lecturing presence telling us, "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man but the end thereof are the ways of death." This Nick is so upright and moral, he even reforms Jordan Baker!

Of all the Nick Carraways (including Tobey Maguire), Sam Waterston is the only one whose voice you might actually want for your narrator. He's a soothing, thoughtful presence onscreen but with enough rootless amiability to make his friendship with these people believable. The only problem is, the '74 version decided it didn't really need Nick after all. A lot of his character moments, including his crucial last speech, are pared down and instead we're treated to more Gatsby and Daisy interplay. So Fitzgerald's "boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past" was cut but Daisy wittering about how she wants to push Gatsby around in "a big pink cloud" was left in. Nick is a difficult if not impossible character to succesfully integrate into a film adaptation because he functions more as a gateway than a character in his own right. But the '74 version leaves him stranded betwixt and between, still present but too remote to fully connect with anybody. His growing friendship with Gatsby is excised for more Daisy. It makes the heartbreaking moment when he tells Gatbsy that he's "worth the whole damn bunch put together" into an odd little throwaway moment. Did this Nick ever really care that much?

Jordan Baker

(Ruth Hussey in 1949, Lois Chiles in 1974)

Just as the '49 version of Nick was retooled into the voice of sober respectability, Ruth Hussey's turn as the amoral golfer Jordan Baker was also given a coat of suburban varnish. She vacillates between wanting to be part of her scheming coterie and wanting to be Nick Carraway's love. In the '49 film, we also get to see Jordan's future: she ends up as Nick's loving, gray-haired wife. Because that makes so much sense. Hussey is a fine actress and her specialty was the wisecracking and sensible side character. But she's a little too smart and down-to-earth for either of the roles the script wants to put her in. You get the sense that this Jordan could have a fine busy life elsewhere if she had the sense to get away from these people. 

Lois Chiles isn't nearly as good an actress as Hussey but her silver-tongued and sultry Jordan is still a pleasure. While her predecessor was tart and sensible, Chiles comes across more as a person so utterly devoid of inner doubt that she will continue to glide serenely across the surface for the rest of her days. And man does she rock those Jazz Age fashions (The Fashionéaste has an excellent run-through of the '74 film's glorious costume designs). The only problem with Chiles is that her husky purr and seductive smile were given to the wrong character--her voice sounds more like money than Farrow's does.

Myrtle Wilson

(Shelley Winters in 1949, Karen Black in 1974) 

The only surprise in Shelley Winters' casting as Tom Buchanan's doomed mistress Myrtle is that it happened before Winters had gotten a permanent lock on all "blowsy, unwanted female" roles. She doesn't really get much of a chance to shine in the part and the '49 version doesn't do much to glamorize Myrtle. Thankfully, it doesn't try to belittle her either.

Karen Black might tie with Mia Farrow for being the performer most unpleasantly indulged by her director. We get lots of closeups of Black either laughing or weeping, her emotions practically dripping off the screen. It's a relief when she moves away. Granted, Myrtle is never meant to be a femme fatale or a delicate flower, but it also means that the tragedy of her death is swallowed up by the film's goofy stylizations. And did they have to play that stereotypical "sleazy jazz" over her scenes?

And what about the 2013 movie?

I really don't know if we will ever have a Gatsby film that works. Maybe the book truly does begin and end with the beauty of Fitzgerald's writing, as some critics say. Maybe Fitzgerald is having a subtle revenge on the Hollywood he hated and he watches from beyond the grave while these films only scratch the surface of what he wrote. It could be that Baz Luhrmann will succeed. As a Gatsbyphile, I know I'll still be watching, for better or for worse.

 
Note: The still of Betty Field is taken from Classic Cinema Gold and the image of Lois Chiles is credited to Cult Queens.

Miscastings in Classic Film

It's time for a list. And today, my chosen topic is:

If I could go back in time and change just one casting choice from one classic movie.

Now I must preface this list by saying that I'm mainly criticizing the casting, not the actors themselves. With perhaps one exception, my feelings for the actors listed below range from indifference to heartfelt love. I just don't believe they were suited for these particular roles. And I chose to go after films I consider true classics. There's little point in going after, say, Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah. And, even though I couldn't resist using the photo of John Wayne as Genghis Khan, I'm not going to go after Hollywood's long history of racial miscastings in this post. Mickey Rooney's portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's may be an epically horrible stain on an enjoyable film, but the character would have been a racist caricature no matter who was playing him. For this list I want to talk about good characters, good movies, good actors and bad casting. So let's begin.

1. Valerie Hobson in Great Expectations

I have to confess a bias here: Estella is one of my favorite Dickens characters. She's that rarity: a Dickens heroine who isn't innocent and wholesome. Instead, Estella is an icy, damaged character, the Catwoman amongst the pigeons. She has humor and honesty and she feels something for Pip, but because of her upbringing, she can't be normal. Maybe she never will be. Because I love Estella, I had high hopes for Valerie Hobson's portrayal. Alas. Hobson is pretty enough but she's so prim and proper. She tries to sound like a heartless femme fatale and ends up sounding pert. Hobson would have made a fine Gwendolyn Fairfax, but as Estella? No. It's a pity because Jean Simmons as the younger Estella is so perfect. If only she could have played both parts.

2. Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina

Bogart's casting, as the harried workaholic Linus Larrabee, isn't so much a disaster as it is a collection of small annoyances. There's his age for one thing, a common problem with Hepburn's costars. There's the fact that he's playing a privileged businessman. Bogart always seemed more comfortable sneering at the upper crust than in playing their games. But the biggest problem, for me, is that he never strikes sparks against Hepburn. Bogart's best leading ladies were as flinty and fearful of surrender as he was, from the high-toned, scheming Mary Astor to the romantically tormented Ingrid Bergman. Hepburn is too elfin, too warm, to play ball with him. For her part, Audrey Hepburn needed leading men who were willing to be charmed, even if it meant letting her steal the light. Bogart was not that man. You can feel his discomfort. This is the itchy wool sweater of romantic comedy performances.

3. Cecil Kellaway in The Postman Always Rings Twice

Cecil Kellaway as the gruff, Greek husband of Lana Turner--I've already ranted about this one at some length. It still makes no sense to me.

4. Nora Gregor in La Règle du jeu

Jean Renoir's masterpiece about the boredoms and manipulations of France's upper class needed a strong leading lady to stand at the center, someone who could be both shallow and seductive. This character, Christine de la Chesnaye, is an aristocrat's wife, mired in the romantic gamesmanship of her class and too weak to break free from it. She is the object of many men's obsessions, but she can't hold on to her husband. She has the chance for escape but it eludes her. There's silliness to her, but tragedy too. For that kind of role, you need a talented and charismatic actress (I'm thinking of Arletty in Les Enfants du Paradis). Instead, we have Nora Gregor, who is just inadequate. She flutters, she pouts, she trembles. She has the mannerisms of a custard pudding. Gregor's Austrian background does allow Renoir to make a clever reference to Marie Antoinette and she gets more tolerable as the movie goes on. But the emotional weight of her character is left up to Renoir. Gregor doesn't spoil the movie but still, I ache for what Danielle Darrieux could have done with this role.

5. James Stewart in Rope

If you put me in front of the firing squad and told me to name my favorite actor, Jimmy Stewart would be it. I very rarely have a problem with Stewart's casting in anything. And Stewart and Hitchcock brought out the best in each other. So it's odd that his portrayal of the sharp-tongued, suspicious, possibly-gay Rupert Cadell in Rope does so little for me. On the surface, it seems like a fine choice. Stewart could spout witticisms about murder without losing audience sympathy and he didn't shy away from darker characters. But Stewart never seems comfortable in the role of this erudite shithead and quickly escapes into playing Rupert the detective. He talks about his own culpability in the murder, but it rings hollow. Properly, this role should have gone to George Sanders or James Mason.

6. Marlene Dietrich in Witness for the Prosecution

It's hard to talk about this one without giving away plot details, but Marlene Dietrich is an awkward fit for the role of Tyrone's Power's devoted wife. Christine Vole. In the original Agatha Christie story, Mrs. Vole was quiet, calm, and mysteriously "foreign," which made her completely unknowable to the stolid British men who dealt with her. Understandably, for the film version, Billy Wilder wanted to expand the character and make her funnier, more exciting. However, Marlene Dietrich is a little too far in the other direction. She's funny, melodramatic and larger than life. There's no mystery about her, everything she does is outsize. Which makes it impossible for her to fool anyone. I can't deny that Dietrich is a lot of fun in the part, though.

7. Leslie Howard in Gone with the Wind

This one's been argued to death but it's true. Leslie Howard is the weakest link in Gone with the Wind. Howard himself didn't want to play the milquetoast Ashley Wilkes and complained bitterly about the role ("I look like that sissy doorman at the Beverly Wilshire," "I'm not nearly young or beautiful enough for Ashley").  Actually, Howard's a little harsh; his portrayal of Ashley was dignified and intelligent and he had good chemistry with both his actresses. But it isn't enough to disguise the fact that Howard lacks believability as the personification of Scarlett's white-knight desires. He's too old and stiff, more like Scarlett's schoolmaster than her contemporary. Next to the pitch-perfect performances of Leigh, Gable, and de Havilland, Howard sticks out all the more. 


Well, that's enough negativity for now. Maybe for my next list, I'll tackle the many great against-type casting choices. That'd be fun.