I was watching The Forsyte Saga on Netflix the other night. Not the original with Eric Porter and Kenneth More. The newer one with Damian Lewis as Soames and Gina McKee as Irene.
I was struck by the fact that the casting director for that version had obviously never read John Galsworthy. Much is made in the books about the dark hair of Soames and the golden, color of “feuille morte” of Irene’s locks.
And yet in this remake, the two leads have switched hair colors.
This is a travesty, and it was only the beginning of the license the screenwriters took with this venerable property. I found it unwatchable.
Which is the long way around to today’s topic.
Perfect movie casting.
Every once in a blue moon, Hollywood (or the BBC) gets it just right and the actors who portray iconic roles look exactly how I have always pictured them. It’s so wonderful when a movie character looks just they way I thought they should. Let’s salute some of the great pair-ups, shall we?
Any talk about movie casting has to begin with the greatest publicity stunt in all of Hollywood’s fabled history.
The search for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with The Wind.
Every actress from Katherine Hepburn to Paulette Goddard wanted the plum role of Margaret Mitchell’s spirited heroine. And producer David O. Selznick duly tested them all.
But luckily for us he held out for an “unknown.” And as the famous story would have it, at the eleventh hour, against the backdrop of the back lot “burning of Atlanta” scene, his brother Myron appeared out of nowhere with the most beautiful woman in the world at his side.
Her gorgeous face profiled against the flames, Myron triumphantly announced to his brother, “Hello, genius. Meet your Scarlett.”
A pretty story. But true or Hollywood-hype nonsense, Vivien Leigh was born to play her. A perfect casting match.
Can you imagine anyone else in the role?
Fiddle dee dee. Of course not.
Clark Gable as Rhett Butler? Perfect- but the public cast him. The casting of Vivien Leigh made that movie for me. She looked exactly the way I had pictured her- only much more beautiful. No one could have imagined her perfection of face.
Another beloved childhood book of mine that also did a great job in the casting department?
To Kill A Mockingbird.
Again, Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout matched the characters in my imagination to a tee. Btw, Mary was a real example of an “unknown” getting a plum leading role. Prior to Mockingbird, she had never acted before.
(To Kill A Mockingbird also marked the screen debut of illustrious actor Robert Duvall as Boo Radley. A great example of using an unknown actor to bring that factor of “otherness” to a role.)
Peck and Badham both got well-deserved Academy Award nominations. Greg won for “Best Actor.” Mary didn’t.
But who cares? Her enchanting little face has been indelibly grafted onto Scout’s whenever I re-read the book. And that’s immortality to me.
Now let’s take the case of a not-so-perfect father figure. Humbert Humbert in Lolita. Nabokov’s genius, and his way with a word, pun and puzzle can not brought out on screen. But Stanley Kubrick and his casting director James Liggat did me a very great service when they hired on James Mason as Hum and Shelley Winters as blowsy, brainless Charlotte Haze.
This was a stroke of casting genius. And a very brave performance on the part of Miss Winters, I may add. Her character is ridiculed so mercilessly in both the book and the movie that only a terrific actress without the usual preening ego would have dared played her.
Staying on the other side of the pond, leave it to the Brits to come up with the perfect casting in EVERY role for my beloved Brideshead Revisited.
This series that first ran in 1981 was more or less written by the brilliant John Mortimer (who had the good sense to let Evelyn Waugh’s haunting prose strictly alone) directed by Charles Sturridge, and cast to perfection by clever Doreen Jones.
She started out with a bang by casting Anthony Andrews (with whom I had been smitten ever since seeing him on Upstairs, Downstairs) as Lord Sebastian Flyte.
But then she outdid herself and gave me the perfect Charles Ryder- Jeremy Irons. His world-weary thrilling voice lent the perfect element to his role as narrator, too.
But every role was cast to perfection in this saga. Clare Bloom as Lady Marchmain, Laurence Olivier (!) as Lord Marchmain, the elegant Stéphane Audran as Cara, Phoebe Nichols as Lady Cordelia and the beauteous Diana Quick as Lady Julia Marchmain.
This to me will be the zenith of fleshing out the literary roles with great, great actors.
Oxford played Oxford. Castle Howard did a noble job of standing in for Brideshead Castle, and Aloysius the teddy bear adorably played himself.
(Here’s my Aloysius, btw. I told you I love this book.)
Another BBC import that did right by me? Their two outstanding re-tellings of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People.
As a rabid John Le Carré fan, I had worshipped the character of cuckolded spy chaser and saviour of the Circus, George Smiley. He’s portrayed vividly as harried, donnish, put upon, forever polishing his spectacles with the end of a nondescript tie. The most unlikely spy in Christendom. The very un-James Bond.
Portly, rotund, out-of-shape- these are descriptors Le Carré uses over and over again in his books.
And yet when I saw Alec Guinness in the part, I was caught hook, line and sinker.
Somehow, without being overweight at all, Guinness perfectly captures the essence of the man. A mild, clerk-like manner that hides a whip-smart intellect, and all the while balancing a sense of duty and honor with the heartbreaking realization of betrayal and loss of innocence.
Bless you, casting director. You also were wise enough to throw in the likes of Ian Richardson, Patrick Stewart, Beryl Reid, Michael Jayston, Ian Bannen and Siân Phillips as the chronically-unfaithful Ann Smiley into the cloak and dagger mix.
Let’s end on an American note, shall we?
Very American.
As in Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. I loved this book. (Ok, not not as much as Lonesome Dove, but there are few books I love as much as Lonesome Dove. That’s a whole other post, pardner.)
Casting Director Ross Brown did a stellar job when he filled small town Texas with the likes of Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cloris Leachman, Eileen Brennan, Ellen Burstyn and Ben Johnson.
But it was director Peter Bogdanovich who found his Jacy- Cybill Shepherd- on the cover of a magazine.
A beauty contest winner from Memphis, Cybill had never acted before. Yet by luck, design or clever direction, she perfectly embodied heartless teenage vamp, Jacy Farrow
Even Larry McMurtry himself fell under her spell. He declared her the perfect blonde siren of his teenaged dreams.
Now my time on the casting couch is up but Aloyisus is telling me to let him show off a bit.
Naughty bear.
Very interesting post, Ellen, that clearly shows your encyclopedic knowledge of, and love for, classic movies as well as British television series. I happen to know a lot about the former, not so much about the latter. But it got me thinking about another jewel in the crown that is performing arts, namely opera.
I grew up in New York City in the 60’s and 70’s, and “discovered” all three tenors: Domingo, Pavarotti, and Carreras … in that order. That is to say, they were all “unknown” when they made their debuts at the NYCO and/or the Metropolitan Opera. It wasn’t until much later that I realized, who am I kidding? They all were sufficiently successful in their home countries to attract the attention of those in the Big Apple companies charged with casting their operas!
Very interesting, Maestro. You obviously have a good ear for talent. And in the bio pic of your life, who would you cast to play Dr. Barany? I see George Clooney.
You flatter me, Audrey Hepburn. The only thing I have in common with Mr. Clooney is the first name. Choose someone whose hairline has been receding since kindergarten.
You’re much too modest, my friend. I know that Mr. C would bring all the intelligence and humor necessary to the role. I’m sticking with him.
In your dreams! Or are you thinking C = Cumberbatch … he seems to have the “brilliant eccentric” act down pat.
On a slightly more serious note, time to pull out “Zelig” — which was Woody Allen’s meditation on trying to fit in, in a complicated and unforgiving world. The title character, through a series of “only in the movies” happenstances, gets the full-blown Hollywood biopic treatment, and it’s telling to compare him and the Mia Farrow character as themselves vs. the far more handsome versions as envisioned by the dream machine.
Right on. And these days, Woody Allen has the ability and luxury to cast much younger, far more handsome actors than himself to play “Woody.” John Cusack, Owen Wilson, Colin Firth, Jonathan Rhys Meyers- these guys have all been avatars for the director- living his imaginary life and acting out some of his fantasies. Nice to be an auteur, I guess.
Here’s to Aloyisus. But for the accident of birth, he could have been a Paddington.
What do you think, Smokey?
Ta, Jack. I bearly can’t contain my glee. I can’t Pooh Pooh this comment.
Of course, in this area of artistic endeavor, you are rarely off target. But an extra brava, for “The Last Picture Show.” I was the age of the boys at the end of the picture when it came out. After watching the first 10 minutes, I said “This is the most depressing place on earth”. Little did I know that I had been watching the “good times” and that it was all downhill after that. This was a movie that never dated, and is as watchable 43 years later after 15 or 20 movies . Ellen, you have picked out of obscurity, one of the truly underrated films, ever. And you are spot on when you speak of Cybill Sheppard. She was my fantasy of the perfect blond, “unhavable” girls to any 18 or 19 year old. It’s too bad she never really developed as an actress the way my secret middle aged baby sitter fantasy, Elizabeth Shue, grew into some amazing performances. I cannot think of a better Bogdanovich movie than the multi-layered “The Last Picture Show.”
I am so glad that one of these movies resonated with you. It’s a magical thing when a movie can put flash and blood face and form onto what has only exited in our imaginations. For me, this is a special gift from one enchanted medium to another. Thanks, Scott.
As a young boy I read the Hardy Boys and one day my Grandfather said to me,”here read a man’s book about crime” and he gave me his copy of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon.” Later, seeing the movie for the first time I thought that director John Huston and producer Hal Wallis got every character perfect.
You are SO right, Mitch. And it was John Huston who said that if you cast a picture right, you didn’t have to do much more as a director. Your comment is the stuff that dreams are made of. Thanks, Sam. Love, Brigid O.
Come on………
Best casting ever???
Who could have played Flash Gordon better than Buster Crabbe??!!
Good casting true but a comic not a book. Still it’s something to read, I’ll grant you. Thanks, Bernie.