14. BURT LANCASTER
Turned down the lead in Ben-Hur (1959). The role of Judah Ben-Hur went to Charlton Heston, who won an Academy Award and added another hit to his career of spectacular blockbusters.
15. MYRNA LOY
Turned down the lead (Ellie Andrews) opposite Clark Gable (Peter Warne) in It Happened One Night (1934). The role led to an Academy Award for Claudette Colbert. A previous film set on a bus had just failed, and Loy thought the film would not have a chance.
16. MICHAEL MADSEN
After his terrifyingly menacing performance in Reservoir Dogs (1992), Michael Madsen was offered the role of Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s next film as director, Pulp Fiction (1994). He turned it down because he was involved in the making of Wyatt Earp (1994) in which he plays Virgil Earp. Pulp Fiction was an enormous success with audiences and critics. Wyatt Earp wasn’t. John Travolta, who played Vincent Vega, found his career on the up and up while Madsen found himself playing parts in a series of B pictures. ‘I wanted to take a walk down to the OK Corral,’ Madsen has been quoted as saying. ‘If I’d known how long a walk it was gonna be, I’d have taken a cab.’
17.-18. EWAN MCGREGOR and WILL SMITH
Both of these stars turned down the role of Neo in the blockbuster science fiction epic The Matrix, which eventually went to Keanu Reeves. McGregor starred as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace instead, while Smith – who went on to star in the film version of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot – admitted, ‘I watched Keanu’s performance – and very rarely do I say this – but I would have messed it up. I would have absolutely messed up The Matrix. At that point I wasn’t smart enough as an actor to let the movie be.’
19. STEVE MCQUEEN
When Paul Newman asked McQueen to star opposite him in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), McQueen insisted on top billing. When his demand was turned down, McQueen refused to appear in the film. Robert Redford played Sundance and became the most sought-after star of the 1970’s. McQueen turned down the lead role of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection (1971) because he felt the part was too similar to the tough cop he had played in Bullitt (1969). Gene Hackman got the part and won an Oscar for it. Finally, when director Francis Ford Coppola offered McQueen the starring role of Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now (1979), McQueen declined because he did not want to spend 16 weeks – Coppolla’s original shooting schedule – on location in the Philippine jungles, away from his new bride, Ali MacGraw. Martin Sheen, who accepted the role, ended up spending a year and a half on location and almost died from a massive heart attack during the filming. Nonetheless, he turned in an electrifying performance.
20. GREGORY PECK
The producer of High Noon (1952), Stanley Kramer, originally offered the role of Will Kane, the retiring marshal who stays in town to confront the gunmen out to kill him, to Gregory Peck. Peck turned it down because he thought it was too similar to the part of Jimmy Ringo, an aging gunslinger haunted by his own reputation, which he had played in The Gunfighter (1950). Several other actors, including Montgomery Clift, Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando were approached before Gary Cooper was signed to play Kane. He went on to win an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance.
21. GEORGE RAFT
Turned down the main roles in High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Casablanca (1942), which became three of Humphrey Bogart’s most famous roles. Raft rejected the Sam Spade role in The Maltese Falcon because he did not want to work with director John Huston, an unknown at that time.
22. ROBERT REDFORD
Turned down the role of Ben Braddock in The Graduate (1967). The role made an instant star of Dustin Hoffman. Redford thought he could not project the right amount of naiveté.
23. EVA MARIE SAINT
Known for her selectivity in choosing roles, she erred when she turned down the central role in The Three Faces of Eve (1957) after reading an early version of the script. Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her performance in the film.
– R.S. & C.F.
15 Film Scenes Left on the Cutting Room Floor
1 FRANKENSTEIN (1931) In one scene, the monster (Boris Karloff) walks through a forest and comes upon a little girl, Maria, who is throwing flowers into a pond. The monster joins her in the activity but soon runs out of flowers. At a loss for something to throw into the water, he looks at Maria and moves towards her. In all American prints of the movie, the scene ends here. But as originally filmed, the action continues to show the monster grabbing Maria, hurling her into the lake, and then departing in confusion when Maria fails to float as the flowers did. This bit was deleted because Karloff, objecting to the director’s interpretation of the scene, felt that the monster should have gently put Maria into the lake. Though Karloff’s intentions were good, the scene’s omission suggests a crueller death for Maria, since a subsequent scene shows her bloodied corpse being carried through the village by her father.
2 KING KONG (1933) The original King Kong was released four times between 1933 and 1952, and each release saw the cutting of additional scenes. Though many of the outtakes – including the censored sequence in which Kong peels off Fay Wray’s clothes – were restored in 1971, one cut scene has never been found. It is the clip in which Kong shakes four sailors off a log bridge, causing them to fall into a ravine where they are eaten alive by giant spiders. When the movie – with spider sequence intact – was previewed in San Bernardino, California, in late January, 1933, members of the audience screamed and either left the theatre or talked about the grisly sequence throughout the remainder of the film. Said the film’s producer, Merian C. Cooper, ‘It stopped the picture cold, so the next day back at the studio, I took it out myself.’
3 TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934) Considered by many to be the best of the Tarzan films, Tarzan and His Mate included a scene in which Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller), standing on a tree limb with Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan), pulls at Jane’s scanty outfit and persuades her to dive into a lake with him. The two swim for a while and eventually surface. When Jane rises out of the water, one of her breasts is fully exposed. Because various groups, including official censors of the Hays Office, criticised the scene for being too erotic, it was cut by MGM.
4 THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) The Wizard of Oz originally contained an elaborate production number called ‘The Jitter Bug’, which cost $80,000 and took five weeks to shoot. In the scene, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Woodsman are on their way to the witch’s castle when they are attacked by ‘jitter bugs’ – furry pink and blue mosquito-like ‘rascals’ that give one ‘the jitters’ as they buzz about in the air. When, after its first preview, the movie was judged too long, MGM officials decided to sacrifice the ‘Jitter Bug’ scene. They reasoned that it added little to the plot and, because a dance by the same name had just become popular, they feared it might date the picture. (Another number was also cut for previews because some felt it slowed the pacing, but it was eventually restored. It’s title was … ‘Over the Rainbow’.)
5 THE BIG SLEEP (1946) This movie is famed as a classic despite its notoriously difficult-to-follow plot. As originally filmed, it included an aid for the viewer: Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and a DA meet and have a conversation that summarises the plot. The film was finished in 1945, but held back from release until the studio finished rolling out its backlog of World War II films. During the delay, the decision was made to re-shoot several
