WORRIES OF CASTING DIRECTORS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21280, 25 February 1939, Page 16

WORRIES OF CASTING DIRECTORS

QUEER ROLES MAKE TASKS DIFFICULT Casting directors in the major studios have worried looks these days, and with good reason. The task of finding types for key spots in current movies is getting more difficult day by day. Unique characterizations are in great demand.

Privately, the casting directors think that something should be done to deaden the inventive genius of the new crop of scenario writers, who are accused of conjuring up the tricky characters and types that find their way into the current screen output. It is up to the casting chief to make these fantastic dreams come true, states a writer in an exchange.

Four men who assign actors to the bulk of Hollywood’s annual grist of 600 or more feature pictures—Fred Dating (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Lew Schreiber (Twentieth Century-Fox), Fred

Schuessler (Paramount), and Stephen Trilling (Warner Brothers) —agree that their most difficult problems have arisen during the past year. Before 1937, they say, few assignments gave them much trouble. Today, however, they are constantly asked to fill roles that force them to search throughout the United States of America, sometimes in other lands for the right type of man, woman, or child. Here are some recent casting conundrums that have tortured Fred Dating and his staff: A set of identical triplets, between the ages of 40 and 45, to appear as a firm of attorneys in “Sweethearts.” An aristocratic-loking actor with a British accent who resembles oil paintings of Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and can play that role in “North-west Passage.” A five-year-old boy bearing some resemblance to Johhny Weissmuller, who can swim expertly and do acrobatics, wanted for a new Tarzan picture.

Only Failure

Portrayers of the triplet characters which Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell wrote into the “Sweethearts” script were never found. Mr Daring said this was the only casting assignment he had ever failed in since his affiliation with the studio five years ago. “Finally,” he said, “we decided the script would have to be written to provide for two sets of identical twins. That was fairly easy. One pair, the Berglunds, we found right in Hollywood thrugh the Southern California Twin Society. The other pair, the Berrys, were located in Laguna Beach. It happens that all four are real estate brokers in private life.”

The difficulty in portraying Lord Amherst for “North-west Passage,” after photographs of paintings of the period had been obtained from Yale University, was that no two paintings looked very much alike, though certain facial characteristics were stressed. When an actor who looked the type was eventually found, he was under contract to Max Reinhardt for appearances in “Faust.” The problem was solved temporarily when camera work was postponed till next spring. The Weissmuller-as-a-boy problem cannot be solved in Hollywood, MiDating says, because the studio has already interviewed, tested and evamined every likely five-year-old turned up by Central Casting. Talent scouts are looking round the country for such a youngster. Worry More Acute! “Every unusual new picture seems to offer a casting worry more acute than the last,” said the veteran, Fred Schluessler, of Paramount. “Right now, for instance, we’re trying to find a leading man for a Claudette Colbert picture, and the requirements are giving us plenty of trouble. Some newcomer may get a break here.” Stephen Trilling, at Warner Brothers’ studio, believes that his hunt for a youthful James Cagney for “Angels With Dirty Faces” exceeded all his past casting worries. And it was just luck that he stumbled on Frankie Burke, the 17-year-old Brooklyn boy, who gives such a clever impersonation of Cagney in the picture that the studio has placed him under a term contract. “We made 200 separate tests of youths, both here and in the East, and were about to give up and rewrite the story, when young Burke walked into out casting office,” Mr Trilling said. Historical and family characters worry Lew Schreiber, at Twentieth Century Fox, most of all.

“How would you like to follow up George Arliss’s famous characterization of ‘Disraeli’,” Schreiber asked. “Well, that’s exactly what was on my order sheet for ‘Suez.’ We had to find an actor to play Disraeli who looked something like George Arliss—because, in the eyes of most movie fans’ George Arliss is Disraeli.

“I couldn’t very well get one who looked too much like Arliss, because the historians might kick, for, as a matter of record, Arliss bears no physical likeness to the man. We finally compromised on Irving Manders.