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| The Greatest Movies Never Made | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 24 2014, 11:11 AM (796 Views) | |
| JazzGuyy | Jan 24 2014, 11:11 AM Post #1 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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There are a lot of movies that were started as extremely promising projects but ended up never being produced. One that comes to mind is the "I, Claudius" movie that never happened. With all of the Balconeers around here who are quite knowledgeable about movie history (I'm looking especially at you, Riddle Rider and Paul Panzer), I wonder if there are some good stories about potentially great movies that just never happened. |
| TANSTAAFL! | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Jan 24 2014, 12:11 PM Post #2 |
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No Bail for the Judge. has always intrigued me. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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| The Batman | Jan 24 2014, 12:30 PM Post #3 |
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Charter Member
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Two words: WAR EAGLES Who does not want to see a film by Merian C. Cooper and Willis O'Brien featuring the exciting tale of a lost race of Viking warriors astride giant prehistoric eagles doing battle with Nazis over the skies of modern day Manhattan War Eagles |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jan 25 2014, 08:16 PM Post #4 |
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Mouth Breather
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Hitchcock often talked about filming Mary Rose, which, somebody correct me if I'm wrong, was a sentimental tale with supernatural overtones by James M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan, What Every Woman Knows, and other plays once thought important. I don't think Hitch was able to pitch it successfully. Ivan the Terrible, Part 3, was all scripted and ready to go when Stalin's goons squelched it. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno was even partially shot when the money dried up. It's kind of a stretch, but the film Fritz Lang was making in Contempt, The Odyssey, sure didn't get made. I've heard so many "one that got away" tales that I've forgotten most. Chaplin's WORK is another one that wasn't completed. Part of it shows up in Triple Trouble as I recall, along with footage from two other unfinished Essenay shorts. Stroheim's Queen Kelly was released in an unfinished state. It just ends in midstory. Same goes for King Vidor's An American Romance, a beautiful picture that might have been Vidor's masterpiece if they had let him finish it, or who knows? The script may have been a stinker. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| CliffClaven | Jan 26 2014, 12:16 AM Post #5 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Work is the title of an existing film -- the one about paper hangers. The lost Essenay was titled LIFE, and was supposedly planned as a feature. All that evidently exists is a sequence in a flophouse; after Chaplin left the studio they built a "new" short around that fragment, using clips from other Chaplins and connecting footage of a double. It barely makes sense. Unknown Chaplin has a curio titled THE PROFESSOR. Supposedly worried about being too dependent on his tramp character, Chaplin did what plays like a stand-alone sketch of a seedy music hall performer in a flophouse. His act, a flea circus, is contained in a cardboard box; he needs a full-sized whip to keep them in line. He echoed some of the gags for a music hall scene in Limelight. The Rudi Blesh biography of Buster Keaton claims that Keaton came very close to making GRAND MILLS HOTEL, an all-star parody of MGM's epic. Marie Dressler would replace Garbo's ballet dancer; Laurel and Hardy would divvy up Wallace Beery's manufacturer; and Keaton himself would be a man who discovered he only had forty years to live. Keaton also supposedly pitched a story in which he would be the milksop son of tough rancher Dressler, slowly proving his worth in the wide open spaces. In a book about Fox titled "The Studio," Gene Kelly was gearing up to direct a big musical based on the Tom Swift pulp novels; he was explaining to a rep from Boeing that the design for Swift's flying machine had to have "pizazz." TOM SWIFT was shelved when Kelly was persuaded to take over Hello Dolly, which was nearing a start date with no director. The box office returns on that and Doctor Dolittle pretty well buried TOM SWIFT. Walt Disney developed a feature film for Mickey, Goofy and Donald; it was a hunt for treasure that included playful pirate ghosts. The film wasn't made, but the script was recycled for PIRATE GOLD, an extra-long comic book story starring Donald and the nephews (Mickey, Goofy and the ghosts were cut). Decades later there were plans for a theatrical featurette casting Mickey Mouse as Columbus. Didn't happen, although the mouse did two other featurettes. The Disneyland show announced a feature film based on the OZ books and starring the Mouseketeers. There was a sort of synopsis and some musical numbers. It was a cute show, but THE RAINBOW ROAD TO OZ didn't look too promising as a movie -- I'm guessing it would have looked a bit like Babes in Toyland, which Disney DID make a few years later with a grown-up Annette. Later, the Disney studio sweated over a major animated epic about the Incas, featuring songs by Sting. It somehow collapsed and the light comedy EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE was made to salvage some of the work -- a bit like setting out to make How the West Was Won and ending up with the good but decidedly less ambitious Son of Paleface. SHE LOVES ME, the excellent stage musical based on Little Shop Around the Corner, was reportedly headed for Hollywood but was dropped. Pioneering animator John Hubley planned on adapting FINIAN'S RAINBOW; he got as far as recording the score (with top jazz performers) and preparing storyboards. UPA wanted to make DON QUIXOTE with Mr. Magoo; legend holds that they ended up making 1001 Arabian Nights because a Hollywood executive hadn't heard of Quixote. Recall an article where George Pal talked about his aborted plans for LOGAN'S RUN; definitely would have been a different movie. And of course Ray Harryhausen shot test footage for his own WAR OF THE WORLDS. Finally, shortly after Star Wars came out Mark Hamill claimed on a talk show that Lucas really wanted to do FLASH GORDON, straight and epic. When he couldn't get the rights, he began fashioning his own story. |
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| Meandering Tortoise | Jan 26 2014, 03:40 AM Post #6 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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In the late 1970s, Warner Brothers acquired an option to make a film based on "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov. Harlan Ellison developed a script in collaboration with Asimov. It was turned down, possibly due to conflicts between Ellison and the producers; the screenplay may have been considered to be unfilmable because of the technology and film budgets available at the time. The script was later serialized in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, then published in book form as "I, Robot - the Illustrated Screenplay" (1994; reissued in 2004 in time for the Will Smith movie, which was not connected with Ellison's script). |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jan 26 2014, 08:41 AM Post #7 |
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Mouth Breather
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Orson Welles had a whole raft of unfinished and unrealized projects. Don Quixote got the most press, but The Other Side of the Wind may be more interesting because of its wonderful cast. Supposedly all photography is done and it only needs editing. Showtime tried to complete it, but Welles's daughter stepped in and claimed it belonged to her, which it didn't. Something's Gotta Give, shut down when Marilyn Monroe got fired, had George Cukor at the helm and also starred Cyd Charisse and her husband, Tony Martin. I'm hazy on how much got done. As everybody knows, a nude swimming sequence was shot and generated heaps of publicity. Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Jan 26 2014, 01:25 PM.
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| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| JazzGuyy | Jan 26 2014, 10:03 AM Post #8 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Not quite the same as an uncompleted film was "Annie Get Your Gun" which was restarted with a new star (Betty Hutton) when disputes between original star, Judy Garland and original director, Busby Berkeley, ended in Garland's firing. Berkeley was also replaced as director. The DVD releases of the film have shown some of the Garland scenes that were shot as extras. |
| TANSTAAFL! | |
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| riddlerider | Jan 26 2014, 09:16 PM Post #9 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I still haven't seen any proof that Orson Welles in the late Forties contemplated making an "A" picture starring himself as The Shadow, but if the story's true....well, that one would top my list. It's well established that among the leading candidates for Alfred Hitchcock's first American film were adaptations of two classic detective novels: Patrick Quentin's A Puzzle for Fools (the very first book in Simon & Schuster's long-running Inner Sanctum line) and Leslie Charteris' The Saint in New York. RKO bought film rights to both novels but only made the Saint story, and as a "B" at that. I've read somewhere that had it become an "A" picture directed by Hitchcock, Cary Grant would have been approached to play The Saint. He was Charteris' first choice for the role. A Puzzle for Fools was the first and, in my opinion, best Peter Duluth mystery. I could never understand why it didn't get made as a movie, although the fact that it unfolds in a sanitarium might have made RKO nervous. (Presumably, that's the aspect of the story that appealed to Hitchcock, since he wasn't much interested in straight whodunits.) Three other books in the series were filmed, one by Republic. As for a serial that didn't get made: Many years ago I saw an interesting squib in a 1939 or 1940 issue of Motion Picture Herald. Sherman S. Krellberg was claiming that he planned to make a 20-chapter serial titled Sign of the Zombie. It was to have starred Buster Crabbe and Joe Louis as G-Men. Supposedly the story called for Louis' character to be turned into a zombie early on and be pitted against Crabbe's character for most of the serial. The last time I saw Crabbe in person, I asked him what if anything he remembered about this project. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "It's news to me. This is the first I've ever heard about it." I only wish I'd known about this thing when I met Krellberg in the Seventies. |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jan 26 2014, 09:28 PM Post #10 |
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Mouth Breather
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Riddle Rider, you never cease to amaze. That's all news to me. The Hitchcock projects could have come from some Selznick flunky. I can't see Hitch bothering with that kind of material. He always looked for the prestigious (or at least best-selling) writer, and for the unexplored subject. He usually tried to give his pictures serious underpinnings. A series whodunit wouldn't have suited him...but it would be just what a PR guy would have thought he would like. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| The Batman | Jan 27 2014, 08:11 AM Post #11 |
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Charter Member
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I've never heard that one. Did hear about the "Batman" film he was supposed to make, but it turned out to be an internet hoax. Either would have been interesting to see. |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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| riddlerider | Jan 27 2014, 12:49 PM Post #12 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Actually, I've read two versions of this story. In the first, Welles considers making a Shadow movie as soon as he signs his contract with RKO, on the grounds that it will be the perfect vehicle to introduce him to moviegoers who only know his voice. In the second, the post-WWII Welles is looking for a "commercial" project as a means of rehabilitating his image, and proposes a Shadow film because his name is linked with the character and the radio show (by that time starring Bret Morrison) is still a ratings powerhouse. Both scenarios are plausible but I've yet to see convincing evidence that supports either one. |
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| CliffClaven | Jan 27 2014, 01:07 PM Post #13 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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One more staring us in the face: The unmade scifi epic at the heart of ARGO. There was an actual project, for which they commissioned Jack Kirby to produce concept art. From what I remember of a long-ago scifi magazine article, the ambitious plan was to build the futuristic city that served as the main setting and turn it into a tourist attraction after the movie was released. They never pulled the money together, but there was enough done that it could be seemingly raised from the dead as an actual production. |
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| CliffClaven | Jan 27 2014, 01:51 PM Post #14 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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HUCK'S LANDING was to be an animated feature very loosely based on Huckleberry Finn. It's a legend in the animation world. The book "Cartoon Confidential" by Jim Korkis and John Cawley has the story. Self-made millionaire Tom Carter had plans to build a Vegas hotel and amusement park complex with a Mississippi theme. That expanded to include an animated movie built on the same theme, and then a lavish studio to produce the movie, theatrical shorts, TV shows, etc. Very simply, Carter wanted to go from zero to Walt Disney almost instantly. Carter's financial empire collapsed and he ultimately did jail time. The studio abruptly closed, tons of work (and investment money) was lost, and no completed work every came out of Tom Carter Productions. Survivors said that the story, score and artwork would have added up to a great movie, but it wasn't to be. |
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| The Batman | Jan 27 2014, 01:54 PM Post #15 |
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Are you sure they were actually going to make that film, or wasn't the whole "production" a ruse to get the Americans out of Iran? |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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