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Post by hi224 on Mar 17, 2019 23:52:57 GMT
Interesting Bogie was choice 2 as well.
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 18, 2019 0:19:10 GMT
Was George Raft choice #1?
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Post by hi224 on Mar 18, 2019 0:32:36 GMT
Was George Raft choice #1? Actually Muni was but punched Huston in his face and left as well.
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 18, 2019 0:43:00 GMT
Actually Muni was but punched Huston in his face and left as well. If you have to leave a film, what a way to do it!
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 18, 2019 0:44:54 GMT
FROM IMDb Trivia In addition to Hal B. Wallis, Humphrey Bogart also sent several telegrams to studio head Jack L. Warner, begging to be cast as Roy Earle. After Paul Muni left Warner Bros. in a contract dispute and George Raft turned down the role, Warner called Bogart and told him the part was his . . . on the condition that Bogart stop sending him telegrams. and Humphrey Bogart's part in this movie was originally intended for Paul Muni. Muni did not like the first draft of the screenplay, which was authored solely by John Huston and given to him by Hal B. Wallis, so Wallis got the book's author, W.R. Burnett, to assist Huston in a second rewrite. This was presented to Muni, who still disliked it and turned the movie and the role down completely. On May 4, 1940, Bogart sent a telegram to Wallis reiterating his continuing desire, which he had mentioned several months earlier, to play the part of Roy Earle. After Muni turned down the script the next person on the list for Warner Brothers was George Raft. Bogart, knowing that Raft was trying to change his image and move away from gangster roles, found out about this and mentioned to Raft when he saw him next that the studio was trying to get him to do another gangster movie where he gets shot at the end. Raft marched into Wallis' office and flatly refused to do the movie. Bogart finally ended up with the role he wanted all along by default.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 18, 2019 0:49:32 GMT
"Pard" played by "Zero the Dog" was Humphrey Bogart's dog in real life.
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Post by hi224 on Mar 18, 2019 2:22:57 GMT
Actually Muni was but punched Huston in his face and left as well. If you have to leave a film, what a way to do it! Yeah lol.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 18, 2019 17:24:32 GMT
Doghouse6 mikef6 do you know if the Muni punch out story mentioned earlier in this thread is true or not ? I can only find the quotes about him not liking the script and/or quitting over a contract dispute and nothing about violence to the writer of the script.
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Post by mikef6 on Mar 18, 2019 18:42:03 GMT
Doghouse6 mikef6 do you know if the Muni punch out story mentioned earlier in this thread is true or not ? I can only find the quotes about him not liking the script and/or quitting over a contract dispute and nothing about violence to the writer of the script. My go-to source for all things Bogart is "Bogart" - the 1997 biography by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax. The authors take four pages to relate all of the negations, wranglings, bad language, and bad feelings that accompanied dealings with Paul Muni over "High Sierra." They ended with Muni ripping his Warner contract into pieces after being told that the movie he really wanted to make - a biography of Beethoven - was off the table. They don't say anything about punches being thrown. When the dust cleared, Humphrey Bogart was on top. The authors - paraphrasing a line from "The Maltese Falcon" - write: "The studio wasted no time. If you lose a star, you can make a new one." I did, nonetheless, run across another wry bit of irony. When Muni was first offered "High Sierra" he had just returned from a leave of absence. He had been on a national tour in Maxwell Anderson's play, "Key Largo." (Do I really need to spell out the implication of that?)
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 18, 2019 19:12:04 GMT
mikef6 Thanks for the info …. I figured if anyone knew it would most likely be you or Doghouse6 . It would make no sense for Muni to have punched out Huston in this instance because he was "just" the writer and not the director or any sort of Warner executive who would be the one doing the hiring. Urban legend pile with this one it looks like, eh ? Key info interesting as well !
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 18, 2019 22:33:50 GMT
mikef6 Thanks for the info …. I figured if anyone knew it would most likely be you or Doghouse6 . It would make no sense for Muni to have punched out Huston in this instance because he was "just" the writer and not the director or any sort of Warner executive who would be the one doing the hiring. Urban legend pile with this one it looks like, eh ? Key info interesting as well ! Sorry I didn't have the dirt (as much as I like being thought of as a disher of same). I don't really know that much about Muni, but from what I've heard about Huston, if any notable person had ever taken a poke at him, I'm guessing the anecdotes about it wouldn't have ended there...if ya know what I mean. An observation about George Raft: perhaps his greatest contributions to classic films came in the form of the jobs he turned down: High Sierra; The Maltese Falcon; Casablanca; Double Indemnity, etc. For these favors, audiences can be grateful. They simply wooden wouldn't be the same.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 18, 2019 22:51:25 GMT
Doghouse6 thanks …. I figured one of you two would be the most "up on" the background goings on with hire-ings and quit-tings and fire-ings in Olden Days Hollywoodland ! . We could use a thread about Raft's jumping ships and/or feeling that roles were beneath him but it would take someone who knows a heck of a lot more about him than ! Was thinking about doing one on Muni but I know even less about him than I know about Raft and that sure ain't much .
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Post by them1ghtyhumph on Mar 19, 2019 1:32:24 GMT
Muni was the most respected actor on Warners' lot, and both he and Warners knew it.
The Story of Louie Pasteur is, IMO, his masterpiece
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 19, 2019 2:35:20 GMT
Paul Muni made "only" 23 movies in a 30 year film career and I have seen very few of them. Just has worked out that way as there has not been a deliberate avoidance of them. I may have seen "I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" and I know I never saw "Scarface".
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 19, 2019 3:37:57 GMT
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