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Post by telegonus on Mar 16, 2017 6:56:31 GMT
A couple of things first: I'm hoping to start a fun thread, and it's tempting, for a number of reasons, to start it elsewhere, such as television or actor and actress related. My hope is that it will be flexible as to TV and movies, and primarily but not rigidly limited to classic era film and old-time TV. With that out of the way, the subject matter is actors who could for all intents and purposes play the same parts, not actors who (necessarily) look and sound alike, though there's bound to be some of that.
To start off, and this one occurred to me just the other night, watching George Macready in a Perry Mason and thinking that it could have been John Hoyt and the episode would play just as well. These two are by no means alike as to appearance or demeanor even as they're similar in many respects. Macready was not an attractive man, his voice was somewhat husky and his presence as often as not intimidating. There was also a somewhat regal/noble air to him that made him good casting for kings, dukes, barons, viceroys and the like in low budget costume pictures. John Hoyt was more modern feeling, a handsome man, he was good casting as men of science and medicine, district attorneys, wealthy individuals, and while he could play patricians he didn't have quite the to the manor born way about him that Macready had. Still, they were pretty close.
John McIntire John Anderson are two more similar types, of different generations, their careers overlapped for many years. I can see the one playing the parts of the other. Both men were tall and lean, and both had a somewhat rustic, country or western air to him; and both actors were adaptive, could play eastern farmers and western ranchers, small town lawyers, mayors, justices of the peace and other roles that called for a reassuring authoritativeness. Interestingly, both men appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, though they didn't share any scenes. Anderson was a sharp-eyed used car salesman, McIntire a small town deputy sheriff. Anderson was prominently featured early in the film, never to be seen again, while McIntire's larger part was crucial in the latter half of the movie. Their characters shared a skeptical air and a dry wit, and are, as I see, complementary in some ways. Another trait both actors share was that they always seemed older than their actual age. Both came across as "born old", or at best middle aged.
Anyway, if there are any people who want to respond and add to this, let the game begin...
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 16, 2017 13:11:35 GMT
Even though they often they played similar roles, Hoyt and Macready gave off very different vibes to me. Macready seemed much more decadent, like he was hiding a secret opium habit, or Heaven knows what else. Hoyt was more conventional; at most. repressed.
There was also something very sad about GM's eyes. Even as a heavy he could elicit sympathy with them.
McIntire was more versatile than Anderson, feeling at home not just in westerns but even as a NYC cop in the Naked City TV series. Anderson seemed out of place in an urban environment, though he played a rival newspaper tycoon in an episode of Lou Grant. Even there he's a fish out of water, showing up at a tux dinner in an everyday business suit. JA also played a career army officer faced with a conscientious objector son (Michael Anderson -- no relation) in a Hawaii Five-0. Of course he's the angel Gabriel in the great Twilight Zone "A Passage for Trumpet", but that casting is adequate at best.
Even though they were nothing alike, the guy I always think of together with John Anderson is Chris Alcaide, as they seemed to take bi-weekly turns playing the heavy on The Rifleman.
One to link with Alcaide is Leo Gordon; they seemed to take roles as villains in TV westerns if the other was unavailable. Gordon was more menacing, generally a no-nonsense thug. Alcaide was a smiling killer who liked to sadistically toy with his victims
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Post by neurosturgeon on Mar 16, 2017 14:40:47 GMT
Jeanette Nolan and Lurene Tuttle were also interchangeable , and were good friends.
My housemate was an acting student of Lurene Tuttle, and her advice was never turn down a chance to act.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 16, 2017 14:46:57 GMT
A couple of things first: I'm hoping to start a fun thread, and it's tempting, for a number of reasons, to start it elsewhere, such as television or actor and actress related. My hope is that it will be flexible as to TV and movies, and primarily but not rigidly limited to classic era film and old-time TV. With that out of the way, the subject matter is actors who could for all intents and purposes play the same parts, not actors who (necessarily) look and sound alike, though there's bound to be some of that. Anyway, if there are any people who want to respond and add to this, let the game begin... Interesting exercise, tel. Although there was no one exactly like Eugene Pallette with his unique foghorn-and-gravel voice, watching explosive Walter Connelly last night in a bit of Nothing Sacred got me thinking that any of the harried, moneyed patriarchs or blustery executives either played could have been done by the other. Imagine, for example, their exchanging places in My Man Godfrey and It Happened One Night. C. Aubrey Smith and Henry Stephenson both typified rigid, aristocratic, old-school Britishness, and could play it with either benign beneficence or imperious arrogance. If they'd each had the other's roles in Bombshell and Reckless, the effect would have been the same. Richard Arlen and Bruce Cabot so embodied earnest, athletic, all-American toughness that I often lose track of which was in which films ( Island Of Lost Souls and King Kong to name two). Cabot had a slightly rougher edge that allowed him to play credible hoods, which I don't recall Arlen ever doing. Gail Patrick and Claire Dodd spent much of the '30s as snooty, overgrown debs who get their comeuppance in the end, although I give Patrick the advantage for ability (and an extra helping of coolly-administered venom). Fun idea. I'll contribute more if they come to mind. |
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Post by telegonus on Mar 16, 2017 18:16:13 GMT
Even though they often they played similar roles, Hoyt and Macready gave off very different vibes to me. Macready seemed much more decadent, like he was hiding a secret opium habit, or Heaven knows what else. Hoyt was more conventional; at most. repressed. There was also something very sad about GM's eyes. Even as a heavy he could elicit sympathy with them. McIntire was more versatile than Anderson, feeling at home not just in westerns but even as a NYC cop in the Naked City TV series. Anderson seemed out of place in an urban environment, though he played a rival newspaper tycoon in an episode of Lou Grant. Even there he's a fish out of water, showing up at a tux dinner in an everyday business suit. JA also played a career army officer faced with a conscientious objector son (Michael Anderson -- no relation) in a Hawaii Five-0. Of course he's the angel Gabriel in the great Twilight Zone "A Passage for Trumpet", but that casting is adequate at best. Even though they were nothing alike, the guy I always think of together with John Anderson is Chris Alcaide, as they seemed to take bi-weekly turns playing the heavy on The Rifleman. One to link with Alcaide is Leo Gordon; they seemed to take roles as villains in TV westerns if the other was unavailable. Gordon was more menacing, generally a no-nonsense thug. Alcaide was a smiling killer who liked to sadistically toy with his victims |
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Post by telegonus on Mar 16, 2017 18:44:13 GMT
Yes, Macready had that worldly sadness to him, absent in Hoyt. Also, Hoyt was clearly buff and physically at least trim and youthful looking, while Macready didn't come across as athletic, or then maybe he did in swashbucklers. I don't remember him as a physical actor, which Hoyt often was. Macready was in his cosmopolitan aspects closer to his friend and business partner Vincent Price, while Hoyt could have been (in an alternate universe) an American Basil Rathbone. McCintire more versatile than Anderson? Probably. Both were laconic players, however McIntire's manner of speaking could suggest a larger wisdom, more facets to the characters he portrayed, while Anderson had that tight-lipped quality that limited him. While I can see McIntire as the airline pilot in the Twilight Zone time warp episode, I don't think that Anderson would have been nearly so good in McIntire's one TZ episode, The Chaser, which drew on the actor's versatility and playfulness. I know the name Chris Alcaide, but he's one of those actors whose faces I nearly always forget when his name turns up in the credits. Leo Gordon was a scary dude, a real one off. He could play different kinds of characters, was most convincing (to my eyes) as a psycho nutjob, as in Riot In Cell Block 11. Interesting to see him in that one forming an uneasy alliance with the (by comparison) poised and diplomatic Neville Brand  . Briefly: Will Wright and Burt Mustin, not interchangeable but old coot specialists, with Mustin even older looking but with a more benign seeming personality. Clem Bevans also played old guys but he was nearer to frail and feeble in manner and appearance. Lots of grandpa players back then. While I never confused them, don't think they were quite right for exactly the same roles I remember when Victor Buono and Roger C. Carmel were in their glory, such as it can be called; and both at around the same time. It's like they were made for the Sixties character actors designed to remind TV viewers and moviegoers of golden age Hollywood. They were both very tall and way overweight, with both tending to wear mustaches. Carmel strikes me as a capable but somewhat unpleasant actor, with an innate unlikableness, his Harry Mudd on Star Trek notwithstanding, while Buono was genuinely engaging, with a sympathetic quality. Jeanette Nolan is an actress I'm hugely fond of, yet she never made the top cut as a character player. In the Fifties and Sixties she carved out an interesting niche for herself as a sort of small screen Agnes Moorehead crossed with Ellen Corby, and when cast as a witch she could really rock and roll  . |
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Post by mikef6 on Mar 16, 2017 18:55:44 GMT
There are the timid types (who can sometimes be officious) like John Fiedler, Donald Meek, Percy Helton, and Byron Foulger. They could be pretty much interchangeable.
One of these (I won’t say which) was effective on a couple of adventurous occasions (on TV) when he was used as a surprise evil person.
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Post by fangirl1975 on Mar 16, 2017 19:31:08 GMT
Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern
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Post by marshamae on Mar 16, 2017 19:40:09 GMT
Barry Fitzgerald and Arthur Shields. - so much alike they were like brothers from a...the same mother! Barry was the older by almost 10 years and was established with the Abbey Players when Arthur decided to become an actor. Arthur fought in the 1916 Easter Uprising and was interned in Wales.
They appeared in seven films together: The Plough and the Stars (1936), The Long Voyage Home (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Easy Come, Easy Go (1947), Top o' the Morning (1949), The Story of Seabiscuit (1949) and The Quiet Man (1952).
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Post by telegonus on Mar 16, 2017 19:41:21 GMT
There are the timid types (who can sometimes be officious) like John Fiedler, Donald Meek, Percy Helton, and Byron Foulger. They could be pretty much interchangeable. One of these (I won’t say which) was effective on a couple of adventurous occasions (on TV) when he are used as a surprise evil person. Actually, I think more than one of those guys played an evil person. When he was young, such as he ever was on screen, Percy Helton played his share of snarky, borderline underworld types. It's the older, kinder, gentler Percy I grew up with. Damn neat interchangeable on screen: two fat men of the radio, Raymond Burr and Marvin Miller. Burr seemed to have more in the way of acting chops, Miller had that rich, almost lush voice. Two more, both mostly on TV: Robert H. Harris and Leonard Stone. With better luck Larry Gates might have had E.G. Marshall's career. Sandy Kenyon was like a shadow Royal Dano on television. Not so skillful an actor, he could play similar roles, but without Dano's bravura (see Moby Dick for some of that). |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 16, 2017 19:53:16 GMT
I was just reading about Will Wright yesterday. Apparently he and Mustin both played the friendly fireman on Leave It To Beaver. Aside from the unaired pilot (w/Max Showalter as Ward and Harry Shearer as the proto-Eddie Haskell) I haven't watched LITB in decades. I have absolutely no memory of Will Wright on the show. Jeanette Nolan never quite broke through onscreen but she was one of the queens of West Coast radio, along with Lurene Tuttle and virginia Gregg (the latter probably most familiar to today's audiences through her several Dragnet appearances) Chris Alcaide  The rather-too-neatly-trimmed pimp-mustache gave him a sleazy aura |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 16, 2017 20:04:34 GMT
Bert Freed (the first actor to play Lt. Columbo, in a 1960 Chevy Theatre episode)  John Doucette  Ed Platt  Sometimes when Ed Platt blew a line on Get Smart, Don Adams would ask the crew, "Is John Doucette available?" |
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Post by telegonus on Mar 16, 2017 20:25:18 GMT
Funny about John Doucette: I don't think of him as an Ed Platt type. Platt strikes me as Ivy League, more along the lines of Hugh Marlowe, even nearer than that, Philip Ober, whom I've on occasion mistaken for Platt. Anyway, John Doucette was quite short, with his stocky build making him intimidating. He reminds me more of Ernest Borgnine, but with a lighter touch, more shading, subtlety.
Bert Freed's face is indelibly stamped in my mind as the desk sergeant in that late afternoon movie on local TV sci-fi classic Invaders From Mars. No matter what I see him in he gives me the willies. OT but that movie featured a ton of actors who later turned up on Perry Mason, including Freed and Judge Morris Ankrum, with honorable mention for Arthur Franz, Hillary Brooke, John Eldredge, Max Wagner and Douglas Kennedy.
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 16, 2017 20:26:03 GMT
There are the timid types (who can sometimes be officious) like John Fiedler, Donald Meek, Percy Helton, and Byron Foulger. They could be pretty much interchangeable.` When he was young, such as he ever was on screen, Percy Helton played his share of snarky, borderline underworld types. It's the older, kinder, gentler Percy I grew up with. Obe of these actors appears in an Alfred Hitchock Presents episode whose plot hinges on his meek persona. I won't spoil it by saying which one. Don't forget the usually affable Porter Hall as the one-armed patriarch in Intruder In The DustByron Foulger has a similar role in the prologue of The Long Hot Summer ("He's a barn burner!!!")  I don't connect these two at all. They certainly weren't the same physical type. I group Harris with Robert Emhart and Robert Middleton in The Fat Men -- Middleton in fact shot a great, Nero Wolfe-ish TV pilot called The Fat Man in 1959, directed by Joseph Lewis. Unfortunately it didn't sell. I found Gates acceptable as bureaucrats or professionals, but he was always rather cold. I was surprised to learn that in the original Broadway production of Bell Book and Candle he played the Ernie Kovacs role. I can't imagine laughing at Larry Gates. Kenyon could be cast in comedies. Like Larry Gates, Royal Dano was someone you didn't laugh at. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 16, 2017 20:35:39 GMT
Hugh Marlowe  Richard Carlson  |
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Post by telegonus on Mar 17, 2017 6:55:06 GMT
I can see the similarities between Hugh Marlowe and Richard Carlson facially and somewhat as to their "square" screen personas, but Marlowe had a restrained screen presence and a radio voice, while Carlson,--I knows this must sound weird--was somewhat more flamboyant.
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Seto
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@seto
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Post by Seto on Mar 19, 2017 9:14:17 GMT
Not sure if this one really counts, but I used to get John Gavin and Stephen Boyd mixed up. They look similar(Although admittedly not to the point where I should have got them confused), are very close in age, and both co-starred in two massive shoe and sandal epics within a year of each other. Boyd in Ben-Hur (1959), Gavin in Spartacus(1960). However from there their careers greatly diverged. Boyd continued doing period pieces, before tragically dying at only 45 from a heart attack. While Gavin was mainly on T.V up until the early 80's deciding then to leave showbiz for good.   |
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 19, 2017 17:46:35 GMT
I can see the similarities between Hugh Marlowe and Richard Carlson facially and somewhat as to their "square" screen personas, but Marlowe had a restrained screen presence and a radio voice, while Carlson,--I knows this must sound weird--was somewhat more flamboyant. I know what you mean, tel: while I can easily imagine Carlson and Marlowe exchanging places in pictures like All About Eve and The Maze, or Twelve O'Clock High and It Came From Outer Space, I don't see Marlowe in, say, The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Carlson retained a hint of youthful exuberance from earlier roles that Marlowe had never displayed; if one can consider Carlson as having once been a frat boy, the buttoned-down Marlowe was more the type to have been president of the students' union. Donald Woods always struck me as a sort of cross-pollination of the two, and either Marlowe or Carlson would have been comfortably suited to the Woods roles in pictures like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms or 13 Ghosts. |
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Post by telegonus on Mar 19, 2017 18:03:09 GMT
Richard Carlson strikes me as closer to that other Richard of sci-fi, Denning, with whom he appeared in Creature From The Black Lagoon: All-American hero types, low key virile, while Hugh Marlowe had that east coast organization man quality, like an older, not terribly funny Jack Lemmon; or the kind of guy young Jack was afraid of turning into...  |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Mar 19, 2017 18:18:39 GMT
Hugh Marlowe always seemed boring and inexpressive to me. He had to be playing a villain to be interesting at all.
Some ex-radio announcers were like that -- Marlowe, Ronald Reagan -- while others were scenery eaters: Robert Middleton Ted de Corsia. I would place Paul Douglas somewhere in the middle.
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