Infinite Worlds: Movies for your Alternate Earths!

[CraigR]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

A nice idea, although of course Norma Jean not only wasn't even remotely Amazonian, but was positively tiny.

Um, no. We're talking Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood's ideal of feminine beauty before marketing of Twiggy brought about the idea that you had to be a stick figure to be attractive. According to this site, she was 5 foot 5-and-a-half inches tall and 118 pounds (that's 166.62 cm and 53.5 kg). That's only 1.5 inches shorter than Lynda Carter's 5' 7". Marilyn was a size 12 but had gone up to a size 16 too.

She was not tiny, she just made a career out of people underestimating her.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Stage presence can make up for a lot. Ask Humphrey Bogart who was not a tall man but dominated the scenes he was in. Although I have to agree that Jane Russell might have pulled it off, IMHO Marilyn was the better actress.

1947 also would have been a good year for Men In Black. Bogart as Agent Kay, that's a given, possibly Jimmy Stewart as Agent Jay.

[Johnny1A.2]

"Even today, 71 years afterward, Hollywood insiders still talk about it. Though there have been movie bombs with bigger budgets since then, not many if any had such ambitions or drew on such source material, few of Tinseltown's famous or infamous lead balloons ever employed such an immense cast or expensive sets, at least by the standards of the time. Nor did many of the infamous failures of entertainment history go to such lengths, literally, as this movie that few outside Holllywood now recall.

"No expense was spared, the technology of the time was employed to create a genuinely epic background, and if the source material was pared down considerably in dialogue and exposition, that could hardly be helped in a movie that already ran around four hours long even with the deletions.

"Of course it was risky. The source novel for the movie already had legions of fanatic fans. Then as now, such fans could be a boon to a movie version of their beloved work...or descend upon it and tear it to pieces for the slightest perceived flaw. The movie was not cheap to make, even with the relatively low pay of the age, the sheer number of 'extras', the lavish sets, the cutting-edge (for the time) special effects, it all added up.

"But they took the chance...and when the on-screen production of Gone With The Wind, starring two actors you're probably never heard of, Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and John Wayne as Rhett Butler, bombed after just a couple of weeks in the theatres, an inside-baseball Hollywood legend was born.

"The movie lost such an enormous sum that it nearly drove Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer into bankruptcy protection. Vivian Leigh had had some success as a stage actress in previous years, and returned to that calling, never again appearing in a life-action picture. Though she appeared in some successful plays, she never really became a household name.

"As for John Wayne, (a stage name, his real name was Marion Morrison) found his motion picture career effectively over. So closely associated was his name with the flop of Gone With The Wind that he never came close to living it down, leaving acting three years later, going on to find some moderate success in real estate.

"One reason this is a Hollywood legend, though, is that there are a few die-hards who maintain, to this day, that in spite of the overwrought dialogue, pared-down script, and overdone production, that Gone With The Wind still could have been a successful movie with different casting. There are various theories about how it should have been done, but the one that seems to crop up the most involves another Hollywood flop, a movie by the name of Stagecoach from the same year as Gone With The Wind.

"This movie, unlike GWTW, starred an established actor by the name of Clark Gable, who by 1939 had several major successful movies to his credit. Still, like the hapless Wayne, Gable's career came to a crashing end when Stagecoach premiered to widespread critical panning and anemic box office. Gable would remain in acting for many years, but never did much better than B list, until he finally left Hollywood for politics, eventually becoming Mayor of Los Angeles.

"Most Hollywood insiders maintain that both movies were doomed by their own failings, and that the weaknesses of the leading men were not really the root problem. There is a die-hard minority who insist, however, that both men were well-suited for each other's roles, and that if Clark Gable had been cast as Rhett Butler, Gone With The Wind might have managed some modest box office success.

"A few even go so far as to suggest that Wayne, though unlikely ever to be a really huge actor, might have managed to make Stagecoach into a platform for a viable second-string career..."

From Hollywood Then and Now by
Gerald Ford, Editor-in-Chief of Variety.

[sn0wball]

Sometime ago, in a "What if Germany won WWII" thread of the former WWII subforum, I suggested the following for a timeline in which Russia had joined the Axis and deafeated the Allies in 1946:

Sergei Eisenstein´s Washington, co-produced by Fritz Lang, Music by Hanns Eisler, starring Peter Lorre as US-President John Garner and Kurt Gerron as Hermann Göring, a critical movie about the nuclear destruction of Washington

Akira Kurosawa´s Sands of Maui Beach, co-produced by Cecil B. DeMille,
starring Toshiro Mifune and Richard Widmark, about the Japanese invasion of Hawaii

Veit Harlan´s Sink The Hood!, starring Curd Jürgens and Robert Mitchum, about the beginning of the end of the Royal Navy

Roberto Rossellini´s San Franciso, Open City, starring Ingrid Bermann and Marcello Mastroianni, about the bombing and the occupation of California

[Spudzill]

Originally Posted by sn0wball

Sometime ago, in a "What if Germany won WWII" thread of the former WWII subforum, I suggested the following for a timeline in which Russia had joined the Axis and deafeated the Allies in 1946:

Sergei Eisenstein´s Washington, co-produced by Fritz Lang, Music by Hanns Eisler, starring Peter Lorre as US-President John Garner and Kurt Gerron as Hermann Göring, a critical movie about the nuclear destruction of Washington

Akira Kurosawa´s Sands of Maui Beach, co-produced by Cecil B. DeMille,
starring Toshiro Mifune and Richard Widmark, about the Japanese invasion of Hawaii

Veit Harlan´s Sink The Hood!, starring Curd Jürgens and Robert Mitchum, about the beginning of the end of the Royal Navy

Roberto Rossellini´s San Franciso, Open City, starring Ingrid Bermann and Marcello Mastroianni, about the bombing and the occupation of California

Very intrigueing. I never realized before what much of Hollywoods war movies must be like to a German Citizen. Very Effective.

[Spudzill]

" One aspect of the North American continent wild patchwork quilt of Nation-States( Similar in many ways to Europe, but mostly speaking English) was the difference in preferences by the Movie-Going public.
In New England, small Horror films and Sea Epics predominated, while in The United States the New York-based Film Industry was best Known for either gritty Crime Dramas or escapist Super Hero fare. The Confederacy has as its primary fare The Southern Gothic, often with large elements of the Supernatural. In the California Republic, which became a Filmmaking powerhouse, Either the grandiose Action genre or the Space Opera was king. Texas, naturally, is in love with the western.
While many of these films are seen to some extent in the various nations of North America and Europe, they often only do so in either Art Houses or in Second Run houses as part of a double bill. It does not look as though any one Nation will Dominate any other in the foreseeable future.
One can only come to the conclusion that the British film Industry will be able to carve out a niche in these English speaking regions, and, while not Dominating, the income from appearing in them collectively can lead the British Film Industry to considerable success."
---Memo Hammer Films, England regarding North American market penetration.
August 16, 1975, from Gerry Anderson. Gallitin-2

[tratclif]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

"The movie lost such an enormous sum that it nearly drove Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer into bankruptcy protection. .

[pedantry] IIRC, MGM's Louis B. Mayer had structured the deal with producer Darryl Zanuck such that MGM had very little exposure to the downside. Zanuck and his production house, OTOH, would have been wiped out.

[Rocket Man]

From Dixie-1:

Ronald Maxwell's Three Cigars (2003) was an unlikely War of Secession speculative film turning on one fictional question: what if a petty thief, interested only in stealing some cigars from an officer's tent, inadvertantly stole the Army of Northern Virginia's battle plans as well, wrapped around the precious smokes?

The film, with an ensemble cast that included star turns by Robert Duvall and Stephen Lang, and a brief appearance by Kevin Conway as the initial thief, follows the cigars and the plans as they pass from hand to hand -- sometimes stolen, sometimes lost, sometimes given away. The film opened to mixed reviews, as the premise seemed far too implausible, though most Union critics were touched by the ending in which a captured Gen McClellan (Jeff Daniels) receives the cigars as a friendly gift from a Confederate guard, just one day after the Battle of Sharpsburg ... and unravels the papers to see the plans that could have saved his army. The final shot, depicting McClellan lighting one of the cigars and then using it to burn the now-useless plans, is still considered a "modern classic."

[Captain-Captain]

The Coughing Front (1930) a very powerful and moving film starring Neil Hamiltion as a German Private in the Great War, which came to an end in the Influenza pandemic of 1916.

Edit: Possibly played by Lew Ayres instead. Oops! ;)

[Spudzill]

Platoon (1987) A story about a young man in the German Army in Indochina.
Dixie-1