This is not where visitors should start at the
Actors Chosen for Ayn Rand Roles web site.
Click here to go to the first page.
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Appendix 1:
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images: detail section and full image of the front side of an advertising handbill for the Broadway run of “Night of January 16th”; the back side of the flyer (not shown here) names Doris Nolan and others, but names neither of the actors who played Regan, making it unclear whether the flyer dates from the first month (when Walter Pidgeon played the gangster) or afterward (when William Bakewell had taken over), although it can be ascertained that this flyer dates from the first five months of the engagement (inasmuch as Nolan left after five months) |
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Is the title “Night of January 16th” (without “The” at the beginning) or “The Night of January 16” (without “th” at the end)? As the above images—from an advertising flyer for the original Broadway run—demonstrate, even the promoters of the original production did not have a single title: the testimonial quote atop the flyer gives the title without “The” but with “th,” yet directly underneath this blurb the large-size version of the title presumably intended as the producer’s chosen title, has “The” but lacks “th” following “16.” | image: catalogue card in the United States Copyright Office. See accompanying text, below. |
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Here are some facts: • The first two copyright registrations for the play under either of these titles were for the “Director’s Manuscript” and “players book” editions, which were both registered December 5, 1936. (Prior to this, the work was protected by copyright through Ayn Rand registering it as “Penthouse Legend” in 1933, and through common-law copyright accorded works which had not been published, even if performed before audiences.) Both copyrights declare the title as “Night of January 16th” and that the work is “a comedy-drama in 3 acts, by Ayn Rand, edited by Nathaniel Edward Reeid.” |
The “Director’s Manuscript” edition was not published (so stated in the copyright registration) but the “players book” edition was. Both were registered for copyright by Longmans, Green and Co., and are the editions subsequently reprinted by David McKay Company, Inc., which also filed renewal of these two copyrights on behalf of the author and the editor’s widow. The front cover and title page of the McKay “players book” edition give the title as “Night of January 16th.” [See above: photograph of the catalogue card for the “Director’s Manuscript” edition of “Night of January 16th” in the Copyright Office of the United States.] |
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image: entry for “Night of January 16th” in the log book of the United States Copyright Office. These two entries were hand-written in or about 1936. Notice that the entry below records the “The” as the first word of the title, indicating that the lack of a “The” in the title in the entry for Rand’s play is not for a policy of the Copyright Office leaving it off. |
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These Longmans editions are the editions which Ayn Rand called the “amateur version of Night of January 16th [which] is not written by me and is not part of my works.” These were editions aimed to “church, school and college groups” and which had been “‘cleaned up’” to remove mentions of any mistress, of the word “Guts” (so that the gangster was renamed “‘Larry’ Regan”), and swearing, as “adapted by the publishing house.” (Quotes from Ayn Rand’s 1968 introduction to her authorized book edition of the play.) Even with these departures from Ayn Rand’s version, it uses the same title word-for-word as Ayn Rand would.
• The book edition of Ayn Rand’s authorized edition of the play uses the title “Night of January 16th,” and as it went to press at a time when Ayn Rand could impose strict contractual and editorial terms on her publishers, it can be assumed the title appeared on hardback dust jackets, on paperback covers, and on the title page word-for-word as she imposed. The hardback published by World Publishing Company in 1968, and the softcover edition published by Signet in 1971 state the title as “Night of January 16th.” • Ayn Rand’s 1968 introduction to the play, which gives the title throughout its text as “Night of January 16th,” was first published in the April 1968 issue of The Objectivist, which was co-published and co-edited by Ayn Rand, and which did not contain any statements or wording which prior to publication had not been read and approved by Ayn Rand. |
• Advertising prepared and/or bought by Al Woods and/or his organization is erratic on the title. As visitors to this web site can ascertain, advertisements for the original production which appeared in The New York Times are inconsistent as to the being given as “The Night of January 16,” or just “Night of January 16” (with neither “The” nor “th”).
The same patterns apply to regional productions. • Uses of the composite title “The Night of January 16th” (with both the starting “The” and the “th” in “16th”) seem to be confined to a very small number of the least authoritative editions: the wholly-unfaithful 1941 movie, the 1936 London production (the program for it gives the title the same way as header of the London Times review seen on this site), and productions even more remote and obscure. • Evidence gives weight to the title of the play being “Night of January 16th.” However, this web site and the companion video vary the title in accordance with the specific production under discussion. There are places where the title is stated as “Night of January 16” where the accompanying illustrations show it to have been “The Night of January 16”; in these instances, the lack of the “The” should be taken as elliptical syntax, in much the same way as it is appropriate to give a title as Fountainhead where the context makes clear that The Fountainhead is the work under discussion. |
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Another proposed Woods title | |||||
The text of this web site reports (with substantiation from newspaper stories reproduced in accompanying illustrations) various titles which had been announced as the title of the play. One of the titles announced by Woods eight months before the premiere was “The Night Is Young.” An idea proposed by Woods after the play had premiered and had already proven a box-office success, was a constant change of title. Here is the idea: “A. H. Woods is thinking of nothing less than a daily change of title of his melodrama ‘Night of January 16,’ the new policy to go into effect on Feb 1. ‘Night of Feb. 1 (2, 3 &c.),’ is the way it would go.” (The New York Times, January 17, 1936, pg. 15) |
Given the date of the announcement, Woods had figured that the performance on January 16th—the date in the title—needn’t be the only performance each year on the date in the title. The Times item recognized that “a lot of changes in the dialogue” at each performance would be entailed in “keeping the show strictly up-to-date.” |
Appendix 2:
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This table lists choices considered by Ayn Rand. |
Role | Actor | Source of report | Citation |
Dagny Taggart | Farrah Fawcett | Arline Mann | V 461 |
Lauren Bacall | Arline Mann | V 461 | |
Raquel Welch | Susan Ludel | V 401 | |
Michael Jaffe | V 516 | ||
Katharine Hepburn [when young, e.g., 1930s] | Allan Gotthelf | V 344 | |
Catherine Deneuve | Cynthia Peikoff | V 556 | |
Barbara Stanwyck | Ayn Rand | L 497 | |
Erika Holzer | H 282 | ||
Faye Dunaway | Erika Holzer | H 282 | |
Dagny? [These names appear on a list hand-written by Ayn Rand on which she does not indicate character name; it is being guessed from other remarks, actresses’ star status, and actress personas, that all were considered for Dagny.] | Farrah Fawcett-Majors [AR underlined this actress] | Ayn Rand | B 115 |
Genevieve Bujold [AR underlined this actress] | Ayn Rand | B 115 | |
Kate Jackson | Ayn Rand | B 115 | |
Julie Christie (“Heaven Can Wait” [1978]) | Ayn Rand | B 115 | |
Charlotte Rampling “?” | Ayn Rand | B 115 | |
Carrie Fisher [AR wrote “Princess from ‘Star Wars’” without naming the actress] | Ayn Rand | B 115 | |
Hank Rearden | Roy Schneider | Ayn Rand | B 115 |
Clint Eastwood | Michael Jaffe | V 516 | |
Erika Holzer | H 282 | ||
Robert Stack | Erika Holzer | H 282 | |
Francisco d’Anconia | Hans Gudegast (a.k.a. Eric Braeden) |
Arline Mann | V 461 |
Harry Binswanger | S --- | ||
Cynthia Peikoff | S --- | ||
Peter Strauss (“Rich Man, Poor Man”) | Ayn Rand | B 115 | |
Tom Selleck? [handwriting reads like “Tom Sennett”] | Ayn Rand | B 115 | |
John Justin [of “Breaking the Sound Barrier”] | Erika Holzer | H 282 | |
Alain Delon | Susan Ludel | V 401 | |
Eddie Willers | Martin Sheen | Ayn Rand | B 115 |
James Taggart | Vincent Price | Harry Binswanger | V 602 |
Erika Holzer | H 283 | ||
Ned Beatty (“Network”) | Ayn Rand | B 115 | |
Lillian Rearden | Lee Remick | Cynthia Peikoff | V 556 |
Claire Bloom | Erika Holzer | H 283 | |
Dr. Robert Stadler | Hume Cronyn | Erika Holzer | H 283 |
Cuffy Meigs | Rod Steiger [of “In the Heat of the Night”] | Erika Holzer | H 291 |
Midas Mulligan | Spencer Tracy | Arline Mann | V 461 |
John Galt | Robert Redford | Erika Holzer | H 282 |
Sources V = 100 Voices: an Oral History of Ayn Rand, by Scott McConnell (New American Library, 2010) B = Ayn Rand, by Jeff Britting (Overlook Duckworth, 2004) H = Ayn Rand: My Fiction-Writing Teacher, by Erika Holzer (Madison Press, 2005) L = Letters of Ayn Rand, edited by Michael S. Berliner (Dutton, 1995) S = Ayn Rand: a Sense of Life, 1998 movie, out-take on DVD second disc |
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The citations in the fourth column provide the page number following a single letter matches to the source (see key immediately above). In the case of the documentary film outtake, there obviously is no page number. A mnemonic for the sources is that citations to Ayn Rand herself always come from Jeff Britting’s book, citations to Erika Holzer always come from her book, and all others go to 100 Voices, except for the two for the Ayn Rand: a Sense of Life supplement, which in turn are from friends of Ayn Rand who are also interviewed in 100 Voices.
Brackets indicate content added by me, guided by knowledge of some of Ayn Rand’s favorite films. Content in parentheses were Ayn Rand’s own remarks written alongside the actors’ names. Content inside neither parentheses nor brackets are Ayn Rand’s. Thus, where “Tom Selleck? [handwriting reads like ‘Tom Sennett’]” appears, the question mark is Ayn Rand’s (positioned on her list immediately after the actor’s name, just as it is here), but the remark inside the brackets is mine, in this case a remark indicating that her handwriting (reproduced in Britting’s book) was not clear enough for certainty. I checked for an actor named Tom Sennett and came away empty. |
Ayn Rand (Overlook Duckworth) by Jeff Britting, pg. 115, also shows that Ayn Rand thought of Jill Clayburgh for a role, then wrote “no” next to her name. Albert Ruddy, on page 511 of 100 Voices, indicates his casting choices for an Atlas Shrugged movie (which he negotiated to produce) to have been Faye Dunaway as Dagny, Clint Eastwood for Rearden, Alain Delon for Francisco, Robert Redford for Galt. He repeats this same list in the interview transcription published in Ayn Rand and the Prophesy of Atlas Shrugged: the Complete Documentary Interviews (a companion volume to the similarly-titled documentary film), pg. 105. The record of other people who knew Ayn Rand shows that Ayn Rand had thought of and approved those same actor choices (see table above). |
Appendix 3:
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In viewing the second clip from Midnight Lady, viewers may have surmised that the “notorious woman” whom Padden is talking about is herself, that the young man she is talking to is one of the children she abandoned fifteen years earlier, that she knows he is her son, whereas he does not. Some people who have seen many 1930s movies may sense that they’ve seen this story before, but may not be sure they’ve seen this particular film. They would be right to question whether this is a new film to them. Hollywood in the first decade of sound films presented many stories of mothers who left their children, faced trial, sacrificed their futures to prevent shame from visiting their children, and never divulged their maternal connection to the children is whose adulthood a reunion occurred. Here are several films which mixed these plot elements: | |||||
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Madame X (1929) was the first sound film version (following a 1908 theatrical play and later silent film versions), and cast Ruth Chatterton as the neglected wife and mother whose affair results in her husband casting her out of their home. Her lover’s death soon thereafter leads her into a loveless life of progressively more-degrading environments, the discovery by a blackmailer of her real identity, her murder of him, and her refusal at trial to identify herself so as not to sully the reputations of her husband and son, the latter of whom has grown up to be the lawyer defending her without knowing what she knows: that he is her son. Sarah and Son (1930) has Ruth Chatterton as a wife whose husband takes their son with him when he deserts her. The prospect of a reunion a decade later fails for her, when she is told about her son’s whereabouts, but the adoptive parents deny that their son is hers. More misfortune follows. Paramount. Caught (1931) gives the pivotal role to Louise Dresser (who, like Sarah Padden, was usually a supporting player, here given a rare chance at a lead) as a middle-aged Old West saloon owner who comes to suspect that the calvary lieutenant visting town to investigate crime is her long-lost son, forfeited by her when she left Eastern civilization for a rugged life. Though she recognizes that her guilt over cattle rustling will be discovered by him, and although her crime partner urges her to kill the lieutenant, she seeks to learn more about him. Engaging him in conversation, she realizes that he is her son, although he never suspects. She sacrifices her business to keep him from being killed, escaping town, knowing she is now a fugitive and won’t ever see him again. Paramount. The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) has Helen Hayes as a young mother who had become pregnant by a man who bends to his parents’ will that he marry someone else; she raises her son in poverty while this is possible, then puts her son into foster care while attempting to better herself, ultimately losing any opportunity to reunite when she is imprisoned for crimes she did not commit. When her son is an adult, she spurns any reunion plans (lest she stigmatize him) but instead secretly finances his college education. When they do meet, she knows who he is, he doesn’t know her. Midnight Lady (1932) is Sarah Padden as a wife and mother who abandons family when no longer able to endure her mother-in-law. She comes to run a successful speakeasy, meeting her now-grown children in the establishment, but doesn’t let known who she is, letting them maintain their belief that she is dead. When evidence points to her daughter being guilty of killing the daughter’s scoundrel boyfriend, and knowing who really killed the man and that this woman has too thoroughly escaped detection, the mother accepts blame and in court doesn’t defend herself properly. Chesterfield. Frisco Jenny (1933) has Ruth Chatterton (again!) as an unwed mother without family, surviving through vice, leaving her infant son with foster parents who come to bond with him so thoroughly that the mother realizes it would be wrong to reclaim the child. She rises in the underworld of illegal commerce, but follows her now-adult son’s progress in newspaper stories about his successes. Mother and son are brought together when he is the district attorney who prosecutes her. She allows him to prevail, even though it means her being sentence to death. William Wellman directed for First National. The Secret of Madame Blanche (1933) puts Irene Dunne through its story of motherhood under circumstances which compel the young mother to surrender her infant son to her wealthy father-in-law, denied the opportunity even to see the child. Two decades later, sheer chance bring mother and son together, she knowing his identity, he not, she at first disgusted by his morals, then becoming maternal towards him. A murder and a trial follow, mother sacrificing herself to spare her son. There is a twist at the end unlike that in the other films. Midnight Mary (1933) is much the same story as Madame X and Frisco Jenny insofar as the central character refuses to divulge information in court which would prevent her being found guilty. This time, though, she has no son, but sacrifices on behalf of an adult man she loves and whom had loved her in the past. Loretta Young enacts the hard-luck story, wherein she undertakes more suffering so as to hold together the marriage of the man to the woman he had not yet met when he had parted with Loretta. Willaim Wellman directed for Most Precious Thing in Life (1934) has Jean Arthur as the young wife who leaves husband, baby son, and her parents-in-law, then is thrown together with her now-adult son by sheer chance. As the cleaning woman of her son’s college room, she tries to reverse the bad traits ingrained in her son by his father and grandfather, while allowing her son to continue believing his mother to be dead. Columbia. Madame X (1937) with Gladys George in the story of the wife having an affair while not realizing that by not attending to her child, she wasn’t there to nurse him as he develops illness, thereby earning the wrath of her husband, who asks her to leave the house. She works locally for awhile, then sails across the Atlantic to America, where she sinks into depravity.
Her murder of a blackmailer who has learned of her past, and would hurt her husband and now-adult son were her fate to become known, results in her being defended by her son, he being unaware of who she is. This version eliminates the mother-in-law’s role in the woman’s downfall, and makes the husband (Warren William) remorseful over his banishing his wife, having sought to get her back just as she has concealed her location. In later decades, Madame X was remade again: in 1948 in Britain (as The Trial of Madame X), in a glossy American production of 1966, and in a 1981 TV version with Tuesday Weld. Outside the English language, there was a 1954 Greek version of Madame X. A well-mounted, top-name-talent version, the 1966 version has the mother-in-law element of some of the films listed here other than the 1929 and 1937 versions: generally following the established plotline, Lana Turner is the neglected wife who takes on a lover, is forced by her mother-in-law to flee to prevent scandal embroiling the family, and then falls into dissoluteness, necessitating her being put on trial, whereat her lawyer is her own son, who never suspects who the woman is who is not giving her real name. This list is confined to the films most likely to be confused. Omitted from this list are variations with fewer common elements, such as Stella Dallas (1925 and 1937 versions), where the child is raised by both parents and is considerably older when the mother surrenders custody, doing so for different reasons than in Madame X; and Blonde Venus (1932), where the parents reunite while the child is still very young. |
Appendix 4:
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In the section discussing Universal’s “Black Pearl” project, it is reported that Ayn Rand was assigned to “continuity.” This detail-oriented form of writing, where creativity is discouraged when not forbidden, had been pioneered by 1914, reputedly by prolific producer Thomas Ince, and arose from deficiencies in filmmaking practices which had given too much freedom to directors to shoot without effiencies in the use of key personnel and without regard to additional costs incurred when all filming to be shot at one location isn’t shot at the same time. Ince’s methods remain standard practice a century later. The travel and set-up time spent at a given location away from the studio doesn’t happen more often than the minimum possible, and sets don’t remain standing when not in use (occupying studio space that could serve another production) while the director intends to return after an interim. The most desirable performers may be paid by the week or even by the day, their salaries continuing until all their scenes have been shot, and their availability may be limited by other commitments, so it becomes incumbent that all of such an actor’s scenes be scheduled to be shot in consecutive blocks of time. A continuity script is an aid to scheduling talent and locations, to on-set behind-the-camera personnel in knowing whether specific physical items are needed and where they are to appear on screen, and to related matters. What was once called a “continuity girl” and is also called a “script clerk” or “continuity person,” looks for details which may be misplaced or which may inadvertently move location between shots. Such a person works on a film that actually goes into production. The “Black Pearl” project, despite background film being shot for it, never went so far as to have performers enact a script before a camera at Universal, so Ayn Rand could not have worked continuity in that sense. Oddly enough, two industry year books of the early 1930s don’t have entries for “continuity” in their glossaries. |
“The detailed continuity script was standard practice by 1914. Continuity scripts and associated paperwork varied little from studio to studio owing to their standardization through trade paper discussion of the formats. … Each of [one] firm’s production scripts had a number assigned to it which provided a method of identifying the film even though its title might shift. … “[It] listed all exterior and interior sites along with shot numbers, providing efficient cross-checking and preventing lost production time and wasted labor. … Each shot was numbered consecutively; included were the shot’s location and a brief description of sets, properties, and costumes. Camera distances were specified, as well as any unusual effects in the lighting or cinematography. Scenes were broken into separate shots, and cross-cutting was fully detailed. All action was specified. … Since these scripts were often used on the set, penciled over each shot was a scribble marking the completion of that shot … “Although the companies might hire famous writers to compose original screenplays, their material was then turned over to these technicians who put it into continuity format. These writers knew not only the continuity format and stylistic demands of the film but also the particular needs of the individual studios in terms of cost of sets, standing sets, star and stock personalities, directorial and staff areas of skill, and so on. Such a tactic provided the studio with a standardized script whose format was familiar to everyone and which was most likely to utilize the studio’s physical capacities and labor force to best advantage.” (American Film Industry, edited by Tina Balio (University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), pgs. 189-190) A continuity script has to be distinguished from a cutting continuity, which at quick glance may appear to be a script, but which is actually a transcript of the finished film, breaking down the actors’ lines and primary actions to blocks of text appearing alongside specific details on the types of shots (“close up,” “long shot,” etc.) and the durations of shots in seconds and frames. Cutting continuities are prepared to assist distribution offices and exchanges with repair of damaged prints, inspection of prints returned from theaters, and legal matters. Obviously, Ayn Rand could not have produced one of these for “Black Pearl” for Universal, because the studio never made the film. |
Appendix 5:
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The remarks about the actors in this project focus on what traits and abilities they would bring to their roles. The objective is to allow visitors to gauge, to assess the actors’ suitability for the roles for which they were considered. Some will object that the comments on Leonard Bernstein make no mention that he advocated for and funded far-left political causes. The passage on Mickey Knox makes no mention of his being blacklisted. Were such comments to have been incorporated into the main text, there would be a precedent for identifying non-Objectivist beliefs of still further performers, until such identifications were being placed in the remarks of performers only slightly removed from the mainstream. Rather than that happen, a decision was made that no such remarks appear. The point of this site is to celebrate talent. | In selecting scenes to appear as film clips on this site, a few policies were followed. (1) The first was that I had to be legally allowed to use the video. (2) The film excerpted should be as near the time of the actor’s association with his Ayn Rand role as possible. (3) It was great when I found a scene of an actor expressing the same kinds of emotions as his Ayn Rand character would be in that role, but failing that, (4) the actor should be in an emotional moment, so that we can see how deeply the actor’s inner being gets engaged in a performance. (5) It was great when I found the dialogue that the actor had conveyed ideas expressed in Ayn Rand’s works, and I’d thought it unlikely there would be much, yet I was surprised by how often I came up with a clip which fit this criterion and all the others. |
Appendix 6:
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Murder by Invitation (1941), it is noted in the section on revivals, reunited Sarah Padden (the maid in “Night of January 16th” on Broadway, and in Boston, Chicago and Pittsburgh) and J. Arthur Young (the judge in those same Broadway and Boston productions, repeating that role and essaying the role of attorney in the play elsewhere). Moon Over Burma (1940), it is noted in this web site’s text, joined the leading man of the “Night of January 16th” film (Robert Preston) with the original leading lady of the play on Broadway (Doris Nolan). These were far from the only reunions and different-production partnerings in other films.
“The Unconquered” (the stage version of We the Living) had Eugenie Leontovich as Kira and Dean Jagger as Andre when the play premiered in Baltimore. The play was not filmed, so we don’t have a record of how these two performers interacted with each other as lovers whose relationship hinges on one partner’s scorn. However, we can get an idea of how they interacted, because these same two actors graced the same sound stages in California seventeen months later, when they played the third-billed and fourth-billed roles in The Men in Her Life (1941), a feature film released by Columbia. The storyline has their characters in conflict, as each has different intentions for the film’s main character, played by Loretta Young. |
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Exiled to Shanghai (1937) contains a mother-load of actors who at some time in their careers played an Ayn Rand character. William Harrigan (“Guts” Regan in Bronxville) is excerpted in scenes from that film elsewhere on this web site. However, the film also has William Bakewell (“Guts” Regan for five of the play’s original six months on Broadway) and Sarah Padden (the maid on Broadway) as characters who cooperate toward a common goal, with Bakewell coming into contact with Dean Jagger (from The Unconquered), Jonathan Hale (later to play Guy Francon in The Fountainhead film), and Charles Trowbridge (member of Wynand’s board of directors of The Banner in The Fountainhead). Click to see excerpts of these six actors, and watch them interacting with one another (in combinations of up to four actors in one scene). |
Exiled to Shanghai doesn’t hold the record for the most actors discussed on this site appearing in one film. A couple of “all star” films of the 1940s hold that record. However, Exiled to Shanghai does seem to have the record for the most number of actors who actually did play an Ayn Rand role, as against having a higher number achieved by counting actors who were considered for roles that they ultimately did not play.
Warner Bros. gathered a large roster of their contract players and put them in Hollywood Canteen (1944), many of these stars appearing briefly, typically in a single scene which limited their interaction with the other stars. Hollywood Canteen has Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker, Joan Crawford, Robert Shayne, and Kitty Carlisle, as well as Jonathan Hale (who would play Guy Francon in The Fountainhead). Variety Girl (1947) was Paramount’s effort at the same kind of film. It has Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Cecil Kellaway, Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, Ray Milland, and Paulette Goddard (also: Russell Hicks of The Fountainhead—he’s the one who tells Wynand, “we’re your board of directors”). (Note: in both of the above films, not all actors were contract players. Some were “free agents” who contracted single films or were connected with that studio at the time without the actor taking on a long-term association with the studio.)
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New content © 2013 David P. Hayes