MovieChat Forums > The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) Discussion > An atypical casting blunder by George St...

An atypical casting blunder by George Stevens.

posted 11 years ago by doug7347
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Susan Strasberg was the obvious choice to repeat her Broadway triumph as Anne Frank. I have little doubt that she would have transformed a merely good film into a great one.

I'm reminded of the story of Jack Warner offering the "My Fair Lady" role of Professor Henry Higgins to Cary Grant. Cary told Jack that if he didn't cast Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins he (Grant) wouldn't even watch the film. Too bad there wasn't anyone with similar wisdom to talk to George Stevens.

[–] rorysa 11 years ago

The story regarding Strasberg is well known by now, from Shelley Winters' book, but this thread provides an opportunity to repeat it:

Winters was a friend of Strasberg's and championed her for the title role in the film. Winters accompanied Stevens to a stage performance to show him how well Strasberg would perform. For whatever reason--Winters supposed it was because Strasberg had performed the play many many times and her performance level had waned--Strasberg gave a rather tired, certainly less than awesome, performance and lost any chance of doing the film. If memory serves, Winters could not convince Strasberg to put up a fight for the part.

Too bad: a very good film almost certainly would have been better.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] crisso 11 years ago

Stevens was obsessed with finding an Audrey Hepburn type for the role, since Hepburn herself turned it down. Millie Perkins was not an actress but a model (Stevens apparently saw her on a magazine cover - this was her film debut) and this completely comes across in her performance. I didn't believe she was a thirteen year old Jewish girl for a second. There was one scene towards the end where the camera shows her looking into space and then raising one eyebrow for no apparent reason whatsoever! Her casting ruined the film completely as far as I'm concerned. I adore Stevens' films up to around "Shane" but his work then began to suffer from a bad case of epic-itis (David Lean's later films suffered the same problem) and similar casting blunders (still not convinced by a lot of the casting in "Giant").