“Blue sky casting” is a screenwriter’s trick — you imagine anyone you
like, living or dead, in a role, and that hekps you find the
character’s voice. If you’re writing for Jeff Goldblum or Michael
Redgrave, different things happen. What you probably shouldn’t ever do
is cast the person you were thinking of — there’s an exciting tension
that happens if you cast, say, Joan Cusack, in a role written with, say,
Myrna Loy in mind.
It’s also a fun exercise: here’s a fantasy cast list for Lewis
Carroll’s Alice books. I found as i was coming up with it that it was
tending to a mid-1950s feel, and naturally British. But it began when
Fiona proposed Peter Lorre as the Dormouse.
It turns out I’ve been carrying in my mind various casting ideas for Alice, and they cam tumbling out and were joined by others…
It just seems crazy that Kenneth Williams never played the Mad Hatter. Put it down to typecasting — the Carry On films,
though hugely popular, rendered all the actors uncastable in anything
other than sitcom or sex farce. The two main productions KW would have
been eligible for, Jonathan Miller’s rather wonderful TV Alice in Wonderland,
and the execrable musical ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, have
excellent Hatters in Peter Cook and Robert Helpmann respectively, but
Williams would have knocked it out the park.
It’s kind of obvious that Jimmy Edwards, extravagantly-tached comic
actor, should be the Walrus, but I think Norman Wisdom is very close to
Tenniel’s drawing of the Carpenter. It’s starting to look like this
production belongs in the mid-fifties to sixties.
Not for any physical resemblance, but the wide-eyed dithering innocence John le Mesurier brought to his work in Dad’s Army seems to suit the King of Hearts nicely. And he practically plays the role in Gilliam’s JABBERWOCKY.
I feel that Irene Handl deserves a crack at the Queen of Hearts —
though associated with working class roles (she argued with Billy Wilder
about how to play cockney dialogue), she was actually quite posh,
seemingly, and derived her characterisations from her observation of her
family’s maids when she was young. And she’s the most versatile and
surprising and funny of actors, seriously underused. (If you were doing
it later, Prunella Scales would be immense, and she’s a lot like
Dodgson’s own drawings.)
I’ve always seen Lionel Jeffries as the White Knight. He has such an
air of melancholy. I can never read the Knight’s verse without tears
springing unbidden to my eyes. Same with Lear’s The Jumblies: “Far and few, far and few…” an incantatory lament.
Okay, granted, Roger Livesey has to be a contender too.
Charles Gray as Humpty Dumpty, because.
When I look at Tenniel’s White Rabbit, I see Edward Everett Horton,
which makes it odd that Paramount cast him as the Mad Hatter in the 30s
version. They should have borrowed George Arliss for the Hatter and
given Horton the rabbit. Fuck Skeets Gallagher. But if we’re going for
anxious British players of the 1950s, maybe Alastair Sim? Or Alec
Guinness, but there you’d be opening up a can of worms. Who could he NOT
play? We know he’d make a magnificent Duchess:
And that’s a role which should really be done in drag, for
compassionate reasons. Peter Bull was pretty perfect in the seventies
abomination. Leo McKern would be good too.
Peter Sellers is maybe the only man to have played motion picture
versions of the March Hare AND the King of Hearts, and he’s another can
of worms if we let him in. But in the Miller piece he does the
unimaginable, improvising Lewis dialogue in character, so he should be
essential. Since this would be early, chubby Sellers, maybe we should be
thinking in terms of the caterpillar, a somewhat shadowy figure in the
illo.
If we’re having Sellers, then Spike Milligan would be a fine Frog
Footman (see YELLOWBEARD for some exemplary footmanning from SM).
Based on Tenniel, there can be no question that the White King and
Queen are Thorley Walters and Joan Sims. though Handl is another
possibility for the latter. The Red Queen could be Flora Robson or
Patricia Hayes, but I’m going for Yootha Joyce (energy) whereas the Red
King, apparently dreaming the whole thing like in INCEPTION, doesn’t
ever wake up and so it seems like wasted effort to cast a celebrated
thesp. Might as well be John Wayne.
Miller cast Finlay Currie as the Dodo, an impressive feat — the only
human actor to LOOK like a dodo. But he’s too old, since Dodgson based
this didactic fowl on himself, incorporating his stutter —
Do-do-Dodgson. Trying to find an actor not aged in the 1950s, with
Dodgson’s sad eyes and an impressive beak, I stop at Richard Wattis.
Cecil Parker, arch-ovine, must be the Sheep, a rarely-filmed
character but one with great material. I suppose the sheep should really
be female, but drag is allowed. We’re through the looking glass, here.
The Gnat also has some really good jokes, and is never presented
onscreen — perhaps because Tenniel didn’t deign to draw him. Another
tutelary figure — you can really tell the author is a lecturer — he
could really be played by anybody from Terry-Thomas to Robert Morley.
The latter is more pompous, so he’d do, but then for heaven’s sake why
not Noel Coward? Or Dennis Price, who quotes Lewis with relish in Mike
Hodges’ PULP?
Of course, given the period, we can have perhaps Britain’s greatest
child actor in the title role, Mandy Miller (MANDY, THE MAN IN THE WHITE
SUIT), and by happy coincidence it appears she’s a fan of the author:
Randy Cook suggests Benny Hill for the Cheshire Cat. What are your
thoughts? I presume that, like me, you have been carrying casting ideas
for Alice around in your heads for decades.
