Chris Fries
Master Film Handler
Posts: 399
From: Ohio, US
Registered: Aug 2011
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posted February 02, 2012 10:35 AM
Last fall I posted a super 8 digest of "JAWS 2" on Youtube and Marshall Crist asked about a blanked-out name in the credits. I told him who it was and then,
"What I find interesting is Lorraine Gary gets second billing and she is nowhere to be found in this cut-down."
It got me thinking. How many other digests have actors listed in the credits but never appear in the film?
I know some studios replaced the original credits. Ken did it with "Empire Strike Back" and "Alien" as did Warner for films like "Blazing Saddles". Then there are the Universal 8 and Marketing films. They mostly used the original credits but cut them very quickly and, as I mentioned earlier, some names got blocked.
And what about the box? A perfect example is the 1x400 "The Exorcist". Lee J. Cobb gets second billing on the cover yet he is not in the film at all. How often did that happen?
I also pointed out to him that Karen Allen and Donald Sutherland were completely missing from the 2x400 "Animal House".
What about actors that are cut altogether? Actors like Peter Ustinov in "Logan's Run", David Warner in "The Omen", and Murray Hamilton in "JAWS 2" (who, like Lorraine Gary, is credited but not in the film). Are they really expendable?
Then there are the blink-and-you'll-miss-them actors that originally had much more to do with the story. Robert Wagner in the 1953 "Titanic" and "The Towering Inferno", Madeline Kahn in "Blazing Saddles", Suzanne Pleshette in "The Birds", Katherine Ross in "Butch Cassidy", John Rhys-Davies in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and, in a performance that won her a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination, Shelly Winters in "The Poseidon Adventure".
And let us not forget Shelagh Fraser as Aunt Beru. Phil Brown as Uncle Owen is only seen buying C3PO. If someone were to watch "STAR WARS", any of the Ken versions, and for some strange reason never saw the original film, they would not know why Luke goes off with Obi Wan at all!
I suppose it depends on how much the character affects the story of the digest version.
You have to hand it to these digests editors. They had a very hard job cutting a 2 hour or longer movie down to 20 min. or less and still retain the story and feel of the original film.
So, what other digests are like this? Actors who are credited but missing or they are missing key actors?
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There's a great big beautiful tomorrow just a dream away.
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