Ginger's Susan Hayward Message Board: To reach If You Knew Susie by Trish Sharp, click the profile photo at www.facebook.com/susanhaywardclassicfilmstar and you will see the link.
I always thought it was poor casting in "Snows"....Ava's and Susan's roles should have been reversed. Susan and Gregory Peck had good chemistry (David and Bathsheba). Their relationship would have been believable.
One of Susan's strong points was that she was indeed
liked by both men and women. Men looked upon her as strong and beautiful. Women didn't seem to mind that she was beautiful. They liked the persona of "strong"
and "been there, done that"...which she projected on the screen.
I agree with Ginger on the poor casting bit and have always wondered 'how' that casting came about, since
Peck and Susan were both at Fox...but Ava was not!
She would have still been under contract to MGM.
Eventhough Susan's role was not as big as Ava's, it was Susan who got billing over her. Susan had just made a pile of money for 20th and the buzz was still going over her performance in "With a Song in my Heart"...Otherwise, top billing in the females should have gone to Ava Gardner.
My mother did not have ANY close relationships with leading women of her day. She was close to Jeff Chandler because they had know each other from high school. My mom was a loner and an isolator - comes with the disease of alcoholism. Aloof? Not really, she was scared to death of people and that FEAR was manifested as arrogance or seeming aloofness.