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.
It is interesting when someone makes a particular role so utterly and uniquely theirs- it is hard to imagine someone else, even Susan in some cases, playing the part.
The DOUBLE INDEMNITY support role would have been interesting casting as I imagine it would have been the one and only time the two Brooklyn bombshells shared a film on screen.
Susan would have eaten up most of those Noir / crime dramas like DARK WATERS and had she landed SECOND CHANCE it would have again paired her with Bob Mitchum.
I must admit I can't go past Mitzi Gaynor in SOUTH PACIFIC and Shirl MacLaine in CAN CAN. They seemed so perfectly cast.
But the one that gob-smacked me was WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE!!
Bette was around age 56 or so when she played that role. It was set in the current era of early 60's and considering that Baby Jane Hudson was a child star way back when....that would have been about right.
Susan was aged? about 47 at the time. And looking well under that. Yes make up and scraggly hair and good acting could have aged her considerably- but why bother doing all that with an actress when someone like Davis was 'ready-made' for the part at the time, as it were.
Joanie Crawford was virtually bang on Bette's age as well so casting them as sisters who had been contemporaries when they were kids was also ideal.
Susan just seems wildly inappropriate for THAT particular role I thought.
I agree that BABY JANE would have been wildly inappropriate for Susan - can't believe that snippet at all and it is the first time I have read anything about it. Maybe in someone's dreams?!
