Word: miscasts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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David Bryden seems slightly miscast as Lt. Barney Greenwald, counsel for the defense, in many ways the focal character of the play. He carries the part with a brashness and at times a gaucherie that seems entirely unfitted to the role, although he has a few redeeming moments. James Putnam as Lt. Thomas Keefer, male-volent, sarcastic intellectual, shows some signs of having thought about his part, although he tends toward overacting. The same might be said of David Galloway who is quite engaging in his brief appearance as Signalman Urban. William Balchelder as the senior officer of the court...
...anybody else has ever dared to. He throws it very cleverly indeed. The dancing girls are numerous, nubile and explicitly photographed. Yul Brynner. as the Pharaoh, swaggering barelegged across the screen, will delight his millions of feminine admirers. Even Moses, a part in which Charlton Heston is ludicrously miscast, looks less like a man who staggers into the desert to find God than one who flies to Palm Springs to freshen up his tan. According to the script, that was the kind of fellow Moses really was, at least as a young man. There are moments, in fact, when...
...Sister Joanna of the Cross, Julie Curtis displays a convincing maternal instinct in the first act, but later became insipid in her farewell scene with Teresa. Joyce White as Sister Marcella was miscast; she lacked the youth and radiance that this nun, who secretly keeps a mirror to catch sunbeams with, should have. In the male roles, Donald McAllister as the Doctor was stiff, formal, and didactic where he should have been casual, worldly, and sarcastic. As Antonio, Robert J. Morris was earnest enough, but substituted too much savoir faire and pompousness for what should have been a certain degree...
This is almost a great movie; Peck's portrayal of Ahab is virtually all that's wrong with it. The flaw is a considerable one, however, since an impassive, insipid Ahab robs Melville's story of its hottest fire and its deepest meaning. Peck is just utterly miscast. For one thing, he is too young, giving no impression whatever of having seen "forty years and one thousand lowerings" on whaling ships. His bland face has nothing of the torn, tortured, gnawed-at, fiery look that Ahab should have. Rather, as he paces the Pequod's deck, his long strides, suspenders...
Jane Slater, who plays the third of the damned souls, has somewhat more trouble than her colleagues, partly because she is miscast. While her part calls for an empty-headed doll who hides the murder of her child underneath an appearance of innocence, she can contribute only a sort of statusque intensity. But she tries hard, and at some moments brings her role to life. The only other member of the cast, John Mautner, manages to get some humor into his portrayal of an attendant in hell. Much of the success of all these actors can be credited to director...