MovieChat Forums > The Fountainhead (1949) Discussion > What were they thinking.....?

What were they thinking.....?

posted 9 years ago by wolf-w49
6 replies | jump to latest

A short list of actors who were 24 years old in 1949--Paul Newman, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Rock Hudson, Farley Granger, Rod Steiger, Hal Holbrook...

A short list of actors who were 25 or 26 years old in 1949--Marlon Brando, Chuck Heston, Cliff Robertson, Murray Hamilton...

Monty Clift and Tony Randall were 29. Jason Robards was 27.

Any of those actors would have been better--as the 23-year-old Howard Roark--than Gary Cooper was. Cooper was 48. He doesn't for one second pull off the illusion that he was just expelled from a college. The script and dialogue are bad enough, but Cooper was just a terrible miscast in this role. Even the best actors can't play characters half their age. Just an awful job by the studio.

[–] shiftylee 9 years ago

I agree. Hopefully Zack Synder is smart enough to cast a real 23 year old who resembles Rourk.

[–] dave3248-1 8 years ago

Ayn Rand insisted on Gary Cooper getting the role.

[–] twilliamson (126) 5 years ago

I agree with you. And I love Gary Cooper! He's so perfect for "High Noon", made three years later, where he gets to play a character around his actual age. But he's too grizzled and weary looking to play the idealistic young architect, especially at the beginning of this film.

[–] rudeboymurray (3290) 5 years ago

Agreed - Cooper is sorely miscast here (at Rand's insistence, as already noted above). He's a hit or miss actor for me (he could be awfully wooden) and this is a miss... he was in his late forties and from looking at him by this stage in his life could well have been well into his fifties... although there are things to admire in this ambitious film, including a luminous performance by Patricia Neal.

[–] raymondoz2007 (2098) 2 years ago

what about 60 year old Jimmy stewert playingn a 25 year old Charles lindbergh

[–] marktayloruk (2590) 7 months ago

Surely most of them were unknown then. I.believe that it should have been about ten years later with Patrick McGoohan - he looked the part.