I thought James Stewart was terribly wrong in the role of Rupert. I would have LOVED to see George Sanders. He would have carried the intelligence, condescension, supercilliousness, coldness, charm, gayness, and palyful sadism that was supposed to be Rupert.
Heck, James didn't even know his character was supposed to be gay.
I was all set to dissagree with you because I've always loved this movie and wouldn't think of changing a thing. That's just it. I didn't think.
You are so right. George Sanders would have been 100% better in the role of Rupert. It's a shame that Hitchcock didn't think of him.
Fasten your seatbelts.... It's going to be a bumpy night!
I agree with you. While Jimmy Stewart is one of the greatest actors of all time, he just didn't feel right. Hitchcock first choice for "Rupert" was Cary Grant-but he turned it down because he disagreed with the Gay subtext. I think Cary Grant would have brought a more playboy manner to the role, but I don;t know if he could bring the remorse part of his role in the end-like stewart did.
Despite what I said, Steawrt's carried the film well and did a good job in the last 10-15 minutes of the filmm where he expresses regret for teaching the boys what he taught them when he was thier teacher in thier youth.
1+1=2****2+2=4****That is the truth your honor*****the truth for help me God
Jay
I thought James Stewart was right for the role Rupert Cadell. Hitchcock himself was satisfied with casting of James Stewart. Arthur Laurents (Screenwriter of Rope) doesn't know that Rupert Cadell in the film and in the play are totally different. For the film, Hitchcock called his friend Hume Cronyn for writing the adaptation.
In the adaptation, they changed lots of things. Some of these explanations are available in this link.
http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=939
well, watpho I can think of one person who would agree with you. James Stewart himself felt he was badly miscast in the role and said this the only one of the four movies he had with Hitchcock that he did not like.
shareJames Stewart thought he was the wrong person to play a character like Rupert Cadell. This is because he was thinking about Rupert Cadell in the play who is very different.
shareI thought he was good enough for the part. He played a few off beat characters in his career such as the clown in The Greatest Show on Earth and did well in them. He was really terrific in this movie in the last ten minutes. He didn't think he was right for it but I still think he did good.
shareI am currently reading Farley Granger's autobiography, INCLUDE ME OUT......
Don't get me wrong here. He didn't say that he had any problem with Jimmy Stewart. He simply says that James Mason might have been a good choice for the part of Rupert. I have to say that's interesting. What do you think?
Fasten your seatbelts.... It's going to be a bumpy night!
i loved james stewart in this :) when he finally appears on screen thats when the party realli begins lol as he brings alot of tension, uneasyness and mystery to his character. he seems more aware then the others and observing which he acts very well....especially the end part after he finally opens the trunk, i just thought he did well with acting as that character:)
x
I agree that James Stewart was great in the role. I especially love his speach toward the end where he finally looks inside the trunk and he's shouting at them. That line about serving dinner off that poor boy's grave still gives me the chills! I think the OP was simply suggesting who may have possibly been more interesting in the role of Rupert. George Sanders really would have been a wonderful choice. I can picture him as Rupert.
I can also certainly see what Farley Granger meant when he was thinking of James Mason in the role. That really would have been great too. Both actors would have been interesting choices.
Fasten your seatbelts.... It's going to be a bumpy night!
awwww im not familiar with them actors lol so i cant really comment. where they quite well known around that time?
and i just love James Stewart haha i have the Hitchcock box set so i try to watch them as much as i can. I especially love him in Vertigo:)
xx
Yes, both actors were and are well known.
If you ever get the chance, you may want to watch the early 1960's version of Lolita. James Mason was fantastic in that. He was a great actor.
As for films with George Sanders, you may even have one if you have some Hitchcock films. He was in Rebecca... (Rebecca's sleazy cousin)
May I also suggest a few other films that I love with George Sanders?
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
All About Eve.(1950)
Village Of The Damned. (1960)
As for James Stewart, He's in one of my favorite Hitchcock films.....
Rear Window.
Nice chatting with you.
Fasten your seatbelts.... It's going to be a bumpy night!
I thought Stewart was good overall, but he did give one particular line of dialog a weak reading. After Philip gets angry with Brandon for telling the chicken-strangling story, Rupert (Stewart) says "Well, one more moment and you two might have been strangling EACH OTHER." He says the words "EACH OTHER" in a very self-conscious and unnatural way, over-emphasising the irony of the words.
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In a way
shareGeorge Sanders may well have been better casting than James Stewart for the role of Rupert, but as a reality, it was quite impossible, because in 1948...
...George Sanders wasn't a "bankable" top leading man.
Indeed, Hitchcock had a little trouble with Stewart's bankability. Hitchcock began "Rope" as a project for Cary Grant, but Grant backed out at the last minute. The moneymen who would have financed "Rope" at a fairly high level with Grant in it lowered their investment when Hitchcock could "only" get James Stewart as a replacement.
Hitchocck complained about this situation for many years. No matter how he ENVISIONED a movie hero, he had to hire from the established list of bankable stars. And stars like William Holden, Gary Cooper, and Clark Gable turned him down.
James Stewart appeared in four Hitchocck films, a tied record with Cary Grant. Some think it is because Stewart was a "favorite star" of Hitchcock's.
Maybe...but also because Stewart would always say "yes" to a Hitchcock role, when other stars said no. Grant did four Hitchcock pictures as well...but turned down about eight more.
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For the record, I think that James Stewart well fits Rupert because Stewart was good at playing overemotional, rather weak males with a certain "psychotic strength." Stewart is a darn good smart ass in the early stages of "Rope"(more irritating than I think the suave and more amiable Cary Grant would have been), and then he goes all righteous and raging at the end, in the James Stewart manner ("I NEVER wanted my words to have that meaning!" -- justifying murder).
Sanders was at or near the top of his game when Rope was being cast. Do you really think that backers would have said, "oh no, not George Sanders, he hasn't had a hit in years!"? Sanders had appeared in several successful films in the five years prior to Rope. My sense is that although Hitchcock himself probably preferred a bigger name for Cadell, that Sanders' tendency to give off gay or bisexual vibes would have been too much for a project already on thin ice.
Stewart works for me, as I accept the film as a product of its time, and at the time a star like Stewart almost had to be cast in the lead. James Mason wasn't yet working in Hollywood at that time, though he was on the verge of leaving England for the States. He was still in his young, brooding lord of the manor who mentally torments the leading lady phase (Odd Man Out notwithstanding), and he wasn't that well known in the States, so he'd have been a stretch on many levels. Had the film been made five years later Mason probably would have been cast as Cadell.
Here's a good one: Fredric March. I can see March making a more convincing schoolmaster or professor type than Stewart. He had that inward quality. On screen he came off as smarter than Stewart in many films, or maybe I should say played smarter. Stewart was extremely intelligent, tended not to "play" intelligent, while March often did.
Robert Montgomery would have made a fine second choice had Stewart become unavailable at the last moment. Stewart had a stronger screen persona than Montgomery, more assertive anyway. Also, he had an air of moral authority that the more debonair Montgomery didn't have, again, on screen. Metro's second string Montgomery, Franchot Tone, was a superb actor who seldom got a chance to shine in films, was nearing the end of his leading man days on screen. My sense is that he could have been startlingly good. Tone could really surprise you. Downside: he was at best an A- list player by 1947-48, probably wouldn't have been in the running. Sanders was likely stronger at that time.
Lots of people like Rope. Personally, I think it's one of Hitchcock's weaker pictures. And I'm with the masses who reckon Stewart is miscast.
But while we're playing this game, I nominate....http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001647/
Maybe?
First, I want to say I'm a big George Sanders fan, and I personally wish he HAD been a bigger star(I'm not sure why; I wouldn't have earned any of his money -- but we like to "root" for actors, don't we?)
He just never seemed to make it "all the way up." In "Rebecca," Olivier has the lead. In "Foreign Correspondent," Joel McCrea has the lead(though I find McCrea and Sanders rather a "buddy team" of US and British heroes for a movie that desperately wanted the Yanks to help the Brits in WWII.)
Near the time of "Rope," I find Sanders having to take billing below Rex Harrison("The Ghost and Mrs. Muir") and second to Cornel Wilde in another film, though it looks like in "Lured" (with a serious Lucille Ball), Sanders had the lead.
Sanders got his two Hitchcocks, but I think he would have also been fine in the Ray Milland role in "Dial M" and the James Mason role in "North by Northwest." Alas, those other two men were just seen as "bigger stars."
I wonder if those Gabor sister marriages dun him in? In any event, the tough truth on Sanders is that his quite right Oscar win in 1950 was for Best SUPPORTING Actor("All About Eve.")
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I have read that Hitchcock wasn't too happy "getting stuck" with James Stewart for Rope. Hitchcock didn't really see Stewart as "a Hitchcock hero"(he'd always felt that Gary Cooper was the perfect Hitchcock man), and Stewart had less bankability than Cary Grant because Stewart was in his wobbly "post-war phase" -- from which it would take the tough "Winchester '73" of 1950 to rescue Stewart and his career for the 50's.
Hitchcock made "Rope" for his independent company, Transatlantic Pictures. In the waning studio era, I don't know if that cut Hitchcock off from male stars who were linked to studios. I think the main reason that Stewart got Rope is that Hitch had hooked up with Superagent Lew Wasserman, and Jimmy was the top Wasserman male client. I THINK.
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James Mason would have been an interesting choice for Rupert...given that James Mason is a point of party discussion when the guests start talking movies! Talk about "meta."
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I have used another "parlor game" to offer what you may find an unlikely choice for Rupert:
Humphrey Bogart.
It goes like this: The American Film Institute ranked as the three greatest male Golden Era stars:
1. Bogart
2. Grant
3. Stewart
And Hitchcock worked with two of them. Would have rough, tough Humphrey Bogart have fit into Hitchocck's universe? In which films?
Very few, I'm afraid. But Bogart himself had a real-life reputation for showing up at parties and acting superior towards the other guests; he could have "played himself," I think, and made a better Rupert than James Stewart. And Hitchcock would have had his Bogie movie, and Bogart would have had his Hitchcock movie.
Bogart was pretty strictly a Warners man in the 40's; I don't know if Hitchcock could have lured him away for other possible fits: the John Hodiak role in "Lifeboat" and the Cary Grant role in "Notorious"(which would have made it "Casablanca 2" with a happy ending!) Bogart could have conceivably done Uncle Charlie.
Came the fifties, Bogart was pretty haggard looking, but I think he might have worked in "Rear Window" -- the rugged outdoor photographer stuck in New York City. That's about it.
Trivia: Bogart IS in a Hitchcock movie: "I Confess." Monty Clift walks by a Quebec movie theater playing the Bogart movie "The Enforcer." He sees a publicity still from the film of a man in handcuffs, thinks about his fate.
Trivia: Hitchcock and Bogart were both born in 1899, Hitchcock in August, Bogie in December(Xmas Day.)
And yet cancer killed Bogart at age 57. Hitchcock lived on to 80, and the movie he directed at 57 was Vertigo.
Think of all the Hitchcock classics we would have lost if HITCHCOCK died at 57.
And think of all the Bogart classics we lost because he did.
I think that Bogart could have been an excellent Rupert, EC, but by the time the film was being made he was a top star with an image inconsistent with the personality of Rupert Cadell, and while he would occasionally stretch himself, try other things, he never stepped out of the macho world, would not play a man whom some might see as a "sissy", Bogart was himself raised in affluence, was a preppie, of the upper classes if not the very rich, therefore, as he tended to play tough guys, was understandably guarded as to matters pertaining to his image. Hell's Kitchen kid Jimmy Cagney could and did play a mama's boy headcase in White Heat and get away with it because he had grown up poor, was a tough guy, or tough enough anyway, and confident enough to allow himself to be photographed sitting in his (screen) mother's lap. Imagine Bogie doing that!
While I have no idea whether Bogart was a homophobe I have no doubt that he was one regarding his screen image. The character of Cadell was, as mentor of the peculiar young men in Rope, implicitly homosexual, if not an out of the closet gay then a closeted one. This is not presented in the film, so Cadell's gayness or gayishness is never front and center as an issue, yet one can infer as much from his character just as we can infer the same from his young students. With Jimmy Stewart in the role, which as soon as he shows up strains credulity, the homosexual issue is put to rest, as Stewart's manner is pretty much the same as when he appeared in Frank Capra's films. Also, Stewart wasn't afraid of showing vulnerability, even outright weakness; at times he seemed to revel in it. Bogart, for the most part, shied away from it. Yet I can see him, as a serious actor, tackling the role, triumphing in it, but not utilizing the screen persona he had, by 1948, been cultivating for over a decade, and being paid handsomely for his efforts, too.
The idea of Bogart in a Hitchcock film is a little hard, but fun, to imagine. I think the trouble is that Bogart's screen image was either that of cynic, world-weary romantic or nutcase. But a prep-school housemaster turned publisher who discusses the concepts of Nietzsche's Übermensch? That's a bit of a stretch.
Considering the longevity of Hitchcock's career, he actually only worked with a relatively small number of the AFI's Top 25 "screen legends" (http://connect.afi.com/site/DocServer/stars50.pdf?docID=262 (I make it five of the male stars, and four of the female).
So, yes, why not Burt Lancaster as 'Manny' Balestrero, William Holden as 'Scottie' Ferguson, Kirk Douglas as Uncle Charlie, or Marlon Brando as Mark Rutland (!) ?
And could Liz Taylor or Ava Gardner have played a brunette Judy Barton? Could either Lauren Bacall or Audrey Hepburn handled any of Grace Kelly's three roles?
Perhaps one day, we won't have to speculate. Technology will allow any star to be transplanted into any role at the touch of a button.
Other than James Stewart, I can see Cary Grant or George Sanders for the role of Rupert.
And I prefer the way Hitchcock films ended up.
Hitchcock was no big director in 1940s. So he always ended up with second best or third best during that time.
So, yes, why not Burt Lancaster as 'Manny' Balestrero, William Holden as 'Scottie' Ferguson, Kirk Douglas as Uncle Charlie, or Marlon Brando as Mark Rutland (!) ?
And could Liz Taylor or Ava Gardner have played a brunette Judy Barton? Could either Lauren Bacall or Audrey Hepburn handled any of Grace Kelly's three roles?
Perhaps one day, we won't have to speculate. Technology will allow any star to be transplanted into any role at the touch of a button.
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Maybe we can interchange them?
Actually, one of your castings WAS given serious consideration: Marlon Brando as Mark Rutland. Brando was rather stuck in a long-term contract at Universal in the 60's, just as Hitchcock was, and "Marnie" was at least discussed as a role for him. Given that his Universal contract lasted the entire sixties, I think that Brando could have played the leads in "Torn Curtain" and "Topaz"(with a French accent) as well. But I have found a Hitchcock interview where he says the following: "I would never use Marlon Brando or Frank Sinatra in a picture, because those men direct themselves."
Hitchcock told Truffaut that he wished the tougher Burt Lancaster had played Joseph Cotten's part in "Under Capricorn," but there is no record of an offer being made.
And MGM contract star Elizabeth Taylor was considered to play Eve Kendall in the MGM picture, "North by Northwest."
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Ultimately, Hitchcock made too few movies with too many stars available for the parts, and Grant and Stewart landed 8 big ones.
I would expect that a wide array of MALE stars were uncastable by Hitchcock because he required his men to play EITHER "regular guys"(like Jimmy Stewart did) or suave playboys(like Cary Grant did.) Either way, these men had to be rather weak and initially overcome by the dangers facing them. Tough guys like Cagney, Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster...John Wayne! Just didn't fit(though I think that the raging Dr. Ben McKenna in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" could have been played by Wayne...if he wasn't cast as a doctor.)
That started to change in the sixties, as Hitchcock cast such macho guys as Rod Taylor, Sean Connery, and Paul Newman. In the seventies, Hitchcock TRIED to cast Burt Reynolds, Roy Scheider and Steve McQueen(in one case to act in a movie of an Elmore Leonard novel.)
But for the lion's share of the Hitchcock career(in America, at least), the men were a weaker lot: Olivier, George Sanders(though he was a big man and could play two-fisted), Robert Montgomery, Bob Cummings, Joel McCrea, Michael Wilding, Farley Granger...
...he just didn't go for macho back then.
Hitchcock didn't like working with Method Actors, because they asked directors too much questions.
I think Lancaster was approached. But the salary he wanted was too high. Ingrid Bergman wanted $250,000. So Hitchcock decided to go for a star with a low salary. So he picked Joseph Cotten.
An interesting take on "where Bogart was" at that point in time.
For my part, (and this will tie into my response to a post below), I WISH that Bogart had made a Hitchcock film, if only because I'm among those who, indeed, enjoyed Bogart.
Funny thing: early in "The Big Sleep," Bogart affects a "silly stage gay" persona that leads to a surprise twist: he uses the characterization to seduce a book store clerk(then-sultry Dorothy Malone) in yet another "buried" reference to sexual reality. (It seems pretty clear to me that the two enjoy a "mid-afternoon quickie," but 1946 audiences were given no conclusive clue.
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Openly gay "Rope" star Farley Granger says that HE believes Stewart had no thought whatsoever that Rupert was gay, because Stewart couldn't conceive of BEING gay..and so, as a matter of performance, Stewart isn't.
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This strikes me as an interesting place to take up, albeit briefly, the stardom of Jimmy Stewart in general.
You'll find that posts at imdb find James Stewartand "miscast for Rope" and "too old for Vertigo" and "too old for Grace Kelly in Rear Window." It seems that the only James Stewart Hitchocck role to pass muster is his Dr. Ben McKenna in "The Man Who Knew Too Much," in which Stewart is playing a rather staid and square married man with a child.
That said, Hitchocck seems to have really WANTED Stewart for "Rear Window," "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Vertigo." There is no mention of other actors being offered those three roles -- not even Cary Grant, who could have played the first two of them.
So part of the issue, I think, is that MODERN young audiences simply don't get Jimmy Stewart and his very special kind of American stardom.
Guys like Cary Grant, William Holden, Rock Hudson were "conventionally handsome" and could take off their shirts for beefcake scenes. At a certain point in time, "stringbean Jimmy" could not do beefcake(his brief shirtless moment in "Rear Window" on the rubdown table gets laughs)...and Stewart had a spectacularly EMOTIONAL approach to his work, not as "manly" as, say...ha...Rock Hudson.
This emerges in "Rope" when Stewart has his final showdown with the two young killers...Stewart really delivers on a rage that is "near breakdown." It is great acting of a sort...but the guy just wasn't too "cool," and I think modern audiences have a lot of trouble with the "Jimmy Stewart persona."
And yet: Clint Eastwood was asked if John Wayne was his role model, and Eastwood said, "actually I prefer James Stewart", which makes sense, given Stewart's penchant for rage in his Hitchcock films (I can see EASTWOOD as the righteous papa in "Man Who Knew Too Much") and Stewart's famous "Anthony Mann westerns of the 50's" in which Stewart could simultaneously bawl like a baby and beat the living hell out of male opponents.
A very weird career.
Hitchcock tried to get William Holden, but for the wrong roles: Guy in "Strangers on a Train," Sam in "The Trouble With Harry." I think if Hitch had offered Holden, say "Rear Window" or "The Man Who Knew Too Much," Holden might have said "yes" and Hitch would have had yet another Hitchcock hero. (Holden would have been fine for "North by Northwest," but Grant was just a bit better.)
Though critics hold James Stewart as one of the greatest actors of all time(Cary Grant said that Stewart was Brando before Brando was Brando), I think perhaps Hitchcock worked with him so much because he wasn't tempermental, Lew Wasserman ran him, and...he was indeed a big box office star in the 50's.
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I suppose this all begs the question as to whether James Stewart was miscast in "Rope." Others would have been better cast(Fredric March is a fine choice, and HE was a name in '48; Hitchcock had wanted him for "Spellbound," I've read), but Stewart is who we've got.
And I think he rather makes the movie his own. Stewart seems EMINENTLY well-cast as a smart-ass to me; his lugubrious way of speaking and ornery way of looking at people was always off-putting to me. This works for Rupert just fine -- we WANT this jerk to get his emotional comeuppance.
Or as Farley Granger said, "Stewart couldn't really come to grips with the fact that he was playing a heavy in this movie."
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Going out where I came in: I think Bogart could have pulled it off. "In a Lonely Place" and "Beat the Devil" say its so.
At the very least Rupert has to be presented as a hypocrite. To say all the subversive things he does in the role of an authority figure and then get on his very high moral horse at the end just doesn't work. Stewart is wrong for the role. He just couldn't align that conflict believably.
(I think Stewart is great in about ten other movies.)
And of course, in the gay context, Monty Wooley would have nailed it.
At the very least Rupert has to be presented as a hypocrite. To say all the subversive things he does in the role of an authority figure and then get on his very high moral horse at the end just doesn't work. Stewart is wrong for the role. He just couldn't align that conflict believably.Agreed, and very well put. To me, he came across from the start like he took none of it seriously. He insisted he was, but his whole manner said otherwise.
THANK YOU. I'm a Stewart fan but he was totally wrong for this. For one thing, Stewart himself just didn't seem bright enough - his entire range consists of looking as though he were experiencing deep flashes of self-congratulatory insight followed by condescendingly slashing to ribbons the logical inconsistencies voiced by others with his rapier-like intellect. For that matter, I have to wonder why this supposed paragon of ivory tower brilliance had been headmaster in a prep school rather than enjoying a cushy tenured research position in REAL academia. Too much of a stretch for me on several levels although I think it's an interesting film.
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