But he and Bogart couldn't agree on whose name should get top billing. Studio execs suggested both men's names on the same screen, but the actors objected that it would appear to read "Spencer Bogart and Humphrey Tracy". So Spencer refused to be in the movie and Fredric March was cast instead.
shareGood Lord, what egos! Why did Frederic March agree to take second billing?
sharei know bogie brought box office and was a really fine actor too
but frederic march was the finest actor ive ever seen on screen bar none
no offense to anybody but i never went out of my way to see a spenser tracy movie
anything w/ bogie or march tho ... yeah let's go to the movies for sure
In looking at the posters for this flick, Bogie and March are both above the title. That would be good enough for me to take second billing if I were a big star in those days lol. Kudo's to March, who was a great actor.
..."We all have it coming kid"...
Tracy and Bogart actually rehearsed scenes from the script at their homes in preparation for this movie, until the billing issue came between them. For these two top stars and highly regarded actors, top billing was something they'd worked for for years. It was a matter of professional pride as well as ego. They feared that if they yielded the top spot once, they'd be forced to do it again.
The two were also going to be cast by director John Huston in his proposed film The Man Who Would Be King in 1954 or '55. Bogart even announced it on Edward R. Murrow's program "Person to Person" in 1954. But Huston couldn't get the project off the ground back then. It would be twenty more years before he finally got to film it, with Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Personally, I think Bogie and Tracy were way too old for the roles by the mid-fifties anyway, and undoubtedly the same billing issue would have arisen with this film too.
March had his ego too but cared more about the part than the billing, and he was realistic about his box-office standing, as he was moving into character parts by then.
Interesting that the billing solution Paramount proposed and the men rejected was resurrected in 1974 to solve the billing problem in The Towering Inferno. Neither Steve McQueen nor Paul Newman would yield first place, so putting their names on the lower left and upper right proved to be an acceptable compromise. (Most people assumed McQueen, on the left, was the lead.) McQueen had long wanted to co-star in a movie with Newman (not including his bit in Newman's second film, Somebody Up There Likes Me), and had turned down Butch Cassidy over the billing issue, but probably felt TTI would be his last chance -- as it proved to be.
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March always got Tracy's cast off Roles.
share