"Starring Paul Newman And......"

William Goldman wrote the screenplay of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Jack Lemmon in mind for Butch and Paul Newman for Sundance.

Newman came aboard for Sundance, but the studio decided against Lemmon for Butch.

The hunt was on for another star -- AS BIG AS NEWMAN -- for "the other part." (Not necessarily for Butch, as we shall see.)

First up: Steve McQueen.

McQueen said he would do the film if he got top billing over Newman. Newman said "I was here first -- no." And McQueen dropped out.

It was that close -- we could have had Newman and McQueen as ...well one of them as Butch and one of them as Sundance.

Only five years later in The Towering Inferno, Newman and McQueen WOULD be in the same movie. The billing was "special" -- McQueen left and low; Newman right and high. Why didn't they try that for Butch? Maybe because in The Towering Inferno, McQueen and Newman only have three scenes together and anchor different parts of the movie(talking by phone.) It was easier for Newman and McQueen(somewhat rivals) to work in The Towering Inferno than in Butch, where they'd have to be together all the time.

With McQueen out, the search for "another big star" continued. Warren Beatty turned it down. Marlon Brando was vetoed.

Lesser lights like James Coburn and Robert Wagner(a Newman pal) were considered.

And finally Newman's wife Joanne Woodward recommended Robert Redford -- then a young, not terribly popular actor with one hit movie on his resume -- Barefoot in the Park, where he's a NYC lawyer, not an outlaw.

Newman approved Redford and instead of a movie with "two big stars", Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid became a movie with "one veteran major star and one new star" -- and Redford became as big as McQueen or Beatty almost overnight.

As McQueen was Newman's rival -- he'd started in a bit part in a movie STARRING Newman called "Somebody Up There Likes Me" and fought his way to equality; Redford would become Beatty's rival. The problem was evidently Beatty's , who wanted everybody to know that he turned down The Sundance Kid, and The Way We Were, and The Great Gatsby...

And oh: though Newman thought he was playing Sundance, director George Roy Hill said, "no, you are better for Butch."

And so a script that had been called "The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy" became a movie called "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."