A bit of a morbid thread perhaps, but I’m trying to get some examples of movies where starring actors died during filming – either on set or off, but the movies went on to be completed. Any “giveaway” scenes where you can tell a stand-in was used, or previous scenes reused, etc., are a bonus.
Two that I can think off straight off:
The Crow (Brandon Lee)
Gladiator (Oliver Reed)
Any others?
Victor Morrow, The Twilight Zone
Bela Lugosi, Plan Nine from Outer Space
Orson Welles - Transformers: The Movie (original 80s cartoon obviously)
Leonard Nimoy (who also played Galvatron) overdubbed many of his uncompleted lines with the help of some audio tricks and the filmmakers admit they don’t know which lines belong to Welles and which belong to Nimoy.
John Candy died in Mexico while filming Wagons east. I didn’t care for the movie so I can’t give any details on stand ins used.
I don’t know if you’d count this, but Superman Returns used canned footage of Marlon Brando as Jor-El (from the first movie) long after Brando’s death.
If you count TV, when Nancy Marchand died during filming of The Sopranos they had some awkward edited bits of her before her character died. I wish they had just gotten the phone call instead of what they ended up doing.
If memory serves they rewrote the movie to have John Candy’s character die.
Vic Morrow died along with two other Asian actors while filming a scene for Twilight Zone - the Movie
Gloria Foster, who played The Oracle in the Matrix movies died during filming of the second installment.
Did any of those mentioned above (with the exception of Brandon Lee and Vic Morrow) actually die on the movie set?
…
James Dean’s fatal car wreck on Sep/30/55 was after principal photography for Giant was completed, but some of his lines in the scene where he’s alone and drunk in the large dining hall were dubbed by another actor. I believe the actor mentioned most often is Nick Adams. This link supports that version.
Marilyn Monroe died during filming of Something’s Got To Give.
Not a movie, but Jon-Eric Hexum (sp?) died on the set of the television series Close-Up of a self-inflicted point-blank gunshot wound. Hexum had mistakedly though blanks ejected no material from the barrel. He put a prop gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
If by “during filming” you mean “before release” there are plenty of examples – Pedro Armandariz, for example, died of cancer before the release of From Russia With Love.
I suspect you don’t, though.
I should have been more specific – I really meant “before filming was complete” such that the movie had to be either rewritten or completed using stand-ins etc.
Not really – Lugosi was already dead when Ed Wood started crafting (if that’s the word for it) the movie around a few snippets of Lugosi footage.
Marty Feldman died during filming of Yellowbeard, at the age of 49.
from the imdb:
I think it was spelled “Jon-Erik.”
A very handsome man he was, but from all I’ve read, not very bright.
I know his heart was transplanted. I wonder if there’s any way to learn if it’s still beating inside someone’s chest? If so, then he’s not entirely dead, even today.