Sorry, but I got a couple movie facts:
1.Frank Sinatra (among others) turned down the role of Harry Callahan.
2.James Cameron didn’t think O.J. Simpson was scary enough to play the Terminator.
Too bad he didn’t have him wear gloves! 
Sinatra turned down the role because his hand was injured at the time and he was unable to do it. The role was then offered to John Wayne who turned it down because he didn’t want Sinatra’s rejects, and he was busy with other films. He also didn’t like the idea of playing the role of a rogue cop. Wayne later regretted it.
On Star Trek, the prop manager bought some very strange looking salt and pepper shakers to use in the Enterprise’s mess room. The actors and directors decided the audience wouldn’t recognize the shakers as shakers, so they were used as medical equipment in McCoy’s sick bay.
I realize this is meant to be hilariously ironic in light of subsequent events, but Cameron was right. Simpson never did have a very formidable screen presence, IMO. He was at his best as the hapless butt of the joke in the *Naked Gun *films.
Say what you will about Arnold’s acting skills, but the man sure can play intimidating.
…And the salt/pepper shakers they did use were ordinary 20th-century ones borrowed from the studio commissary!
Somebody in the prop department made a mockup of what they thought the USS Enterprise should look like. Roddenberry picked it up upside down and thought it was perfect. That’s what they went with.
Jeremy Brett (of blessed memory) was THE BEST Sherlock Holmes ever. Bar none.
In January, 1966, “Lost in Space” aired a two-part episode called “The Keeper,” about an interplanetary “menagerie” (which word was used in that ep), and the title character (Michael Rennie) wanted one or more of the Robinsons (or Smith) to join.
In November 1966, “Star Trek” aired a two-part episode called “The Menagerie” which featured a number of *interplanetary critters which featured a character that Spock referred to as “The Keeper” (a name that did not exist in the unaired “The Cage” pilot that the two-parter was wrapped around).
Probably just coincidence, but interesting.
OK, it’s not an odd ‘behind the scenes’ situation.
*Which I believe were edited out of “Menagerie,” and appeared only in “The Cage.”
Jorge Garcia, who very famously played Hurley, tried out for Sawyer.
They loved him and created Hurley just for him, making him the first casting of LOST.
I think that originally Gene Hackman was supposed to play the father on “Brady Bunch” but was replaced because they didn’t feel he was very well-known to television audiences. His big break “French Connection” came a few years after.
Wasn’t “Married with Children” supposed to be holding the time slot until Fox could get a show with George C Scott as POTUS ready to air?
Cybill Shepherd says in her autobiography that originally they were going to have another actor play David Addison. They later cast him as the guy Maddie married when she was on a cross country train trip. Audiences HATED this actor (Dennis Dugan) and he was quickly dropped.
IN “Gilligan’s Island” the boat in named “Minnow” after the former FCC boss Newton Minow who famously called television a vast wasteland. Gilligan came from a phone book as creator Sherwood Schwartz wanted a name that was both plausible and a little bit silly.
The character of Harry on 3rd Rock from the Sun was envisioned as a fat couch potato who just sat around doing nothing but get messages from
The Big Giant Head. But when French Stewart came in to audition, he just looked “so much like an alien” that the role was rewritten for him.
When someone asked “Who would be perfect for the role of Dick Solomon?” someone responded “John Lithgow?” The producers offered and he accepted.
Barney Stinson was originally such a minor character in How I Met Your Mother that, when Neil Patrick Harris ws offered the role, his agent told him not to take it. But he did. And made TV history with his portrayal.
Shaggy’s real name is Norville Rogers.
The Skipper’s real name was Jonas Grumby.
The Professor’s real name was Roy Hinkley.
Gilligan’s first name was Willie.
Lovey Howell had two different first names. In the pilot episode, the radio mentions that the ship is missing, and refers to her as Lovey Howell. In another episode, the Professor refers to Mr. and Mrs. Howell as “Thurston and Lovey.” But another episode has the radio announcing her as Eunice.
Normally, I’d chalk “Lovey” up to being a nickname based off of Thurston’s pet name for her, the fact that she was referred to as “Lovey” by the radio announcer in the pilot seems to indicate that she had two different first names during the show’s run.
One of the major reasons Richard Moll was cast as Bull on Night Court was the fact that at 6’8" he could legitimately tower over Harry Anderson and John Larroquette, both of whom are 6’4", and getting an actor with that much height AND good comic timing is not easy.
In fact, by the time the final cast was set in the later seasons, Night Court had a remarkably tall cast - the shortest of the male regulars - Charles Robinson, who played Mac - is 6’3", and Marsha Warfield (Roz) is 5’11. Only Markie Post isn’t remarkably above average, though I forget, just now, how tall she is.
The end result is recurring secondary characters Phil Sanders, Buddy Ryan, and Bob Wheeler - played by William Utay, John Astin, and Brent Spiner - look positively wee by comparison, despite all 3 actors being average height.
Er…random free association aside…another interesting bit of trivia - Bull wasn’t initially conceived as being bald - Moll had shaved his head for another role (Hurok, in Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn), and everyone agreed the look worked for him, so, we got a bald Bull.
(After I wrote that sentence, I was so tempted to make essentially that joke…figured I may as well leave it to other people.)
One I heard from Sherwood Schwartz, who told me that Gilligan didn’t really have an ‘official’ first name:
The Brady Bunch’s dog Tiger was originally played by a well trained older female dog in the earlier episodes. In later episodes the original dog was replaced (after she died) by her son, who was not as well trained but looked exactly the same.
There were at least two or three scenes where Tiger was to be laying down in the boys’ shared room, but the dog just would not stay put, and it kept wrecking shots by getting up during the scene.
So, losing film and options, the decision was made to nail Tiger’s collar to the floor to keep him in place for the whole scene.
I keep watching reruns to see if I can spot that…
Tim
“toy geek”
Check out the cast intros for the 1991-92 season of Saturday Night Live. When Phil Hartman’s name is announced, look to his left. See the woman with the obviously-swinging earring? That’s his wife, Brynn Hartman, who would later murder Phil before killing herself. It’s a little strange to me that they continued to show that same image of Phil and his murderer together whenever they aired that season in reruns, for years afterward. For all I know, they still do.
My all time favorite Shaggy fact is that he was voiced by none other than American Top 40s Casey Kasem. That’s just awesome.
Hell, according to IMDB he last voiced the role in 2009. I have a new hero.
There’s a scene in The Brady Bunch that takes place in their driveway where Greg is a little clumsy and kind of laughs at his clumsiness, in a kind of stoned way.
That’s because Barry Williams was, in fact, stoned.
And, some early episodes of The Next Generation have men wearing similar dresses. I think the idea was that gender-specific clothing was a thing of the past in the new, updated future.
Paul Ford (Col. Hall in the Phil Silvers Show) and John Hamilton (Perry White in the Adventures of Superman) were notorious for forgetting their lines in the middle of shooting. The producers’ solution was to have Silvers pick up on Ford’s hesitation and ad-lib “Do you mean to tell me…” and to have Hamilton speak while seated at his desk, fumbling through papers, which happened to include the script.