In the original LASSIE TV series, the part of Timmy’s mother Ruth was played at different times by June Lockhart and Cloris Leachman.
The MAD ABOUT YOU revolving door parentage at least always upgraded. You can’t do much better than Carol Burnett and Carroll O’Connor as parental units for a sitcom. (Carol Burnett works wwwaaayyy too seldom in TV- I wonder if the offers just aren’t there or if she prefers not to?)
Interesting (if only to me) trivia about the second Burt Buchman (whose character was referred to as dead on one of the early episodes): the last/most frequent actor to play him was Louis Zorich. Zorich’s most memorable film role was as the constable in the movie version of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and while filming he was thrown from his horse (he’d never ridden before), causing his very pregnant wife who accompanied him to Yugoslavia to go into premature labor when she witnessed the accident. (He wasn’t seriously injured and made a full recovery before the filming was even over.) His wife was/is Olympia Dukakis, though at the time she was a stay-at-home (or go-to-Yugoslavia as the case may be) mother. (This is courtesy of the director’s commentary on the FIDDLER DVD.)
Aunt Esther was played by two actresses as a bit part on SANFORD AND SON before the divine Lawanda “Watch it Sucka!” Page was cast. I believe there was another Grady as well. A great disappointment in the First Season DVD is that it doesn’t feature Page, Whitman Mayo, or Don “Bubba” Bexley, all of whom were as influential in making the show so fantastic as the two stars.
Lionel #1 from The Jeffersons was Mike Evans, who retired from acting about halfway through the show to breed horses. If you’re wondering how he could afford to do this, he was one of the co-creators of the hit series GOOD TIMES, in which the youngest son was named Michael Evans. He was replaced on the series by an openly gay actor/opera singer named Damon Evans (no relation) who later moved to England.
It’s not at all uncommon for a different actor to be cast in a role for a series than was cast in the pilot. One example of this was MURDER SHE WROTE, in which Angela Lansbury took over the role originated by Jean Stapleton, who declined the series offer because her husband was dying of cancer. (She’s another actress who works too seldom.)
Diane Ladd played the role of Flo in the movie ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, but the role went to Polly Holliday in the series. When the character of Flo left the series she was replaced by a waitress named Belle who was played by… Diane Ladd. (Vic Tayback [ne’ Tabbak] played Mel in both versions.)
The roles of Mulcahy and Klinger were played by other actors when they were bit parts in the first season of MASH. Only Gary Burghoff was in both film and screen versions.
One odd case of another actor sorta kinda doing a switch was in the GODFATHER movies. A key element of Puzo’s script for GODFATHER II called for Michael’s betrayal by his own godfather and lifelong friend, Pete Clemenza, who would turn state’s evidence against him in the Kefauver hearings after mistakenly thinking Michael had ordered his assassination. Clemenza was played in a fantastic performance in GODFATHER I by Richard Castellano who was offered an excellent salary for GODFATHER II and accepted, then declined, then accepted again, then declined again, etc., the role for GODFATHER II. Evidently he was something of a primadonna and negotiations finally broke down over whether or not he would be allowed to write his own lines, at which point Coppola finally had enough and replaced him the week shooting was to start with actor Michael V. Gazzo. Since he knew that it would be impossible to explain how Clemenza grew 20 years older and lost 140 pounds between the two movies, he and Puzo did a 30 minute addendum to the script in which they changed the name “Clemenza” to “Pentangeli” in the script, plopped a black armband onto Gazzo’s arm, gave about a three sentence “shame Clemenza died but nice that it was you who took over” send-off to Clemenza, and went from there. A real shame, because as good as Gazzo was in that role the continuity that Clemenza could have provided (especially as the alternating storyline told the story of his rise back when he was Bruno Kirby) would have made a great film even greater, and Castellano never had another role anywhere near as good as Clemenza. (There just aren’t that many great roles for morbidly obese short and bald Italians, evidently.)
Like Clemenza, two actors played the role of Salvatore Tessio: Abe Vigoda as a young man, and John Aprea, who was cast for his dead-on resemblance to a young Abe Vigoda in 2. (The 1970s were of course the “Get me a Young Abe Vigoda” decade, which wasn’t bad homage for a guy who was driving a cab the day before his cattle call audition for GODFATHER I.)
Hooray! No one mentioned this yet! (I always get to these threads too late.)
There was a show that ran for one season, 84-85, called Spencer. Not “Spenser for Hire”; this was a stupid, doomed sitcom about a high school kid. The lead actor, i.e., the guy who played Spencer, either quit or was fired halfway through the first and only season and was replaced. Actually, my dim recollection is that they replaced ALL the actors at once, but I can’t find anything to back that up.
Incidentally, in looking that up, I came across this page about an equally monoseasonal show (same season, even), this one about a sneaky 14-year-old. The show was It’s Your Move, starring Jason Bateman, brother of Justine; I’d forgotten how much my brother and I loved that show.
Cloris Leachman did not play Timmy’s mother on Lassie; she played Jeff’s. First Lassie belonged to a farm kid named Jeff, then to a farm kid named Timmy, and then to a park ranger. One used to see the first incarnation of the show in syndication as Jeff’s Collie, and the second version as Timmy and Lassie.
In one season of the Cloris Leachman series Phyllis, she worked at a photographer’s studio. Her boss was played by two actresses. The first was murdered in a hold-up after only three episodes had been shot.
I remember that show quite well. The first Spencer was played by Chad Lowe- I’m not gay or anything, but man I had a crush on him. He left because he was 16, wanted to be a serious actor, and was very uncomfortable with the screaming girls who were in the audience and hounded him everywhere else. (Being Rob’s younger brother, he probably didn’t want to be niched as “another Lowe heart throb”.) His greatest success was probably playing the hopelessly romantic HIV+ teen artist on LIFE GOES ON (for which he won an Emmy), though his most famous camera time was crying like a baby at the Academy Awards when his wife won Best Actress for, ironically, BOYS DON’T CRY.
He was replaced as Spencer by a teen actor nobody could have a crush on, and they rewrote the show to add in the grandparents (veterans Frances Sternhagen and [Dr.] Harold Gould) and writing off his father (who was said to have run off with a high school cheerleader). Since the only appeal of the show was mentally undressing Chad, it immediately fell on its Nielsen Sword.
In the British show “Goodnight Sweetheart,” there was a largish break between series 3 and 4 and the two lead actresses went on to other projects. The roles were recast. The show sucked without Dervla Kirwan.
Whoops…
The part of Digger Barnes was played by both Keenan Wynn and David Wayne.
I’ve been told that the actor who played Spock’s father in an episode of the first Star Trek series later played a Klingon and a Romulan.
Alan Melvin played no fewer than eight different characters on “The Andy Griffith Show”. (It always amused me because he was sometimes a cop from somewhere else and sometimes a criminal or escaped prisoner. It may have been an intentional choice to symbolize how everyone from outside Mayberry was seen as equal and regarded with equal suspicion by the townsfolk, but I really doubt it.)
He also played seven different characters on “The Dick Van Dyke Show”.
He went on to greater fame for bringing Alice the meat as Sam the Butcher on “The Brady Bunch”.
Dr. J
Yes - the talented Daws Butler and the incredible Mel Blanc.
As much as I admire and love Mel Blanc’s work, I think that Daws Butler did a much better job as Barney Rubble.
Or is this a “Ginger or Mary-Anne” type question?
Well, what the heck, I’ll throw one on the pile.
In the pilot of Boston Common, Professor Jack Reed was played by Patrick Fabian. He decided he didn’t want to get tied to the series, and after only one episode, he split. The role then went to Vincent Ventresca for the remainder of the series (two years). It’s a little weird, seeing someone different in the pilot…
In the JAWS series of movies, Chief Brody’s sons are played by different actors each movie:
…Michael Brody…Sean Brody
Jaws:…Chris Rebello…Jay Mello
Jaws 2:…Mark Gruner…Marc Gilpin
Jaws 3D:…Dennis Quaid…John Putch
Jaws: The Revenge:…Lance Guest…Mitchel Anderson
Do you have a cite for Stapleton playing the role in the pilot for Murder, She Wrote? All the sources I can find say that the role was written for Jean Stapleton but that she turned it down before production began. (One cite. Scroll down to Trivia.) The reason I’m asking is because I really enjoy Jean Stapleton’s acting, and if this pilot exists, I’d like to track down a copy of it.
Actually, he played the Romulan first. Mark Lenard played the commander in * Balance of Terror *, THEN Sarek in * Journey to Babel *, and a Klingon in one of the later series or movies.
They reused a few actors in fairly big roles - Campbell played Trelane * (Squire of Gothos) * and Koloth * (The Trouble with Tribbles)
*
Out of curiosity, I did an IMDB show for that replacement. His name was Rossie Harris, and he was the kid from Airplane!. You know, “Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?” Bleah.
Re: the “two Becky’s” on Roseanne. It was either Roseanne or Jackie who said “Did they think we wouldn’t know the difference?” when they were watching Bewitched, while the “new” Becky (Sarah Chalke) said, “Well, I liked that second Darrin much better! [smirk]”.
They did a lot of self-reference on that note, in fact. Roseanne once said to another character, “Well, our daughter eloped, and when she came back, we hardly recognized her!” Then when Lecy Goranson returned (briefly), R. made another remark to the effect of “It seems like you’ve been away for three years!” Then when Chalke took over again (what was the deal with that, anyway? I never knew) the tag scene had both actresses reenacting the opening credits of The Patty Duke Show as “identical Beckys”.
FWIW, I prefer Chalke. She was more easygoing than Goranson, who tended to play the character as a snip.