You’re contradicting yourself. The history of dramatic portrayal is a history of roles being filled by many different actors. Sometimes an earlier actor is well-remembered, sometimes not.
The role of Hannibal Lecter was originated on the screen by … Brian Cox.
Barry Nelson and Bob Holness played James Bond before Sean Connery did. (Frankly, the current Bond is my favorite.)
Kristy Swanson played Buffy the Vampire Slayer before Sarah Michelle Gellar.
I know! It creeps me right the hell out having Popeye Doyle shilling for Lowe’s.
Ha! I always think of Little Bill and his leaky roof.
Another data point: When the BBC declined to produce a series featuring K-9 (a talking robot dog that appeared on Doctor Who in the '70s), one of the writers who created the character shopped around to other production companies. The result is an Australian-based children’s show featuring a talking robot dog named K-9, voiced by the original actor with much the same personality. But the robot has a radically different appearance (the original design is owned by the BBC), and no direct reference is made to the BBC parent series.
Writer Terry Nation (and later his estate) retained ownership of Doctor Who’s most iconic monsters, the Daleks, and there have been non-DW-related Dalek appearances in spin-off appearances. There was at one time some doubt as to whether the revived series would be able to use Daleks.
I just read a short bio of Adriana Caselotti who was the voice of Snow White in the original Disney film. Interesting <snip> here:
Don’t know if a VOICE can be applied to the OP, though.
An actor owns his or her own voice, image, likeness, identity, and persona. That kind of blacklisting wouldn’t hold up today.
It worked because until just this moment, I had no idea it was NOT KGlover!
Yeardley Smith must get sued just for answering the phone!
She does raise the pitch of her voice just a bit to do Lisa. But it’s not a problem if she’s not using it to sell something. I’ve read that Billy West sometimes went on Howard Stern’s show in 2008 (he was a regular years earlier) and did a John McCain impersonation using his Professor Farnsworth voice. It didn’t cause any problems as far as I know.
I’m more curious about actors such as Harry Shearer or Dan Castellanata, who have done dozens of voices on a series. Could they be barred from doing similar characters on another show? That would seem to seriously limit their employment opportunities. (Not that they should ever need to work on another series, but still…) “Sorry, I can’t do a frail old man voice; It might sound too much like Jasper or Mr. Burns. Indian shopkeeper? Not on your life.”
I don’t think that’s correct. Jeffrey Weissman’s IMDB page said he was used in new footage created (and you can see a photo of him made up quite convincingly with prosthetics to look a helluva lot like Glover). On Weissman’s IMDB page it also says he thought he was being used as a “photo double” so they could incorporate footage from the original.
ETA: Wow, I read a thingy that said it took three to four hours for the prosthetic make-up. This site includes an interview with the guy and a creepy photo of him as Faux Glover.
Kinda loses the reason why she’s named “Ginger”, donit?
I remember the first time I watched “Inside the Actor’s Studio”, the Simpson voices were on, and they (except for Kavner, she left halfway through and, for some reason, didn’t look happy when she was there) answered questions from James Lipton in character for a part of the show. That blew me away that they could do that, I’m guessing it was already vetted a long time earlier that they’d want them to do the character voices and got the required permission lined up.
(Interestingly, the second time I watched “Actors Studio”, about a year or so later, it was the same episode!)
I remember Seth McFarlane said he deliberately made Brian’s voice nearly (if not exactly) identical to his own (I think due to Brian’s views and personality being similar to his), and it always throws me to hear Seth, as Seth, talk, it took me quite a while to wonder why he was doing Brian’s voice when he’s supposed to talk as him, I never expected him to sound like Brian …
Interesting. Maybe I remembered it wrong; it could be that The Bobs planned to use the BTTF1 footage originally, but that plan was thwarted by Glover’s suit. I’ll have to dig out the DVDs at some point and listen to the commentary tracks again. That’ll ruin a weekend. 
The commentary track for the Criterion Laserdisc release of “This is Spinal Tap” has Guest, Shearer and McKean speaking as themselves. At one point one of them comments they had to sell the rights to get the film made and a French company owns it now. In order to do anything as the characters, they have to get permission. Of course that would be with wigs, clothes, cucumbers so it isn’t “themselves”.
I’d guess it depends on what the contract says and what your lawyer gets. One of the most fascinating things I ever read was an article in “Playboy” 20 years ago by the author who created Rambo in a novel. His lawyer got things like merchandising, profits in sequels, novelization of movie rights which the author thought were stupid when the contract was negotiated in the early 1970s. As his lawyer told him, you never know…Broadway could make a musical out of this slaughter fest for all you know
When Flo Ballard left the Supremes in the 1960s, Motown forced her new label not to mention on the album that she had been a Supreme. Ballard was the one who chose the name from a list Motown gave them (they were known as the Primettes since they were friends with the Primes, who became the Temptations).
One of the weirder cases was Larry “Bud” Melman. When Letterman jumped ship from NBC to CBS he wasn’t allowed to use that character anymore- it was NBC’s intellectual property- so on the few occasions Calvert DeForest appeared, playing pretty much the exact same “weird little old man” character, he appeared as Calvert DeForest.
I just watched BTTF2 last weekend, and there’s definitely some footage from the original used in it. I don’t remember offhand if there is any footage that includes Glover.
Disputes over characters happens in wrestling when a wrestler moves from one company to another. Sometimes they can take their name and character with them, and sometimes they can’t, so you wind up with situations like The Dudley Boyz (Buh Buh Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley) becoming Team 3D (Brother Ray and Brother Devon) when they moved from WWE to TNA, but at the same time Hulk Hogan gets to be Hulk Hogan no matter where he goes.
Speaking of Hulk Hogan, sometimes neither the wrestler nor the wrestling company owns the character. For a long time Marvel Comics owned all the Hulk Hogan trademarks (that’s no longer the case, however)
Depends on whatever deal the writer makes with the producers. Obviously complicated if there is an adaptation.
A friend of a friend wrote the spec script that resulted in the first Barkly (sp?) episode of Star Trek TNG. Though the script was heavily modified by the staff before airing, they still got ownership of that character, and therefore residuals whenever he appeared in a later episode or movie.
I saw an old episode of “Married…with Children” and the minute the gay guy spoke I thought “Homer Simpson.” Castellanata uses a different voice for Homer, but his method of speaking (cadence?) is the same as his regular voice.
Well, I know they refilmed everything they showed with Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer, as they cast a new actress due to scheduling problems.
You can compare the two scenes on this annotated video.
It’s probably a combination of both issues involving original footage as well as the “double”. But the heavy amount of prosthetic make-up to create a Faux Glover is probably what got them in trouble. It certainly resulted in new SAG rules. BTTF II did use footage from the first movie in a bunch of shots, but they also re-did some scenes from different angles and such.
They could have simply re-shot some scenes with George McFly recast, the way they did with the new Jennifer as in BigT’s example.
The DVD commentary tracks will probably be one side of the story. Crispin Glover’s side being different, and the The Faux Glover’s comments from the above linked interview:
So it sounds more like the suit was less about re-creating “George McFly” and more to do with re-creating “Crispin Glover” which would make a legit cause of action.