It's all a parlor game, but the film with Reynolds would have made base line sense. People positing Sally Ann Howes and even Maureen O'Hara (in 1969?) seem to know nothing about the movie business.
Oh, believe me, honey, there were Hollywood movie musicals actually released in 1969 that had far crazier casting than that! Jean Seberg, Lee Marvin, and Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon? The funny thing about that era was that all of a sudden even veteran movie executives didn't seem to know anything about the movie business!
I agree that Sally Ann Howes and Maureen O'Hara would not have been obvious choices for box-office security. But since reading these subthreads over the last couple of days, I've become quite enamored of the idea of a Dolly starring O'Hara and John Wayne. She would have been the right age and sung it beautifully; he would have been the extra box-office insurance, and Horace doesn't really have to sing. Wayne had actually done comedy from time to time--in The Quiet Man with O'Hara, and elsewhere. Seeing those two icons go a few rounds as Dolly and Horace might have been wonderful. And it might even have been just flukey enough to become a box-office hit.
And, man, would O'Hara have looked spectacular coming down the runway in that dress!!! |
