I'm sorry to learn today of the passing of actor James Caan. While Caan is well-known for a myriad of famous film roles, I always think of him as one of the actors touted as a possible Houdini. In 1974 Caan was favored by producer Ray Stark for what was then called,
The Magic Man: The Story of Houdini.
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| Variety, Sept. 18, 1974 |
At this time Caan was on everyone's short-list of leading men, so it's hard to know how seriously he considered the part. Ultimately, Caan never played Houdini and Stark never made his Houdini film. But it's always fun to think about what might have been!
RIP James. He was a bad don...
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the news article notes the film could draw from the writings of William Lindsay Gresham.
ReplyDeleteAt the time there was a competing Houdini project at Paramount which held the rights to the Kellock book. So this project, at Columbia, claimed Gresham.
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