Take the "Did You Know" Quiz!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:   Did we ever figure out yesterday who we thought should play Lady Georgie in the movies? I know in TRUST ME, my Mercer Hennessey is Tea Leoni and in fact, have a photo of her on my bulletin board to inspire me.

But the role of Caitlin Strong, the iconic, smart, savvy and intrepid heroine of Jon Land’s novels—who should play her?  You know Jon Land right? He’s a Jungle Red hero himself, a dear pal and a brilliant writer and an unstoppable force. And such an imagination! (If you ever have the chance to take a class from him—do it! He’s life-changingly wonderful.)

Anyway, he’s been thinking about who ‘d be a good screen Caitlin—since his tenth (!) Strong novel is about to grace bookstore shelves everywhere. But you know Jon—he’s not only thinking about casting--he has some wonderful stories about it. And—a quiz!

Let’s Play DID YOU KNOW

By Jon Land

         So who do you think should play Caitlin Strong in my dreamed-of television series or film? Chances are whoever producers really want for the role either won’t take it or end up eing replaced before shooting actually begins. Why do I feel that way? Look no further than some of the examples detailed below and presented here to commemorate the publication of the tenth book in the Caitlin Strong series, STRONG AS STEEL, on April 23.       

         DID YOU KNOW, for example, that the original choice to play Harry Callahan in the modern cop classic Dirty Harry wasn’t Clint Eastwood; it was Frank Sinatra! Upon reading the script, though, Old Blue Eyes wanted no part of such a violent film. The studio turned to Eastwood who ordered a major rewrite by the era’s top screenwriter John Milius. And Milius’ polish added virtually all of the film’s signature lines including, “Do you feel lucky? Well do you, punk?” And a star was born.

         Speaking of Frank Sinatra, DID YOU KNOW that he was also offered the role of John McClane in Die Hard. Not because the studio actually wanted him, but because they had no choice. See, Sinatra had purchased the rights to The Detective, a Roderick Thorpe novel which he produced as a film and played the hero Joe Leland. Well, as it turns out Die Hard was actually written by Thorpe under the title Nothing Lasts Forever as a sequel to The Detective. Because it also featured Joe Leland and Sinatra technically owned the rights to the character, he had to be offered the role. Sinatra, of course, declined, setting the stage for another star to be born in Bruce Willis.

         But DID YOU KNOW that Willis wasn’t the first choice for John McClane? Far from it, in fact. Kurt Russell was reportedly the studio’s pick, but he passed. So did Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Burt Reynolds and Richard Gere—all stars at the time who couldn’t imagine how an action movie set entirely inside a building could possibly succeed. Well, not only did it succeed, it redefined the action film forever and established an entirely new form in the process. How many times, after all, have you heard a film described as “Die Hard in a blank?”

         DID YOU KNOW that Paramount wanted no part of Al Pacino as Michael in The Godfather? Not only that, execs were so determined to fire him that director Francis Ford Coppola shot the famed restaurant scene out of sequence to prove Pacino was a star in the making. Case closed! Who was the studio’s original first choice to play Michael? In a 2004 interview with Movieline, Jack Nicholson said he turned down the role. “Back then I believed that Indians should play Indians and Italians should play Italians,” Nicholson said in the interview. “There were a lot of actors who could have played Michael, myself included, but Al Pacino was Michael Corleone. I can’t think of a better compliment to pay him.”

         DID YOU KNOW Paramount wanted no part of Marlon Brando either. The first name they raised to play Vito Corleone was John Marley who was coming off Love Story which had been the #1 movie of 1970. Marley, of course, went on to play film producer Jack Woltz and became famous for finding a horse’s head in his bed.

         Speaking of hit films, there are few with more tumultuous shooting timelines than Jaws. During all that downtime brought on by lousy weather and a broken mechanical shark, Steven Spielberg pondered why the shark hunter played by Robert Shaw hates sharks so much. It wasn’t in the book and neither author Peter Benchley or screenwriter Carl Gottlieb had a clue. So Spielberg called back the great John Milius (just as Clint Eastwood had for Dirty Harry) who’d already written the famed fingernails on the blackboard Quint intro. But DID YOU KNOW that when Milius couldn’t nail the scene, none other than Robert Shaw stepped forward and asked for a chance? The scene was scheduled to shoot on the Orca set the next day and Shaw promised to come in with pages. Only he showed up drunk instead, having memorized the lines. Knowing he couldn’t use the footage, Spielberg only pretended to roll the cameras as Shaw launched into the now famous Indianapolis monologue. The crew listened, utterly mesmerized, and then the next day Shaw came in sober enough to nail the scene in one take! All without ever putting the words on paper.

         And, speaking of Jaws, DID YOU KNOW that to the day he died Roy Scheider claimed he ad-libbed the signature line, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” Although no one else has ever definitively corroborated that, watching the scene today it does appear the line caught Robert Shaw by surprise. But plenty of his fellow actors have corroborated John Belushi’s assertion that was indeed a real bottle of Jack Daniels he chugged for a scene in Animal House.

         Similarly, Matthew McConaughey became famous for the first line he ever uttered on film: “All right, all right, all right,” in Richard Linkletter’s Dazed and Confused. But DID YOU KNOW he almost never got to deliver it? Reading for his first film role ever, McConaughey killed his audition, but Linkletter told him he was too good looking to play Wooderson, the town’s perpetually adolescent Lothario. So he came in to his callback with a white t-shirt and a comb over. McConaughey got the role but his father died just before filming was scheduled to start and Linkletter hated the notion of recasting the role. So he held it open as long as he could and, lo and behold, McConaughey returned to the set just in time. Linkletter was shooting the drive-in scene at the time and was so happy to see McConaughey back, he added him to the scene with instructions to ad-lib his lines, including “Love them redheads,” another of his most iconic ones.

         Since I’ve recently taken over the MURDER, SHE WROTE series, though, let me finish with the fact that did you know the great Angela Lansbury wasn’t the first choice to play Jessica Fletcher? It was Jean Stapleton, who famously played Edith Bunker in All in the Family. Imagine that!

         Hey, I can only hope to be able to share a comparable story about the actress ultimately chosen to play Caitlin Strong sometime down the road.  In the meantime, though, we’ll have to settle for picturing Caitlin as she’s presented in STRONG AS STEEL and the other nine books in the series. Happy reading and do you have any DID YOU KNOWs you’d like to share?  

HANK: SO fascinating, as always! (And did you know my name was supposed to be Alexandra? But at the last minute, my mother decided I didn't look like an Alexandra. So  they decided on Harriet. Hmmm.) How about you, Reds and readers? Any did you knows in your life? And did you know about the Hollywood secrets John revealed?  (Wasn't there something about Elizabeth Taylor and Scarlett O'Hara?)

Jon Land is the award-winning, USA Today bestselling author of 50 books, including ten titles in the critically acclaimed Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong series, the last of which, STRONG TO THE BONE, won both the 2017 American Book Fest and 2018 International Book Award for Best Mystery Thriller. Suspense Magazine called the latest title in the series, STRONG AS STEEL, "what just might be the best novel of 2019." MURDER IN RED, meanwhile, will mark his third effort writing as Jessica Fletcher for the MURDER, SHE WROTE series when it’s published on May 28. He has also teamed with Heather Graham for a new sci-fi series starting with THE RISING. He is a 1979 graduate of Brown University, lives in Providence, Rhode Island and can be reached at www.jonlandbookscom and on Twitter @jonland

STRONG AS STEEL

1994:  Texas Ranger Jim Strong investigates a mass murder on a dusty freight train linked to a mysterious, missing cargo for which no record exists.

The Present:  His daughter, fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, finds herself on the trail of that very same cargo when skeletal bones are found in the Texas desert near an excavation site where something else was clearly removed.  She’s also dealing  a mass murder of her own after a massacre claims the lives of all the workers at a private intelligence company on her watch.

What Caitlin doesn’t know, can’t know, is that these two cases are connected by a long-hidden secret with the potential to rewrite history. For centuries, men have died trying to protect that secret, but it’s left to Caitlin to uncover the shocking truth that something far more dangerous is at stake here as well: a weapon of epic proportions with the potential to kill millions.

To stop the world from descending into chaos, Caitlin and her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters must prove themselves to be as strong as steel to overcome a bloody tide that has been rising for centuries.