John Wayne said no to starring
in both "Dirty Harry" and "Dirty Dozen" .. . Paul Newman nixed starring in
"The Shootist" . . . Charleton Heston nixed starring in "The Comancheros"
and Burt Reynolds nixed playing James Bond . . .Fred Thompson had a healthy head of hair, but his horse, Silver King, wore a toupee . . . Fox's first choice to play Hopalong Cassidy was David Niven . . . and Robert Livingston and Jack Randall were brothers . . .
It took Richard Hooker seven years to complete his war novel "MASH" only to see it rejected by 21 publishers . . . It took Edward Gibbon 26 years to write "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" . . . Ernest Hemingway rewrote the ending of "The Sun Also Rises" 35 times before he was happy with it . . . and French novelist Victor Hugo wrote in the nude . . .
Billy Bletcher, the voice of Oz's munchkin mayor, was also the voice of The Lone Ranger in Republic's serial . . . Red Ryder's creator, Fred Harman, and Walt Disney were partners once upon a dream . . . and Buster Crabbe was a Wall Street stockbroker . . .
"Gone With the Wind" author, Margaret Mitchell, wanted Groucho Marx to play Rhett Butler . . . Batman's nemesis, the Joker (Jack Napier), had a wife named Jeanne . . . Larry Fine liked to munch on dog biscuits occasionally . . . and Adolph Hitler owned property in Oklahoma . . .