"And the winner for Best Actor is Daniel Day-Lewis in `Philadelphia."'
Wait a minute . . . there must be some mistake.Everyone knows Tom Hanks carried off the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a lawyer dying of AIDS in "Philadelphia."
What most people don't know is that before Hanks stepped into the role Day-Lewis turned it down. He didn't like the script and he thought the lawyer was too one-dimensional.
So Hanks got the part and went on to win the golden statuette.
It's not uncommon for stars to either reject or yearn in vain for a role that then becomes a landmark in Tinseltown.
Imagine what "Schindler's List" might have been like if Kevin Costner had played Oskar Schindler, the German war profiteer who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews?
Costner was anxious to play the lead when the film was first being developed by Steven Spielberg. But when Spielberg decided to take on directing chores, the role went to Liam Neeson. "Schindler" won seven Oscars.
Day-Lewis out, Hanks in. Costner out, Neeson in. Luck? Timing? Fate? In Hollywood some people say that serendipity is the real winner.
In the colorful history of filmmaking it has not been unusual for an actor to be offered a role, even to the point of almost stepping in front of the cameras, only to drop out at the last minute, making way for a fellow thespian.
In some cases the role turns out to be a career-maker - the kind that catapults an actor or actress from workaday performer to high-profile star.
In the early '80s, when Spielberg was casting for Indiana Jones, his archaeologist/adventurer in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), Tom Selleck was front and center for the role.
But Selleck couldn't get out of his TV contract - he was starring in the popular series "Magnum, P.I." - and so the part went to Harrison Ford, who rode the role to megastardom.
Nothing new in that.
Would "Casablanca" (1942) have been so many people's all-time favorite film if a B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan had played Rick, the saloon-keeper, and an actress named Ann Sheridan had played his leading lady?
Fortunately, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman got the parts.
In more than 50 years of filmmaking, the history of Hollywood is packed with similar "what if" casting stories.
And now producer Jeff Burkhart and his writing partner Bruce Stuart have collected many of these tales into "Hollywood's First Choices: How the Greatest Casting Decisions Were Made" (Crown, 1994).
The two have compiled a fascinating chronicle of rejected roles and picked-up parts that have made careers and broken hearts.
"My partner Bruce came up with the idea when he read that Groucho Marx was supposed to play Rhett Butler in `Gone With the Wind' (1939)," Burkhart says.
"It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. Margaret Mitchell (who wrote the book on which the film is based) got so sick of hearing about who was going to play the part that she said, `Oh, get Groucho Marx.' That's how these casting things start."
Other stories in the book are only marginally less frightening.
Imagine Frank Sinatra or Paul Newman going nose-to-nose with a menacing villain and uttering that immortal line, "Go ahead, make my day." It almost happened.
Before Clint Eastwood signed on to play "Dirty Harry" (1971), both Sinatra and Newman were considered for the part. (The famous line was actually said in "Sudden Impact" (1983), the fourth "Dirty Harry" film.)
Oscars galore have gone to actors who were probably the least likely candidates for the part when the project was begun.
For example, take Peter O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962). When the original casting choice was announced - Marlon Brando - there was an outcry in Britain.
So Richard Burton, Montgomery Clift, Albert Finney, Laurence Harvey and Anthony Perkins were all considered. But the moment O'Toole screen-tested, he was hired.
Ben Kingsley landed "Gandhi" (1982) after Dirk Bogarde, Tom Courtenay, Peter Finch, Albert Finney, Alec Guinness and Anthony Hopkins all said no.
Cher got "Moonstruck" (1987) after Sally Fields nixed the script.
Louise Fletcher was brought on to do "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) after Angela Lansbury decided that Nurse Ratched was too nasty for her to play.
Jon Voight, who won an Oscar for portraying a paraplegic Vietnam vet in "Coming Home" (1978), got the role after Jack Nicholson and Sylvester Stallone turned it down.
Then there are the roles that turned just another actor into a full-fledged star.
Imagine "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) with Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty instead of Paul Newman and Robert Redford.
Or "Patton" (1970), the cantankerous World War II general, played by Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger or John Wayne, instead of by George C. Scott.
Peter Sellers got to play the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in "The Pink Panther" (1964) only after Peter Ustinov decided against doing the role.
Glenn Close turned her image around and scared Michael Douglas - and half the male population - into fidelity in "Fatal Attraction" (1987) only after Debra Winger and Barbara Hershey both said no thanks to the role.
In the early '80s John Travolta could do no wrong. He was offered "American Gigolo" (1980) and "An Officer and a Gentleman" (1982). Travolta, riding high from the success of "Saturday Night Fever" (1977), turned both roles down. Richard Gere stepped into the breach.
Tom Cruise proved his dramatic acting mettle playing Ron Kovic, the paraplegic Vietnam vet, in Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989). But he wasn't the first choice for the part.
He grabbed it only after Al Pacino, who had been thinking about the role for 10 years, dropped out when the original financing for the film fell through.
"Break a leg" is the traditional show-business "good luck" wish - or is it? Some actors and actresses have become overnight sensations thanks to the illnesses and accidents of rivals.
"In 1955 MGM bought Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play `Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' as a star vehicle for Grace Kelly and James Dean," Burkhart recalls. "But six months later Dean died in a fiery car crash and the following year Grace Kelly took the biggest role of her life - Princess of Monaco. In stepped Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman in the 1958 screen version - roles that brought them both Oscar nominations."
Movie mogul Jack Warner of Warner Bros. wanted John Garfield for the 1951 role of Stanley Kowalski in the film version of "A Streetcar Named Desire." But Garfield's health was bad, so he turned it down. The role went to Marlon Brando, who was no movie star, but had done well in the role on stage. It made him an international screen sensation.
Burkhart and Stuart put together their chronicle without much help from their subjects. "Nobody wants to look like an idiot," Burkhart says. "Actors, in particular, never admit to having been twits."
Neither do directors.
"Thelma & Louise" (1991) was originally intended for Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. But when Streep wasn't available, Hawn backed out.
"To this day," Burkhart says, "Ridley Scott (the director) insists that the parts were written for Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. Though anybody knows that no one was writing parts for Geena and Susan then."
Burkhart also has an important piece of advice for writers and anyone else faced with what seems like a particularly crazy casting choice. "Wait for the film to come out before you scream your opposition."
Edward Albee, the playwright, didn't wait.
When faced with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for the screen version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), he snapped, "Why not Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher and be done with it?"
Taylor and Burton were cast and the rest is Hollywood history.