The Miscast-ies -- A Tribute to Hilariously Bad Casting

Now and then you really realize how well a movie has been cast. I mean, is there anyone else but Tom Hanks who could have played Forrest Gump? Think about it. Then think about, say, Russell Crowe playing the part. 

"Mama always said life was like a can of whoop-ass."  

But then there are roles that are cast extremely poorly. And because, you know, that's a lot funnier, that's what I'm going to write about. My too-clever-by-half name for this? 

"The Miscast-ies." 

So, with no further delay, the first Miscast-ie goes to......

.........................................(drum roll).........................................

John Wayne... as Olson -- a Swedish (!) farmer -- in The Long Voyage Home (1940). 

Pictured: John Wayne on the set.  

So if you're trying to imagine just how bad Wayne would be at playing a Swedish guy, I've got news for you: he's worse. Truth be told, it's a miracle he doesn't ruin what's actually a pretty good movie. 

Actually, let me rephrase. The reason he doesn't ruin the movie is because director John Ford, not being a complete dumbass (only a big enough dumbass to cast John Wayne as a Swedish guy), cut out almost all of Wayne's dialogue, to the point where it took me like an hour and 20 minutes before I figured he was supposed to be Swedish and not Irish. By the end of the movie, though, he's jabbering on and on, in such a ridiculous sing-songy kind of Swedish mumbo jumbo it's amazing it wasn't declared a hate crime.  

Unfortunately, there aren't clips on YouTube to show you the massacre Wayne made of it, but imagine Wayne trying to play one of the Minnesottans from Fargo and you'll get pretty close to the cringing hilarity of it. As a video consolation prize, however, here's the video of another legendarily bad John Wayne performance -- as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

As you'll notice, this is the entire movie. Since it's considered one of the shittiest movies ever made, I wouldn't recommend watching it. But to get an idea of Wayne's total incompetence with accents, fast forward to about 3:50. 

So there you have it. It's a pretty simple equation, really. 

John Wayne doing accent = John Wayne giving crappy performance. 

Fortunately, after The Conqueror he learned his lesson and went back to shooting bad guys and using his regularly weird pausing-in-the-middle-of-sentences way of speaking. Unfortunately, due to the fact that The Conqueror was filmed near a nuclear test site, there's a pretty good chance that making the movie actually led to his cancer, and thus his death. 

The Long Voyage Home was much kinder to him, as the movie, these days, is mostly forgotten. This allowed Wayne to move on to far more important things, like making meatballs.