{"id":2119,"date":"2024-04-16T03:03:11","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T03:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/?p=2119"},"modified":"2024-04-16T03:03:11","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T03:03:11","slug":"bill-cosby-and-muhammad-ali-both-coveted-the-same-coppola-script-vu-thuy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/bill-cosby-and-muhammad-ali-both-coveted-the-same-coppola-script-vu-thuy\/","title":{"rendered":"B\u0456ll Co\u0455by \u0430nd Muh\u0430mm\u0430d Al\u0456 both \u0441oveted the \u0455\u0430me Co\u0440\u0440ol\u0430 \u0455\u0441r\u0456\u0440t"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The classic comic fantasy \u201cHere Comes Mr. Jordan,\u201d released 75 years ago this summer, spawned remakes starring Warren Beatty and Chris Rock, as well as a sequel with Rita Hayworth that was itself reworked into one of the worst movie musicals of all time (and later morphed into a campy Broadway hit).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/06\/cosbyfeat.jpg?quality=75&amp;strip=all&amp;w=744\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But you probably haven\u2019t heard of an abortive version written by Francis Ford Coppola that, at various points, was announced as a starring vehicle for a couple of icons planning to make their film debuts: Bill Cosby and the late Muhammad Ali.<\/p>\n<p>It all started with \u201cHere Comes Mr. Jordan,\u2019\u2019 which debuts Tuesday (June 14) in a\u00a0glorious new Blu-ray restoration\u00a0from the Criterion Collection. Robert Montgomery stars as a boxer who is transported to heaven 50 years ahead of schedule because of a mistake by a bumbling angel (Edward Everett Horton). It\u2019s up to the angel\u2019s superior, Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains), to straighten things out by transferring the boxer\u2019s soul into the body of a freshly murdered businessman (also played by Montgomery, though the other characters in the movie only see him as the businessman, a gimmick that was also used in the remakes).<\/p>\n<p>There are plenty of comic complications \u2014 involving the boxer\u2019s confused manager (James Gleason) and the love interest (Evelyn Keyes) \u2014 on the way to a happy ending. The film was a huge success in the months before the US entered World War II, and it received seven Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director (Alexander Hall) and Best Actor (Montgomery).<\/p>\n<p>It kicked off a whole genre of afterlife comedies that most notably includes 1943\u2019s \u201cHeaven Can Wait\u2019\u2019 (which will see its own\u00a0gorgeous restoration premiere\u00a0on June 17 at Film Forum), \u201cA Guy Named Joe\u2019\u2019 (1944) and the British \u201cA Matter of Life and Death,\u2019\u2019 which was retitled \u201cStairway to Heaven\u2019\u2019 when it was released in the US in 1947.<\/p>\n<div id=\"connatix-outstream-video\">\n<p>There was even an odd sequel to \u201cHere Comes Mr. Jordan,\u201d called \u201cDown to Earth,\u201d with Horton and Gleason reprising their roles from the original, and Roland Culver replacing Rains as Jordan (Robert Montgomery was MIA). In the 1947 Technicolor musical, Rita Hayworth stars as the goddess Terpsichore, who descends to Earth to straighten out the producer (Larry Parks) of a Broadway musical that pokes fun at Greek mythology. It broke even at best at the box office.<\/p>\n<p>Two decades later, Bill Cosby\u2019s then-manager Roy Silver \u2014 a fan of the original \u201cMr. Jordan\u201d \u2014 commissioned a script from Coppola (who had already won an Oscar for co-writing \u201cPatton\u2019\u2019 and had directed several features) for a remake that the two of them thought would launch Cosby\u2019s film career.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Here Comes Mr. Jordan - Trailer\" width=\"790\" height=\"593\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ckUDcWIm4DQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Cosby would still play a boxer, but this version had an intriguing racial twist: He\u2019d be playing a black man who, after his reincarnation, would be in the body of a white man (with a black mistress, who, according to film historian Michael Sragow in a Criterion special feature for \u201cMr. Jordan,\u2019\u2019 was going to be played by singer-actress Leslie Uggams). Warner Bros. announced the film for a Christmas 1969 release, but it didn\u2019t happen \u2014 apparently after Cosby and his manager had a falling out. (Meanwhile, in India, there had already been an entirely unauthorized remake called \u201cThe Skies Have Bowed.\u2019\u2019)<\/p>\n<p>Warner Bros. was still interested, especially when Warren Beatty purchased the project from Silver. Beatty wanted to make his directing debut using Coppola\u2019s script \u2014 with boxing legend Muhammad Ali (who had briefly appeared in 1962\u2019s \u201cRequiem for a Heavyweight\u2019\u2019 as himself back when he was known as Cassius Clay) in his first acting role.<\/p>\n<p>Ali\u2019s biographers disagree over why the boxer left the project, which also went all the way to the announcement stage: either his Muslim spiritual leader, Elijah Muhammad, nixed it as theologically incompatible, or there were issues with Ali\u2019s schedule.<\/p>\n<p>Several years later, Beatty decided that he would also star in what came to be known as \u201cHeaven Can Wait\u201d (the original title of the unproduced play that inspired \u201cHere Comes Mr. Jordan,\u2019\u2019 a name switch that created endless confusion with the 1943 film, which was also nominated for a Best Picture Oscar). By then the project was at Paramount, where Beatty threw out the Coppola script.<\/p>\n<p>In the new version that he wrote with Elaine May and an uncredited Robert Towne, his character is a football player, with Beatty\u2019s real-life then-girlfriend Julie Christie as the love interest. Jack Warden is the manager, and Buck Henry (who shares a directorial credit with Beatty) portrays the heavenly messenger who screws things up. James Mason plays Mr. Jordan after Cary Grant (who had passed on the role of the boxer for the 1941 film) turned it down.<\/p>\n<div class=\"single__content entry-content m-bottom \">\n<p>The remake, which opened in June 1978, was an even bigger success than \u201cHere Comes Mr. Jordan\u2019\u2019 and racked up nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture (the sole remake of a nominee in that category with that distinction), Best Actor, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Warden) and Best Supporting Actress (Dyan Cannon, who divorced Grant in 1968). It won a single Oscar for Best Art Direction. It even inspired a porn takeoff called \u201cHeaven\u2019s Touch\u2019\u2019 (1983).<\/p>\n<p>With lightning having struck twice, you\u2019d think that Hollywood would leave well enough alone. But no: Two years later they dusted off the sequel, \u201cDown to Earth,\u2019\u2019 and retooled it as a campy musical vehicle for Olivia Newton-John as Terpsichore (renamed Kira). This loose remake had an entirely different score and was set in the world of roller disco. Her unlikely co-star was aging Hollywood legend Gene Kelly, confusingly reprising his role from another Rita Hayworth musical (one that was actually successful), \u201cCover Girl.\u2019\u2019 Greeted with the worst reviews of 1980, \u201cXanadu\u2019\u2019 failed to recover its hefty $20 million budget during its original release. But it, too, awaited resurrection.<\/p>\n<p>First came a third film version of \u201cHere Comes Mr. Jordan,\u2019\u2019 which further added to the welter of confusion by taking its title from the first version of the sequel, \u201cDown to Earth.\u2019\u2019 This one starred Chris Rock \u2014 who told an interviewer that he became interested when he heard about Bill Cosby\u2019s race-switched version \u2014 with Chazz Palminteri as a version of Mr. Jordan and Eugene Levy as the bumbling messenger.<\/p>\n<p>But the third time wasn\u2019t the charm, and in 2000 audiences just weren\u2019t interested in seeing Rock play a dead black comedian reincarnated into a white man\u2019s body, even if he looked like Chris Rock.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By the 21st century, \u201cXanadu\u2019\u2019 had acquired such a cult following \u2014 particularly in the gay community \u2014 that a $5 million Broadway musical was mounted in 2007 with Kerry Butler, Cheyenne Jackson (in the part played by Michael Beck in the movie) and Tony Roberts. It ran for 500 performances, followed by national and international tours. Receiving generally good reviews, it was nominated for four Tony Awards.<\/p>\n<div id=\"trxppp230530_1\"><\/div>\n<p>Will \u201cHere Comes Mr. Jordan\u201d\/\u201cHeaven Can Wait\u2019\u2019 make it to Broadway as well? I wouldn\u2019t be surprised \u2014 it\u2019s a property that, like its main character, apparently just won\u2019t die.<\/p>\n<div id=\"wpcom-liveblog-container\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"floatingShare\">\n<div class=\"floating-share-wrap single__floating-share opaque attached\">\n<div class=\"floating-share sharedaddy\" data-component=\"socialShare\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The classic comic fantasy \u201cHere Comes Mr. Jordan,\u201d released 75 years ago this summer, spawned remakes starring Warren Beatty and Chris Rock, as well as a sequel&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2121,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions\/2121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}