In the ’40s, back when he was Young Blue Eyes, the actor-singer had enjoyed movie success with MGM, especially costarring with Gene Kelly in films such as Anchors Aweigh, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and On the Town. But by the early ’50s his screen career was hurting; in 1951′s Double Dynamite he was billed third, after Jane Russell and Groucho Marx. He fought to get the secondary, non-singing role of Maggio, the edgy soldier in 1953′s From Here to Eternity, because he knew it could rewire his Hollywood cred as a dramatic star. Did The Godfather get it right? Was a horse head involved in the casting discussions? We’re sworn to omerta. Whatever happened, though, Eli Wallach was out and Sinatra was in. He won a Supporting Actor Oscar and, after that, it was Hollywood that had to do the begging.
Through the 1940s, this Swedish import was the American movie industry’s go-to gal for noble heroines: Joan of Arc, a tubercular nun and of course Ilsa in Casablanca. In 1949, she went off to Italy to make a little art movie — and a lot of whoopee — with director Roberto Rossellini, deserting her husband and Hollywood in the process. It was the domestic melodrama that the film establishment publicly condemned but secretly loved. So when Bergman and Rossellini split, and she starred as the would-be princess of the Romanoffs in 1956′s Anastasia, Hollywood welcomed her back with tears of forgiveness and an Oscar for Best Actress.
As we prepare for the Game of Thrones finale, we recognize Joffrey and nine other baddies who showed us that terrible, horrible things can come in small packages
