Straw Dogs is such a seminal piece of 70's cinema that its very hard to imagine it being played out any other way than it is or having actors other than Dustin Hoffman and Susan George as the stars. However it turns out that neither were necessarily first choice for their respective roles.
For the part of David Sumner; Stacy Keach, Beau Bridges, Donald Sutherland, Sidney Poitier and Jack Nicholson were all allegedly considered. There's not a bad actor there but if I was to rewrite history I think Poitier would have been a more interesting choice although maybe that would have brought just one "ism" too many for the film to bear.
For the role of Amy Sumner, again there is an handful of alternative names of which all could have carried it off with as equal aplomb as Susan George did. I might also add that the list is very much a who's who of fanciable females from 70's cinema. At least its a lot like my version of the list!
Hayley Mills, Jacqueline Bisset, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren, Carol White, Charlotte Rampling and Judy Geeson were all considered at some point.
And as you'll see from the evidence below, the latter even gets named checked on the back of the novel along with Dustin Hoffman and David Warner*
There's clearly a story there, the details of which we may never know for sure but along with our; "What if?" we also now have a mysterious "Why not?" as well
Interestingly its also reported that Hoffman didn't think George had the right kind of look for what he believed David Sumner's wife should be like. And on top of that Gordon M Williams was not a fan of the changes Sam Peckinpah made to his novel and Peckinpah by retaliation, claimed not to think an awful lot of Williams writing ability. All of which goes to show that you don't all necessarily have to be pulling in the same direction to make a great film. And it is a great film.
Being only about 3 when it first came out I didn't see it until the late 70's early 80's but its potent stuff being at times both ambiguous and brutal which is a hell of a trick to pull off.
If you've never seen it then you probably should and if you have then you should really go watch it again. I know I will be.
And that's it except to state for the record that I bloody love Susan George in Straw Dogs and the decades of other work she's appeared in. What an actress. What a Lady.
Steve
*Although noted on the paperback, David Warner remained uncredited on the actual film. Some kind of crime, surely! And of course we will be back to redress that at some point in the future
