You can choose six actors for the ultimate film noir. Whom do you select...?

[First Speaker]

God has granted you the opportunity to make the ultimate noir, and can select six actors in heaven (well, hopefully that's where they are) for your film. My choices? Robert Mitchum, Dan Duryea, Elisha Cook Jr, Elizabeth Scott, Gloria Grahame, and Helen Walker. How about you folks…?

[at140]

1. Kirk Douglas X 3, Jessica Walter, Sean Connery, Greata Garbo

[First Speaker]

2. That's interesting...some actors in noirs played twins...

...but Kirk as triplets? You're actually making my imaginary screenwriter juices flowing...

[Quemado]

5. Sean Connery is still alive.

[Ron Obvious]

10. As is Kirk Douglas. n/t

[Watchfoxheadexplodes]

3. Mine

Fred MacMurray
Farley Granger
Peter. Lorre

Barbara Stanwyck
Joan Chandler
Beverly Garland

[Quemado]

4. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Fred MacMurray, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck

Marilyn Monroe would be a great addition to any film noir movie.

[stopbush]

6. Bogey, Mitchum, Robert Montgomery, Bacall, Sterling Hayden and Gene Tierney.

So many to choose from!

Of course, my list wouldn’t work to cast a movie. You need bad guys, dames and the small rôle players to make a great film noir.

[cureautismnow]

7. Bogie, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Ingrid Bergman, Mary Astor, and Cary Grant

[First Speaker]

11. Sounds like *Notorious* meets *The Maltese Falcon*...

...which, come to think of it, would be a real gas to watch...

[Ptah]

8. Okay!

betty boop

olive oyl

wilma flinstone

minnie mouse

billy graham

richard nixon

[hunter]

15. Minnie Mouse is a terrifying Femme fatale.

I was sure Wilma Flintstone was the murderer until the very end of the film, and then OMG, you realize...

The most shocking ending ever.

People were still sitting in their seats stunned when the movie was over and the lights came on.

There were men stumbling out of the theater like they'd just been kicked in the balls with women who had inscrutable Mona Lisa smiles.

I've NEVER seen anything like it.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

9. My picks.....

Joan Crawford
Veronica Lake
Rita Hayworth
Van Heflin
Fred McMurray
Ingrid Bergman

[rurallib]

12. Rod Steiger, Sidney Portier, George C. Scott,

Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis.

[Generic Brad]

13. Don Knotts, Ernie Kovaks, Marjory Main, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, and Moe Howard

I would like to have them play against type.

[Mendocino]

14. William Holden

Joseph Cotten
Paulette Goddard
Woody Strode
Sydney Greenstreet
Teresa Wright

[Floyd R. Turbo]

16. Brando, Dean, Hopper, Presley, Page, Kitt.

Cool thread!

[First Speaker]

17. Thanks...but I'm trying to imagine the film that could contain all your picks...

...it would have to be directed by a collaboration between Welles and Tarantino--but be in black-and-white...this *is* noir, after all...

[pecosbob]

18. I'll buck the trend...I would pick the cast from Straight Time (though not all are deceased)

Dustin Hoffman, Theresa Russell, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmet Walsh, Rita Taggart, Kathy Bates. Throw in John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands and you've got a masterpiece in the making.

[Harker]

19. Robert Mitchum, Broderick Crawford...

Dana Andrews, Barbara Stanwyck, Shelley Winters, and Groucho Marx.

[First Speaker]

20. You know, it's funny...a "straight" version of a Groucho character...

...would very much resemble a film noir. The real Rufus T Firefly would look a little like Trump, and a little like Willie Stark. The "real" Otis Driftwood would resemble a shady doctor out to rip off a wealthy old lady. Groucho would fit into a real noir just fine...

[Harker]

22. That's the beauty of casting.

I threw in Groucho for laughs at first, but as I was doing so, I saw him playing a small role earnestly. The boss at work, a bank manager, maybe.

His serious side was undervalued, I think.

[Harker]

23. P.S.

I was also considering Judy Holliday, but Groucho edged her out.

[gratuitous]

21. I'll put a spin on this

How about a sequel to Body Heat? It's 30 years later, William Hurt gets out of the slammer for the murder which Katherine Turner framed him. He's known almost the whole time that he was framed and that Turner pretty much got away with it. He gets in touch with Ted Danson, who played one of the cops who investigated the murder, and explains how Turner framed him. It takes a little while, but Danson overcomes his skepticism and eventually comes around to believe Hurt's story. They set off to try to find Turner, who, when last we saw her, has achieved her high school yearbook dream of living on an island somewhere.

I'm not sure where it goes from there, but what happens when they find her? Hurt, Turner and Danson are all still alive, and I think with the right screenplay, some studio could make a creditable sequel to a very fine latter-day noir movie.

[UTUSN]

24. They have to be dead?!1 Otherwise, Joaquin PHOENIX, Cristina RICCI, DUNNAWAY,