Hollywood's First Choices: How the Greatest Casting Decisions Were Made

Hollywood's First Choices: How the Greatest Casting Decisions Were Made Jeff Burkhart and Bruce Stuart (Crown, $14) It's hard to imagine All About Eve without Bette Davis, but that's just what Hollywood's First Choices wants us to do. This book provides a glimpse into a parallel universe of movies that almost came to be. What's that universe like? Claudette Colbert plays Eve's Margo Channing. Noel Coward and Charles Laughton both get shots at The Bridge On the River Kwai, Alec Guinness be damned. And Robert Redford stars in every movie from Rosemary's Baby to The Verdict. What's missing is any acknowledgment of the hundreds of movies that failed because of bad casting. Nonetheless, First Choices oozes insider detail. B -Robin Dougherty