It took nine tailors (1948)

28: Little Miss Marker EVERY actor has to fight type casting and type thinking in Hollywood. Writers, directors, producers, all talk in terms of types. They will say, "This is strictly a Humphrey Bogart type, except he's afraid of guns," or "There is a little of Bill Powell in this character but not so refined," or "I see this guy as a kind of Cary Grant with shadings of Wallace Beery." I fought that kind of talk for years. I was the Menjou type and nothing else— which meant a fellow on the Retail Merchant Tailors' list of the ten best-dressed men. If a part called for an actor to wear an ill-fitting forty-dollar suit, nobody ever cast me in it. Why Al Hall ever thought of casting me for the part of the bookmaker in Little Miss Marker I'll never understand. But he wanted me and I got the part. It was one of the greatest favors anybody has ever done for me in Hollywood. The character I played was a Broadway bookmaker, a frowsy misanthrope who thought about nothing but the bangtails. He lived like a miser, and his main interest in life was collecting bets from the suckers. I had to furnish only one suit for the part— a blue serge. I didn't even own a blue serge and besides, this was supposed to be a thirty-five-dollar fiddle-and-flute that only half fitted and that got a pressing once every four weeks. I started searching for such a garment. After trying Paramount's wardrobe department and the Western Costume Company, I finally found the right outfit in the wardrobe department of RKO. I put on the suit and dropped into Al Hall's office for his O.K. He looked it over and shook his head. 217