The Silver Screen Oasis

I LOVED that Brady Bunch episode where Alice's cousin came to sub for Alice! She wore gray sweats and a whistle around her neck and made the kids get up early and run laps around the block. Horrible!

Fox Movie Channel used to show The Forbidden Street quite regularly, but it's been a while...good performances from Maureen O'Hara and Dana Andrews.

What's the name of the movie where Katharine Hepburn plays a spinster who pretends to be her own younger, more attractive niece? Based on a play, I think?

Sandy K

I don't think anyone has mentioned what to me was one of the funniest double roles ever done, and that was Jack Lemmon playing Professor Fate and the screwy Baron in The Great Race. In addition to Ronald Colman, Stewart Granger also played the double role in The Prisoner of Zenda.

Anne

Sandy, I think the Hepburn movie you're thinking of is Quality Street.

Your mention of Alice's cousin on The Brady Bunch made me remember that Ann B. Davis actually has a twin sister. Davis was a TV fixture long before The Brady Bunch. I have a vague memory of the two of them on some talk or quiz show long ago, trying to fool people. Something with the twins on roller skates, skating around a wall, first one, then the other --- it's all very foggy. Perhaps the fact that Davis has a twin was the inspiration for the episode.

I meant to mention the other day that I saw an ad in a magazine someone next to me on the Subway was reading, not sure what the ad was for - maybe insurance, or applying for Social Security -- but it said that different people do things in different ways, and it shows Patty Duke as both Patty and Cathy, together, now both of Social Security collecting age, but still as "the same but different" as identical cousins can be.

The marvellous Dick Van Dyke as Bert and the chairman of the bank in Mary Poppins. I think I read that the children didn't realise it was Dick Van Dyke.

Lon Chaney in The Blackbird plays the Blackbird, a criminal and also as the bishop, his community minded and kind twin brother. It doesn't stritly count as a double role as the bishop was a smoke screen who was actually played by the Blackbird .

Peter Sellers.
The man might not have invented the technique of comic multi-roling, but in my book, he certainly perfected it, at least on the big screen.
And no disrespect intended, but someone really needs to tell Eddie Murphy that whatever mysterious formula of talents it is that multi-roling requires . . . he don't got it!

No one's mentioned one of my favorite "double" roles - Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou. And then there is the 1941 Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. vehicle The Corsican Brothers.

There's also Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets, which I don't believe has been mentioned - also Jerry Lewis in its semi-remake The Family Jewels.

There's that one wild scene with a whole mess of John Malkoviches in Being John Malkovich.

There's Tom Ewell in the ultra-creepy Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "The Case of Mr. Pelham." Just the idea of two Tom Ewells...

And I can't believe anyone forgot the gem Double Impact, featuring two Jean-Claude Van Dammes.

-Stephen

srowley75 wrote:
And I can't believe anyone forgot the gem Double Impact, featuring two Jean-Claude Van Dammes.

-Stephen

Steve, I hadn't forgotten about Double Impact , I just didn't feel much like bringing it up!
(And I'm a Van Damme fan!)
Now if you want to see a good movie with Jean Claude x2, run down a rental of the little-known but far superior Replicant!

The film with the most uses of overlays, dubbing and mulitple characters is Michael Keaton's MULTIPLICITY. "I need an extra me to care of so many commitments..." This film gives an interesting perspective on that question. Not a great one, but some moments here or there. Those darned Copies Of Copies...

Another dual role that's a lot of corny fun is Jack Palance's in House of Numbers (1957).

We REALLY need to shut this thread down. Period. Now all I'm thinking about is COLLECTING these blasted films merely on the basis of MULTIPLE ROLES. Good grief...

In the film BOUNCE (Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck), Gwyneth is learning to smoke because she learned to love nicotine gum. Ben mentions the backwardness of this, asking what the next week would bring - "You'll be on heroin to stop a methadone addiction?"

I'm looking at wall-space thinking, "Why not just tear out that wall, extend the DVD room out into the yard another 30-40 feet. Sure... why not. Buy up the neighbor's house and yard. Maybe a couple of them. That should give me enough room for DVD collecting..."

Heroin, anyone?

Ollie wrote:We REALLY need to shut this thread down. Period. Now all I'm thinking about is COLLECTING these blasted films merely on the basis of MULTIPLE ROLES. Good grief...

Apologies, Ollie, to you and your bank manager, but I've thought of two more.

From the sublime to the ridiculous (well, actually the other way round): Maria Montez in Cobra Woman (1944), where I think she plays both an innocent island maiden and the island's look-a-like evil queen; and the incomparable Deborah Kerr as three incarnations of Roger Livesey's ideal woman in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).

"Apologies to bank manager", aye! ha ha...

Oh yes, COLONEL BLIMP and Deborah Kerr. Of course! So many great ones, and I'm sure we've still got as many left to name as we've placed here already! Hopefully, this thread can keep growing.

And grow, it shall: PASSION (Allan Dwan, 1954), with cinematography by John Alton, which is why I bothered. Yvonne De Carlo portrays sisters. Cornel Wilde, Raymond Burr, Lon Chaney Jr. and John Qualen also star. Definitely not up to the standard that Dwan-Alton set earlier in that year with SILVER LODE.

Late to the party, as usual, but here are a few that may or may not have been mentioned.

Bud Abbott played a dual role in two terrific Abbott and Costello films, The Time of Their Lives and Little Giant.
The Monty Python gang all play multiple parts in Holy Grail, Life of Brian, etc.
Elsa Lancaster plays Mary Shelly and the monster's bride in Bride of Frankenstein.
Kevin Kline plays the president and Dave in Dave.
Buster Keaton plays everyone (including the audience) in The Playhouse.
Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel and the Jewish barber in The Great Dictator. (I know this was mentioned, I just love the name Adenoid Hynkel.)