1. - Fay Wray, Shanghai Madness, 1933. Musical chairs at Fox for Spencer Tracy’s next co-star. First choice Trevor was suddenly switched to a second consecutive George O’Brien vehicle. MGM loaned Elizabeth Allen, who simply walked out. Enter (for just a few days) Burns, aka Joan Bennett’s two-timing sister in Me And My Gal. Finally, with less than a week’s notice, King Kong’s girlfriend became the wild girl called Wildeth.

2. - Susan Hayward, Canyon Passage, 1946. For his first major Western (and colour debut), Hollywood’s resident realisateur Jacques Tourneur wanted to reunite the 1938 Stagecoach team of Trevor, John Wayne and Thomas Mitchell. He had to make do with Hayward, Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy.

3. - Mercedes McCambridge, Johnny Guitar, 1954. Joan Crawford had the rights and sold them, to Republic, suggesting Trevor or Barbara Stanwyck for the merciless Emma Small. Small is not the way director Nicholas Ray let McCambridge play her in the psycho-dikey-sexual drama hiding out in what François Truffaut dubbed an hallucinatory Western.

4. - Mercedes McCambridge, Giant, 1955.