The classic 1969 movie Harrison Ford was banned from starring in: “The studio opposed it”
While he wasn’t quite a complete unknown, Harrison Ford was still a nobody in Hollywood terms before his casting as Han Solo in George Lucas’ Star Wars paved the way for 50 years of superstardom.
Before taking his first trip to a galaxy far, far away, the actor’s most prominent roles were supporting parts in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Lucas’ American Graffiti, and since the latter didn’t want to cast anyone in his sci-fi blockbuster that he’d worked with before, Ford was nowhere near the short list.
Obviously, that didn’t stop him from being hired and making the part his own, and the two biggest what-ifs of his legendary career are what would have happened if somebody else had played the roguish space smuggler, and what would have happened had Tom Selleck been able to commit to Raiders of the Lost Ark. However, to carry on the Star Wars theme, as Yoda would say, there is another.
It’s not quite on the same level as a pair of career-defining protagonists, but with only one credited feature under his belt in the 1968 western Journey to Shiloh, Ford was handpicked by one of the leading lights of the ‘French New Wave’ to play the male lead in their upcoming picture, only for the novice’s paymasters to wade in and rule him out of Jacques Demy’s Model Shop.
The 1969 romantic drama has become one of the most quietly influential pictures of the decade, with Quentin Tarantino, Damien Chazelle, and Greta Gerwig citing it as a major influence on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, La La Land, and Barbie, respectively, with the auteur’s first English-language film overcoming a poor showing during its initial run to take its place as a classic and minor masterpiece.
The part of George Matthews was there for the taking, but after the studio vetoed his casting, 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s Gary Lockwood got the nod instead. “He wanted me in the main role,” Ford admitted. “In his film, Jacques faithfully recreated the atmosphere of this common memory. It was a very strange experience for me. I was very keen to participate in Model Shop, but the studio opposed it.”
Under the old studio system, he had no say in the movies he did and didn’t star in, with Columbia Pictures failing to comprehend why Demy wanted a newcomer. He was only being paid $115 a week, but he still wasn’t worth it. “The producers had a hard time understanding why Jacques had thought of me for this role when there were many more experienced actors,” the icon acknowledged, and that was that.
We’re not suggesting that he’d have missed out on Han and Indy had he been allowed to lead the cast of Model Shop, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have changed everything in other ways. Ford’s second credited role in a film could have come at the hands of a ‘French New Wave’ master, which, in theory, may have opened several doors that would remain shut to someone who didn’t even appear onscreen in ’69 at all.
In the end, it would be half a decade before Ford finally landed a part that he could really sink his teeth into, all because the suits at Columbia couldn’t comprehend why Demy was so keen to give him the job.
