5 Unintentionally Racist Casting Decisions

Editor: rale / July 18, 2010 / Category : Misc

Let’s just get something straight: like it or not, racism has never exactly been a stranger to cinema. Why do you think there have only been four black men to win a Best Actor Oscar? And is it a bigger travesty that there have been only four, or that Jamie Foxx has one while Morgan Freeman does not (and yes, we know that Freeman has won Best Supporting Actor, but still)? Hollywood has gotten better about giving people of all creeds and colors a chance, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t made some missteps along the way. Sometimes, those missteps aren’t intentional, either. Case in point with these absolutely ridiculous casting decisions that could be considered downright racist…

John Wayne as Genghis Khan

John Wayne was a lot of things. Tall, imposing, talented, charismatic, and decidedly not Mongolian. Did that last thing stop him from portraying the most famous and feared Mongolian in all of history? Of course not. And that’s precisely why the extremely white cowboy from Iowa who played football at USC wound up with the role of Genghis Khan in the film The Conqueror. The movie was a pet project of Wayne’s for years, and just to really emphasize how crazy the production was, it was filmed largely near the main site of US nuclear testing and was funded by Howard Hughes.

The movie was pretty much an unmitigated disaster, and not just because a white man was portraying one of the most famous Asians in history. Of the 220 cast and crew members, 91 contracted cancer, including Wayne (who would later die of the disease in 1979). At the very least though (in hindsight) even Wayne knew that it was an awful movie and that he was never in any way, shape or form the man to play Genghis Khan. He even stated that the film taught him “not to make an a** of yourself trying to play parts you’re not suited for.” Oh, if only Mickey Rooney had taken that advice, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

john wayne

Natalie Wood as Maria

And we jump right from John Wayne to one of his co-stars from the classic western “The Searchers”, Natalie Wood. Perhaps the most famous role Natalie Wood portrayed in a career cut far too short by her untimely death in 1981 was as Maria in West Side Story, in which this daughter of Russian immigrants portrayed a Puerto Rican. Wait, what? We realize that with her dark hair and complexion she wasn’t the whitest girl on the block, but doesn’t it seem like a bit of a slap in the face not to cast an actual, you know, Puerto Rican in a role that had already been well established on Broadway?

Particularly when you consider that the woman who actually played Maria was also in the cast. And Rita Moreno, who actually is from Puerto Rico, by the way, didn’t just play the role of Maria on Broadway. She dominated it, winning a Tony for her efforts. So maybe the producers of the big screen version just figured her stage success wouldn’t translate to a movie, right? Nope, because she won an Oscar for her (other) role in the movie adaptation, becoming the first Hispanic to win one. So maybe Wood just had a better voice, right? Wrong again. Wood didn’t sing any of her own songs, but still got the part of Maria anyway. All because Hollywood just didn’t want to give the good roles to Hispanics in 1961, meaning that maybe this one wasn’t so unintentionally racist after all.

natalie wood

Fisher Stevens as Ben Jabituya

Maybe Short Circuit isn’t the greatest movie in the world, but it was sure entertaining when it came out back in 1986. Who doesn’t remember “Johnny 5 is Alive” or Steve Guttenberg back when he was actually getting work? Who can forget the timeless story of a robot who gets struck by lightning, which inexplicably brings him to “life” and sets the army hot on his trail, trying to capture or destroy him for some reason? Personally, we feel that if a good natured robot became sentient, our first thought wouldn’t be to destroy it. But then again, Terminator came out two years before Short Circuit so maybe the army guys were just paranoid.

Anyway, Johnny 5’s creator in the movie is Ben Jabituya, an Indian scientist portrayed by Fisher Stevens: very much a white man and very much from Chicago. Now if you’ve never seen Short Circuit, first of all shame on you. But anyway, think about the biggest possible caricature of an Indian man you can. You’re probably thinking of Apu from The Simpsons, right? Well now you know exactly how Fisher Stevens portrayed Ben. Seriously, the only thing that was missing was a line where he thanked Johnny 5 and invited him to come again.

fisher stevens

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Lisandro

This is a racist list by itself. Aren't there white puertoricans or persian? It's like american rednecks call all latinamerican “mexicans”
Happyfeet

Also the whole freakin cast of Avatar
Guest

Rita Moreno never played Maria in West Side Story on Broadway. Carol Lawrence did. And while she was nominated for a Tony, she didn't win. Rita Moreno's role (Anita) was created by Chita Rivera on Broadway.
lurker

I like how most of the main cast in the Prince of Persia have middle eastern ancestry [Ben Kingsley is Indian, Gyllenhaal is a Jew, etc.] which sort of cancels out the assumed racism.
Lauren

I have to agree with you there. People are uneducated when it comes to ethnic groups.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/UAZAYDJ5QN6Y75KEAEPQT5O4HA ruth

Actually, Genghis Khan was Howard Hughes pet project. He refused to release it to theaters and kept it for his personal enjoyment for years. It's also the reason most of the cast eventually died of cancer in some form because it was filmed in the same area as the atom bomb tests that were going on. A fact they weren't too happy about.
Calic

i don't get how this is racist.

ehehe
kr1st0f

Charlton Heston as Ramon Miguel Vargas in 'A Touch Of Evil'.
Desmond G C Nel

Apparently “21″ was quite racist.
Rob

Casting Natalie Wood as Maria was racist? You've got to be kidding me.
Heimdal

http://www.comicvine.com/news/idris-elba-cast-a... this is perhaps even “intentional”. The aesir god known as the “whitest and fairest of them all”, will be portrayed by a BLACK man. Pathetic…
Squishynothers

The recent “10,000 B.C”.
Brklyngirl4life219

Well, I'm a light-skinned Puerto Rican and and my friends make fun of me by calling me “Goya” as in the Spanish cracker. People usually confuse me for other ethnicities as well, so not all of us look the same. You're right.
Danyeller1980

Actually (& y’all, don’t hate me for being a know-it-all or whatever, but) John Wayne IS a little Mongolian! 16,000-ish years ago the people who are the present day Mongolian population had a chunk of them cross over a now non-existant “land bridge” between the northern parts of the eastern Asian Continent & the western North American Continent. Every Native American tribe that has ever existed has descended from those who crossed over the land bridge. John Wayne is part Apache, so he’s really part ancient Mongolian.
Danyeller1980

Betcha didn’t know that ;J
Smoog

Anyone seen ‘Vertical Limits’? It has Temuera Morrison – a Maori from New Zealand playing a Pakistani Helicopter pilot. He’s a damn good actor except he can’t lose his kiwi accent, even when he’s speaking in Pakistani. Guess there are Indians/Pakistanis actors…
He also played Jango Fett but I guess you can’t really accuse Hollywood of racist casting as Jango is an alien

Tem was in ‘Once were Warriors’, a NZ movie about a severely dysfunctional Maori family. One of his mates in that movie was Cliff Curtis, who is a fantastic actor.
He’s since appeared in several Hollywood movies playing basically every coloured race out there, other than Maori. He’s played a Columbian terrorist in ‘Collateral Damage’, Pablo Escobar in ‘Blow’, a Cuban in ‘Runaway Jury’ and a Mexican gangster in ‘Training Day’. Hollywood had to hire a Maori from New Zealand to play these roles because, presumably, there aren’t any Latinos in Los Angelos…
He’s also played a a Kurdish fighter in ‘Three Kings’ and an Iranian in ‘Crossing Over’ (again, we must assume that there are no Middle Eastern actors in Hollywood).
At least Hollywood is finally choosing a dark skinned actor to play these roles and not just hiring a blond white guy and sending a gopher off to the nearest shoe shop for some polish. Guess it is progress of a sorts.
Smoog

Anyone seen ‘Vertical Limits’? It has Temuera Morrison – a Maori from New Zealand playing a Pakistani Helicopter pilot. He’s a damn good actor except he can’t lose his kiwi accent, even when he’s speaking in Pakistani. Guess there are Indians/Pakistanis actors…
He also played Jango Fett but I guess you can’t really accuse Hollywood of racist casting as Jango is an alien

Tem was in ‘Once were Warriors’, a NZ movie about a severely dysfunctional Maori family. One of his mates in that movie was Cliff Curtis, who is a fantastic actor.
He’s since appeared in several Hollywood movies playing basically every coloured race out there, other than Maori. He’s played a Columbian terrorist in ‘Collateral Damage’, Pablo Escobar in ‘Blow’, a Cuban in ‘Runaway Jury’ and a Mexican gangster in ‘Training Day’. Hollywood had to hire a Maori from New Zealand to play these roles because, presumably, there aren’t any Latinos in Los Angelos…
He’s also played a a Kurdish fighter in ‘Three Kings’ and an Iranian in ‘Crossing Over’ (again, we must assume that there are no Middle Eastern actors in Hollywood).
At least Hollywood is finally choosing a dark skinned actor to play these roles and not just hiring a blond white guy and sending a gopher off to the nearest shoe shop for some polish. Guess it is progress of a sorts.
Shira

The fact that you think anyone who’s not the ethnicity of the part shouldn’t be allowed to act as that role is racist, you’re a hypocrite