The Band Wagon

[filmlover]

I know that Jose Ferrer has been called the inspiration for the character of Jeffrey Cordova (played by Jack Buchanan), but today I was looking at some Playbills from the early 1950s and came across Cyril Ritchard's name as a director of a Broadway production. I remembered him really as Capt. Hook to Mary Martin's Peter Pan. But it struck me that the flamboyant Cyril Ritchard was certainly closer to the characterization that Jack Buchanan gave than Jose Ferrer. I did some looking up of Ritchard's career and he had quite a history of acting and directing prior to the making of The Band Wagon.

 

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bestweb.net/~foosie/cyril2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bestweb.net/~foosie/cyril.htm&usg=__hpYR7FkopsvueOGqRdywo23POJE=&h=534&w=389&sz=35&hl=en&start=2&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=ldfDqQyP_DqnyM:&tbnh=132&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcyril%2Britchard%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbs%3Disch:1

 

Also, Buchanan was Scottish and Ritchard was Australian, so it would finally make sense in the casting of Buchanan, because there was similar sounding foreigness to them. Ferrer was from Puerto Rico. Plus there is even a resemblance between the two:

 

 

What do you think. was it Ritchard or Ferrer that was the inspiration for Jeffrey Cordova, or a mixture of both?

 

(One sad note: Jack Buchanan died only four years after making The Band Wagon.)

[MyFavoriteFilms]

I've read that Ferrer was definitely a main inspiration, but so was Orson Welles.