I can’t say that Murray as FDR was the worst movie casting ever, because I will shortly point out some worse ones. The Times ducked responsibility for those because of the “recent decades” qualifier. Ironically, one of Oscar’s Best Actor nominations this year meets my definition of incompetent casting: Ethan Hawke is nominated for his portrayal of lyricist Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon.” Nope, sorry, by any rational measure, casting Hawke as Hart makes as much sense as casting Melissa McCarthy as Marilyn Monroe. Hart was less than 5 feet tall. Hawke is a fine actor, but he’s 5’10.” Not only was Hart tiny, but his short stature played a large part in his life-long insecurity and emotional problems. Would you want to see Danny DeVito play Lincoln? Would you cast Jared Leto as Orson Welles? Tom Cruise as Martin Luther King? The only excuse for casting Hawke regardless of his height is the assumption that most movie-goers today don’t know Lorenz Hart from a Type D battery. Relying on your audience’s illiteracy and ignorance—and then adding to it, as in representing Lorenz Hart as normal sized— is unethical.
I will now note some other unforgivably bad casting choices that top all of the examples on the Times list. Sadly, the two worst involved one of my favorite actors, John Wayne. In a weak moment he let Howrad Hughes talk him into playing Genghis Kahn in “The Conqueror.” Everything about the movie is Ed Wood-terrible, but none worse than the Duke playing a Mongolian….
Nevertheless, the great George Stevens arguably equaled this casting botch when his 1965 all-star production of “The Greatest Story Ever Told” featured the Duke as a Roman Centurion at Jesus’s crucifixion.
It’s arguably even worse casting because the Duke’s appearance in such an alien setting and in such a solemn moment comes as such a shock; it would be as if Wayne showed up in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
There are other older casting disasters, like Cary Grant, romantic leading man par excellance, being cast as Cole Porter, who was famously gay, and when Steve Martin starred in a grim, dark fantasy he didn’t have the chops to handle, “Pennies From Heaven.” Francis Ford Coppola’s nepotism-based decision to cast his non-actress, charisma-challenged, big-nosed daughter as the romantic lead in “Godfather 3” was both cruel and stupid. As the Hollywood musical slowly crashed and burned like The Hindenburg, several casting decisions have been terrible, such as Tim Burton inflicting Johnny Depp on Sondheim fans as Sweeney Todd, and Russell Crowe being cast in a crucial singing role in “Les Misérables” despite being unable to sing at anything approaching a professional level. The unforgivable choice to let Marlon Brando’s thin, unpleasant singing voice ruin the film version of “Guys and Dolls” will live in infamy. Nothing, however, approaches or will ever approach the Duke’s two disasters, or the horror of Bill Murray portraying FDR.
Ethics Alarms 
really hoping you had a gift link for that story.
-Jut
Oops! It was supposed to be…I fixed it. Gift link now…
An inverse of your Ethan Hawke/Lorenz Hawke situation could be 5′-7″ (or maybe less) Tom Cruise cast as Jack Reacher (6′-5″ and imposingly bulked-up and buff, per the books).
Yes, my neighbors, who are fans of the novels, hated that casting. The first Cruise-Reacher movie was still fun, but I had no idea what the character was supposed to be when I saw it. The “Reacher” series educated me.
Just a bit of fluff, but Meryl Streep and her cohorts were two decades too old in Mama Mia.
I never liked Kurt Russell in Tombstone, although I generally like his acting in the more lighthearted characters he plays. Every time it’s on I always think they should’ve picked someone else for that part.
It’s amazing, isn’t it? The guy has been a middling level star since he was 11; he can do comedy and drama; he’s had many hit movies in different genres, but he doesn’t have “star power,” whatever that is. Val Kilmer steals that film away from Kurt: even Stephen Lang, Michael Beihn and Sam Elliot make more of an impression.
Elicited from a friend knowledgeable about these matters:
He’s right about the new Oscar for casting—it’s a ridiculous idea, and the examples the Times made of “bad casting” were nonsensical—they were just bad performances, or the result of bad writing or directing. Bad casting, or miscasting, to use a more precise term, is different. A classic example is Millie Perkins in “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a beautifully crafted and deeply felt adaptation of the famous stage play. The lead role required an actress as luminous as Susan Strasberg apparently was on Broadway, and Millie just didn’t have it, thus fatally damaging the film’s effectiveness.
On the other hand, there are triumphs of casting against type that sometimes resulted in Oscars for the actor—some deserved, and others awarded mostly for being a surprise. Shirley Jones, for example, the ingenue of two Rodgers and Hammerstein film musicals, hit the jackpot, winning a supporting actress Oscar for playing a prostitute in “Elmer Gantry. Though she was only in a couple of scenes, her performance was so unexpected and so startling—in a raw and very sexual way—that I suspect the vote was nearly unanimous. A daring and brilliant bit of casting.
There are many other notable examples of miscasting, none of which appeared in the Times article.
I disagree about Millie. She was a very inexperienced actress whose big plus was exactly that quality of being luminous. George Stevens got that one right, and took a big risk to do it. The lingering criticism of Perkins seems to come almost entirely from the influence of New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, like all Times movie and drama critics an asshole, who raved about how wonderful the movie was while slamming Millie. Of course the movie couldn’t have been so wonderful with a poor Anne. Most critics praised her performance. At the time there was a lot of anticipation that Audrey Hepburn would play the role, but she properly declined because she was too old. Also the play was a big New York hit, and Susan Strasberg was reportedly memorable and won a Tony at 18. But she was never effective in the movies, and Stevens’ instincts in not casting her seem to have been proven accurate.
Tangential but interesting (to me, at least).
In hindsight, it should be obvious that any number of icons of the old west might have lived into the 20th century, but going down the Google rabbit hole a while back turned up these, and a number of others:
John Wayne claimed to have met Wyatt Earp, and considered him an idol. Earp moved to California and worked as a consultant for early Hollywood Westerns. Tom Mix helped Helped Wayne get his career started, and was a pallbearer at Earp’s funeral.
Bat Masterson became a prominent sports writer and columnist.
Seth Bullock (Deadwood) lived until 1919, and was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt.
Tom Mix’s demise: Famed cowboy actor took his final drive near Tucson
A photo of his Cord! I didn’t know he wrecked in broad daylight. He made $220,000.00 a day in current dollars!