Joan Crawford who was a major star in the forties and fifties actually began her career as a stripper and pornographic actress. Joan worked in some very fashionable strip joints doing not only performances for audiences but also doing personal performances, many times for members of the mafia and underworld. One of her future husbands tried to buy up all the copies of the art film she did when she was 20, only to realise that pirating the copy was all to easy, making his efforts futile.
When Marlon Brando won the Oscar for his portrayal of Vito Corleone in the 1972 movie The Godfather he refused the award as a protest to the treatment of American Indians. Instead of Marlon making the announcement himself, he sent up a pretty young representative of the American Indians to refuse the award for him. As it turned out, this pretty young representative of the American Indians wasn't even Indian at all but rather a model who was paid to do it.
During the War, the Japanese used to show the Abbott and Costello sequence "Drill Routine" from the movie Buck Privates to show how stupid the American Army was!
Burt Lancaster was originally offered the lead role in the movie Ben Hur but turned it down on the advice of his manager. The movie went on to become the biggest box-office success of its time as well as winning 11 academy awards, one which went to Charlton Heston for his performance in the lead role.
Another one for the lost opportunity box is the rumor that Gwenith Paltrow turned down the role of Rose in the movie Titanic. The fact that she has never refuted the rumor, but rather chooses not to discuss it leads to the popular belief that it is true.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes who were the leads in the most famous love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet, actually hated each other. DiCaprio was quoted as having said that Claire was so ugly ( how wrong he is ), that she needed a lot of make-up to improve herself. During the filming of the swimming pool scene, Claire had a slight accident in the pool which lead to her to getting infection, and this sent Leonardo into fits of laughter.
Buddy Ebsen of Beverly Hillbillies fame was originally picked for the role of the tinman in The Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately for the future Jed Clampett, the make-up that had to be applied to him caused a bad skin reaction which ended up costing him the part.
Elvis Presley's hair was not actually black, it was a light brown ( you can see this in his early photographs or even in the movie Love Me Tender). He actually dyed it black to be like his mother's.