Terrific coulda-been/shoulda-been movies, and I love that newspaper page! It looks like a classic movie transition: showing first the “uh-oh, trouble” headline, then panning down to the “rest easy, he’s on the case” Lancelot story.

I would liked to have saved MGM in the late 40s and 50s when it was falling apart.

It wasn’t all Dore Schary’s fault. Or Mayer’s. The seven year actor contract system was ending, TV was a major threat and the courts made the studios sell their theaters.
Also, I think the producers at Metro had run out of ideas.
Another problem was that two of MGM’s best directors, Victor Fleming and Jack Conaway, passed away and Clarence Brown retired in the early 1950s. That left Minnelli, Cukor and Wellman and a couple that should have received better breaks, John Sturges and Anthony Mann. Both would do great elsewhere.
Some of the movies made much later for other generations might have saved the ship from being scuttled had they been made in the 40s or 50s.
How about Gene Wilder’s TV movie MURDER IN A SMALL TOWN with William Powell and Mickey Rooney (as the murderer)? Clark Gable and Ray Milland in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING? Tracy and Hepburn in A BIG HAND FOR A LITTLE LADY, with Tracy in the Paul Ford role, Hepburn in the part Joanne Woodward played and Joseph Cotten or Walter Pidgeon in the Henry Fonda role. Garbo, Tracy (or Cagney), Van Johnson and Jean Hagen in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, instead of Dianne Wiest, Palminteri, John Cusak and Jennifer Tilly. MISERY with Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis instead of Kathy Bates and James Caan. Greer Garson, Pidgeon and Margaret O’Brien in THE PARENT TRAP instead of Maureen O’Hara, Brian Keith and Hayley Mills. O’Brien and Wallace Beery in HOME ALONE instead of Culkin and Pesci.
I also would have changed the casting of some of the movies they DID make. Esther Williams wanted the lead in CASS TIMBERLANE; I would have given it to her opposite Walter Pidgeon instead of Tracy. I always enjoyed EAST SIDE WEST SIDE because of its wonderful cast (Gardner, William Conrad, James Mason, Nancy Davis, Cyd Charisse) but I would have replaced the leads. James Cagney and Greer Garson instead of Van Heflin and Barbara Stanwyk.
And many of the movies made during that time frame would not have been made at all.

Of course, there was one thing stopping me from saving the day. I was born in 1948. And I don’t have a time machine to go back and tell them which movies to make and which ones to avoid.

I think some people blame MGM’s downfall on Schary but it probably would have happened anyway. When he left the studio he got no offers to run another major film operation.

I guess I just feel frustrated when I realize all the mistakes the studio made at that time. I feel like screaming, “What is the matter with you idiots? What are you thinking about?”

During that time Gable, Turner, Skelton, Garson, Elizabeth Taylor and other biggies made their worst films.

So, you aren’t the only one to daydream about what might have been.

By the way, that was an imaginative, well written piece.

I always loved whenever Sir Lancelot showed up in movies, especially since he was often the wisest guy in the room, ready to point out the folly of becoming vexed by life’s twists and turns,(“Calypso” in Brute Force is a particular fave).

Btw, one movie that should have been made: THEY CALL ME SIR LANCELOT!

I’d almost love to make up more, but you’ve provided about as many ones to imagine as would possibly have been created.

I think I’ll just think of them, and mention them, as if real, and maybe in 100 years, as far as written film history goes, they WILL be.