5. John Fords Captain America
Sorcha EdwardIf Western auteur John Ford had of made a version of Captain America contemporary to the war then the most obvious choice for Steve Rogers would no doubt have been Ford regular John Wayne. Instead though the role would go to real-life actor come war hero Audie Murphy and Wayne would appear in cameo as Sergeant Fury (later appearing in spin-off team-up film: The Invaders), Mickey Rooney would play Bucky Barnes (foreshadowing a later role as Fall-Out Boy) with the most famous Hollywood based German speaking actor of the time: Peter Lorre making for a decidedly creepy Red Skull. Anybody who knows Audie Murphy's story knows that he more or less was the "real" Captain America. Murphy was one of the most decorated American soldiers in the War, he was involved in the Invasion of Sicily and Anzio, the Liberation of Rome and the Invasion of Southern France, as well as famously holding off a company of German soldiers single handedly for over an hour. It was his appearance on the cover of Life magazine celebrating this fact which brought him to the attention of James Cagney. Murphy's incredible war record was immortalised in the 1955 film Hell and Back, where he played himself. If 1940's Hollywood had seen the potential of the fledgling superhero genre then Murphy could have been a definitive Captain America over sixty years before Chris Evans made the role his own.