A Movie I Wish I'd Seen

It's not generally known, but at the time of his death, the great actor Claude Rains was in negotiations to star in a film about the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. He was to play a Spanish agent assigned to Havana, but the project was scrapped when the writers could not come up with a plausible way to avoid linking the character to the sinking of our battleship, which would have made the movie too controversial.

That's right:

Claude Rains, from Spain, was plainly on the Maine.