In the first deleted scene, Lillian and Julia are onboard of the S.S.Majestic in 1923. The ship’s orchestra plays “Over the Waves”. Confetti floats through the air. The main deck filled with departing passengers and their friends. Lillian and Julia spot their socialite friend Anne Marie and her brother Sammy (played by an exaggerated John Glover). They have a quick chat until the siblings move off.

Clover’s character has little do in the film as well, except for a flashback scene in which he meets with Lilian in a bar. Being heavily intoxicated, he defends his sister’s frivolous antics and lets Lilian in on his secret that he slept with his own sister on his graduation day – trying to prove his point that Anne Marie does have feelings. As the conversation quickly moves to Sammy telling Lilian that “everybody knows about her relationship with Julia”, she ends his drunken brawl with a slap to the face before flipping his table. The scene can be watched on Youtube, in case you want to know why I described Clover’s peformance as exaggerated.

The Sardi scene – the first in the film that introduces Anne Marie, features a much longer conversation between her and Lillian. People moving in and out to congratulate her, staying a moment or two, then moving off. But Annie Marie has invaded Lillian and is kneeling at her side and is carrying on conversation, despite interruptions by Lillian’s well-wishers. Part of her conversation was later dubbed into the film’s second scene in the bar, starting with “I tried to see Julia in Vienna, but she wouldn’t see me, can you imagine?” Her scene closes with Anne Marie complimenting Lillian: “I am so happy for you, you look so slim, and now you’re famous, too, Lilly. And to think, you nearly became an architect.”

In the film’s second scene – a small New York hotel cocktail lounge in 1937 – they do not originally talked about Julia being in Vienna, but about Lillian’s second play, which failed to find an audience. The scene is rather short, and depsite dialogue being switched, it remains almost faithful to what we see in the film. Streep herself has later confirmed how her character and dialogue was mangled in the final version, and how disappointed she was left after seeing her motion picture debut: “When I saw myself on screen for the first time, I was horrified. I had a bad wig and they took the words from a scene I shot with Jane and put them in my mouth in a different scene. I thought, I’ve made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business.”