 Wasserman, however, always claimed that the lines were his own, despite the allegation that they appeared in print six years before he was born.Wasserman himself noted that he had tried to cut the impossible dream speech from the teleplay due to a need to fit the performance into the 90 minute slot, but that Lee J. Cobb, who played both Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote (despite the fact that Cobb was rather beefy and Don Quixote is supposed to be thin), had insisted it go back in.The famous apocryphal portrait of Cervantes, the , bears somewhat of a resemblance to Cobb; perhaps this is one of the reasons that he was chosen for the role.