Why isn't Dennis Weaver credited?
I don't get it. He was credited while Vic Perrin, who's role was almost as small was.
shareI don't get something either, wrf -- I replied to this post last night, yet there's nothing here.
I'm obviously losing my mind.
What I wrote is that Dennis Weaver wasn't yet a major name and so, in keeping with typical Hollywood practice of the time, he received no screen credit. This happened to him in other films he appeared in around this time. Vic Perrin was an established actor.
The studios usually didn't list most actors in a film back then, and while these were mainly bit and supporting players, there were many cases where they'd credit someone who had a smaller role either because that person was known, or because the credited person -- often a starlet -- was someone the studio was promoting, even though their role may have been small and insignificant. (The credits for It Came From Outer Space, seen at the close, have such a ludicrous "starlet" credit.)
A good example of credit neglect is A Letter to Three Wives. Thelma Ritter, not yet a "name", had a large and noticeable supporting role throughout the movie, yet she got no screen credit. But several performers with much smaller parts and far less screen time -- including Barbara Lawrence, Connie Gilchrist, Hobart Cavanaugh and Florence Bates -- were all credited. No Highway in the Sky is an even more notorious example, crediting two actresses who have, respectively, one and no lines between them, while almost a dozen or more major actors with crucial and lengthy roles receive no credit whatsoever.
You're absolutely right, hob. 1954 would have been at least a year before "Gunsmoke." Dub Taylor also wasn't credited, of course, we only see his face for about five seconds.
I like it when I see a future star's name in a film before they've settled on their screen name; for instance, Julie Newmar is credited as Julie Neumeyer in SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS.
Yeah, poor Dub Taylor. He gave his life for Dragnet. The only time in any Dragnet we actually see the crime committed. Pretty brutal for 1954, actually.
He'd been in lots of movies for years (you see him as a reporter in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), and was in Them! in '54, and most often uncredited. But in later years he seemed to get his name in the credits pretty regularly.
How often have you seen a film where the credits proudly state, "And Introducing" someone you never heard of again? So it really is always neat seeing the name of someone who did become a star in a first or early movie. Like Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry's credit, "and introducing Shirley MacLaine", for one.
But the name-change thing is fun, too. 1955's Battle Cry lists in its cast Justus H. McQueen. Steve? Nope. In his film debut, the man played a character called L. Q. Jones and liked it so much he adopted it. Gig Young, May Wynn (The Caine Mutiny) were two others who adopted the name of one of their characters. And of course, Herman Brix eventually became Bruce Bennett and Julie Bishop acted under three names before settling on that fourth one.
I remember Charles Bronson talking in an interview about using his real name - Buchinski(?) - early in his career. It's true, there seem to be very few "Introducing" roles that I can think of that led to major careers.
Am I mistaken, or was BATTLE CRY the second feature under WAR IS HELL at the Texas Theater in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963?
Now, if you're talking introductions and THE CAINE MUTINY in the same sentence, I can't help but reflect on Robert Francis, who played Ens. Keith. Clearly, this was a young actor the studios had high hopes for. Sort of a clean-cut James Dean, who would wipe out in his plane a mere two months before Dean met his end in that car crash; one has to wonder what kind of career Francis would have had. When Dean's mantle was picked up by Paul Newman (and later Steve McQueen), the anti-establishment new age hero was born. Francis did not fit that type, so I imagine he might have landed on the small tube. In fact, looking a bit like Larry Hagman maybe he would have found his niche acting in kooky sitcoms.
Funny Bruce Bennett story. His first day shooting on THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE required him to eat beans while delivering dialogue. John Huston kept asking for re-takes, and Bennett kept obliging his director. After Huston was satisfied with the scene and Bennett had his belly full, the director called out, "OK, everybody, lunch!"
Come to think of it, I believe the Texas Theater was playing CRY OF BATTLE, and not BATTLE CRY. I'll leave it to you, the expert.
Right, Charles Bronson used Buchinski for the first three years of his movie career. I think he switched sometime in 1954 (seems to be the focal year of this board!), appearing in his initial films as Buchinski, and then came Bronson. (Sorry!)
Funny you mention Robert Francis, because I've had just that kind of discussion about him, even making the same comparisons you did -- the sort of straight-arrow James Dean. Columbia did have plans for him -- although at the time of his death on July 31, 1955, he hadn't been in front of the cameras in months -- but I suspect he would have become a mid-level star of action films and some dramas or soap-opera type of movies, and I agree, he would certainly have landed on the small screen before too long -- as a lot of 50s actors did. I could see him in 60s TV shows like The Big Valley, or maybe a late 50s western TV series, and later guest-starring roles on Hawaii Five-O and the like.
On the other hand, I can't quite see his Hollywood career nose-diving the way some of his contemporaries' did -- e.g., Rory Calhoun, Cameron Mitchell, Ray Danton, George Nader and the like, all of whom went to Europe in the 60s to find work. Francis may have had to go that route later on but I think he might have had enough breaks to stay pretty occupied on TV and in movies at least through the 1960s. I can see him doing pictures with Clint Eastwood like Hang 'em High or one of the Dirty Harry movies. It's really too bad we can never know.
If he were alive today, Robert Francis would be 84. I've often thought of that last day. It was a Sunday. He went up in a friend's plane for a late-afternoon spin with his starlet girlfriend and a mechanic, and no doubt thought he'd buzz around for an hour or so, land, drive back home, grill a couple of steaks on the patio, spend a beautiful summer evening relaxing and looking ahead to the week, and no doubt to another night of energetic sex with his gal pal. And then I think of what those final moments must have been like, the plane stalled and plummeting to the ground with its three helpless passengers, realizing they were about to die. It was after his and Dean's deaths that the studios began enforcing their contract clauses prohibiting actors from pursuing dangerous hobbies.
Interesting trivia note: In all four of Robert Francis's films (all for Columbia) he played military officers: The Caine Mutiny, They Rode West, The Bamboo Prison (his only black & white film), and The Long Gray Line. Think he was in danger of being typecast?
Yes, it was Cry of Battle, not Battle Cry, that was playing in the Texas Theater in Dallas on 11/22/63. And of course to add to the confusion Van Heflin was the star of both films. The cops never did find out how Oswald liked the twenty minutes he cadged after sneaking into the place.
Think how appropriate it would have been had the theater been running Dragnet!
Don't know if you've been over to the JFK boards lately, but the inmates have taken over the asylum. I wrote what I considered a thoughtful post about Oswald's encounter with P.O. Nick McDonald in the movie theater and one poster told me it didn't happen, that it was a cover-up. The other responders posted in kind. I think one even wrote that the Texas Movie Theater was a CIA or FBI transfer point.
While TV became the dumping ground for the lucky few 1950's movie stars that never were - Martin Milner was another comer whose "break-out" performance in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS led him to small screen success - Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty went the opposite way, from small to big screen glory. I have a hunch that the big star die-off (1957-60) of Power, Flynn, Cooper and Gable might have saved those Hollywood icons from 1960's ignominy of making TV guest appearances, low-rent westerns and cameos in IT'S A MAD (4X) WORLD. Tracy, Fonda and Stewart did their best to continue good work, but I'm at pains to find ten good films in their collective 1960's-70's canon.
I think you know this film. (I forget the name. I caught it on Fox Movie Channel a couple of months ago). Suburban drama starring Jeffrey Hunter, Tony Randall and Cameron Mitchell. Anyway, I was thinking how the least likely of that group, Randall, is the most fondly remembered by today's film and TV fans.
Yes, the film you referred to is No Down Payment (1957). I really like that movie. Melodramatic but it captures some of the feel of exploding suburbia of the 1950s. (I believe Friday and Smith got called out on that Mitchell "accident".) Interesting also to see Randall in a dramatic role. I thought he was the best of the bunch, certainly the husbands. You can also see why Joanne Woodward did so much better than the other leading ladies. (That's also the year she won her Oscar.) Fox Cinema Archives announced it would be releasing that film over a year ago but it was subsequently called off. Knowing that line it surely would have been only a pan & scan print anyway.
Errol Flynn had already been on TV in the 50s (in fact his very last appearance was on The Red Skelton Show just two days before he died), and I think you're right, his money needs would have forced him into television in the 60s. Yet I'm sure he would still have had movie parts as well. I doubt very much either Cooper or Gable would have been forced on to TV too soon, though maybe by the late 60s -- made-for-TV movies, perhaps, like Robert Taylor, who of course also had his own TV detective series in the late 50s. But for them it would have been a occasional indulgence, a big TV event, rather than a real need, and anyway I can't see either one ending up sinking on The Love Boat or that kind of tripe. Same with Power, who unlike the others preferred the stage. He was also younger, so I think he would have had movie roles through the 60s. He had made a few TV appearances (more in England than here) and I'm sure would likely have ended up on the small screen by the 70s anyway.
Next month is Power's centenary (May 5). Hard to believe this and so many other similar anniversaries have been and are upon us. You know that in 1956 he formed a production company called Copa with a former line producer at Universal named Ted Richmond, whom he'd met when Richmond produced Power's The Mississippi Gambler in 1953. After Power's death while filming Solomon and Sheba in 1958 (on to which Copa had been brought as a co-production company), Richmond carried on in Europe, making movies for another 20 years or so before retiring in the early 1980s. In some minor irony, Power died at 44, while his business partner Ted Richmond died in Paris just this past December -- at 103!
Oh, JFK: I'm really mad at myself because I was working on a painstaking reply to a thread there called something like "50 years - 50 questions". I'd almost completed my response in January but got sidetracked and have never gotten back to it. Hopefully the thread is still there but even if not I copied-and-pasted it and put it in my document file so I could answer at leisure and then simply transfer it over to the board. I really need to finish that because the stupidity and smugness of these nuts really gets to me. I promise a really good reply, so hold on!
A good example of credit neglect is A Letter to Three Wives. Thelma Ritter, not yet a "name", had a large and noticeable supporting role throughout the movie, yet she got no screen credit
And don't forget "Miracle On 34th Street" where she also has no screen credit for her great scene ("Imagine, Macy's sending customers to other stores!" share
She did that part as a favor to George Seaton, who knew her from the New York stage. Thelma never really cared much about having a film career and tried a couple of times to quit but always got called back.
Someone else in 34th Street in one of his typical uncredited bits is Jack Albertson, as the post office worker who gets the idea of delivering the Santa Claus letters to the courthouse...21 years before his Oscar-winning performance in The Subject Was Roses. Thelma had six nominations but never won.
Thelma Ritter's second screen appearance, also uncredited, was in the James Stewart thriller Call Northside 777 (1948). For years I saw her listed as being in the film but could never find her. I finally spotted her several years ago. Do you know where she is in that one? Unlike her uncredited parts in Miracle on 34th Street and A Letter to Three Wives, you'll really have to squint to find her in 777!
I never met her but saw her a few times on Fire island in the mid-60s. She had a house in the next community to the east. But people who knew her told me she was entirely down-to-earth, friendly, modest, no airs, just a regular housewife who lived next door. Too bad she died at only 66. One of her movies, Titanic, ran on NYC TV the morning she died, and the host (Gloria DeHaven) used the occasion to announce Thelma's death.
A fellow I used to work with at a "major metropolitan newspaper" told me he took acting lessons from Ms. Ritter in the 1960s. He and other students would visit her NYC apartment where she would take them through voice and improv exercises and read through plays and movie scripts. My colleague says she encouraged him to make a go of acting, but he didn't like the odds. I can't remember what her fee was, but he said he usually paid for an hour "class."
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"