There's a great joke re Robert Easton in this movie. He was so familiar to audiences because of his country boy accent that Van Heflin tells one of the raiders to see Easton keeps his mouth shut. Otherwise, he'll give the whole thing away. I never realized he was a master of accents and dialects until I saw his full pace ad in Variety for years.
shareYes, it's amazing to know that Easton (who died in late 2011) was Hollywood's number-one dialogue and dialect coach for decades. (Among others, he helped Bob Hoskins get rid of his cockney accent and find the appropriate one for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which Easton called one of his toughest challenges!) His deep-South accent was certainly deceptive...but I don't think that was the way he normally spoke. I always thought this was an affectation he used for many of his slow-talkin', southern boys roles, which is how we usually remember him.
One small correction: in this movie, Heflin doesn't have to tell one of the men to make sure Easton keeps his mouth shut. When the officers were trying out the men's accents to see whether they could pass as Yankees, Easton's accent was so thick he was laughed at by the others and rejected out of hand by Heflin, so he never went on the raid. It was his one scene in the film, and very memorable. And, as usual, he was uncredited in the film.
Too many years since I've seen The Raid. I just turned 70 and even my memory tends to play tricks on me. I still remember seeing Easton on Johnny Carson one night: "Ja. I can do a Swedish accent."
It was a great testament to his talent that Robert Duvall asked him to help him learn a Virginia accent for Gods and Generals because Duvall is a master of finding the right accent for his characters. I once saw Duvall at George Washington U where he said his favorite films are The Godfather and Lonesome Dove. After the interview and two questions from the audience, he brought his girlfriend up on stage and they danced the tango.
You know, I saw an interview with Easton about training Duvall for Gods and Generals. If I recall Easton's story correctly, Duvall asked him to teach him a proper rural Virginia accent, to which Easton replied, "Which one? There are eleven."
By the way, The Raid will be released on DVD sometime later this month as part of a new line of made-on-demand films from 20th Century Fox, called Fox Classics Archive (similar to Warner Archives). The studio just announced this new series on June 1, and plans to make around 150 titles available this year. But The Raid will be in the first batch. When definite information comes out (which should be soon), I'll post it here, so keep checking this site if you're interested.
Oh, don't worry about forgetting a minor point about this movie and turning 70. I'm 59 and my memory has been taking time-outs for quite a while! You're fine.
Thanks for the tip about Fox classics. I have some of their DVD's from several years ago, mostly the film noir classics. Speaking of which I saw Robert Aldrich and James M Cain at the AFI in DC years ago as part of a film noir series. Aldrich introduced Kiss Me Deadly and Cain introduced Double Indemnity. Cain had come down from College Park, MD where he was living. Apparently at the time nobody realized that the ending of KMD had been cut.
end.
59, eh? You're still a youngster.
I'm a big film collector and even host a classic film series at a club I belong to. I have those Fox Film Noir DVDs, which were mostly pretty good films (a few so-so). But Fox abruptly shut down its releases of classic DVDs in 2008 (as did all the studios), leaving hundreds if not thousands of great titles still unreleased. This MOD series (joining the ones already started by Warner, MGM [UA], and Columbia) is overdue but promises to make lots of these titles available to the public. It's been a gold mine for the studios that have similar series. As the titles are made only on demand, they don't have to worry about pressing lots of discs that may sit unbought.
There's a website called The Digital Bits (thedigitalbits.com), which has just started a column by their classic movie reviewer, Barrie Maxwell, devoted exclusively to studios' MOD releases. His first such column was printed Friday. Check it out if you'd like further information on these various series.
Thanks for the information and congrats on your film club. We very rarely go to a movie anymore because I can't stand the excruciatingly loud volume. Even taking out my hearing aids doesn't help I did make an exception for The Vow and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
I prefer the old movies, and a friend gave me 1001 Movies You Should See Before You Die for my birthday. The answer is 661 whereas Roger Ebert's is 983. One omission I can't understand is Harold Lloyd's Safety First which I first saw at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater. It was sold out.
My niece made her first movie last year. Welcome to Harlem is an independent romantic musical comedy about nine young people in Harlem. The writer/director/star is from Maryland, and Rebecca plays his girlfriend. WTH premiered at the Apollo in Novemenber and has played at U of Maryland and the San Diego Black Film Festival.
Two recent acquisitions from the Serial Squadron are King of The Mounties and Daredevils of The West, both starring Allan Lane. These Republic serials were considered lost until Eric Steadman restored them. DOTW had completed music and sound tracks, but some of the dialogue required voice "doubles." Most of the dialogue track from KOTM is lost, and Steadman relied upon subtitles.
I used to have a friend Ralph Tabakin who was a character actor in all of Barry Levinson's films. Ralph taught speech and acting in Wheaton, MD for years. In Rain Man heis the casino security man who figures out how Cruise and Hoffman are winning so much money at blackjack.
That's wonderful news about your niece. I hope she gets a long career out of acting (or whichever aspect of motion pictures may interest her most).
When you mentioned Mr. Tabakin I thought I knew who you meant, and in checking his IMDb c.v. remembered him from Good Morning Vietnam, and also Diner. His bio said that Barry Levinson cast him in 15 films because he considered him his "lucky charm". There have been several such relationships going back to the "old" Hollywood, and I've always found it kind of neat. William A. Wellman had such an actor in George Chandler, who had roles in most of Wellman's films. Similarly, Frank Capra kept casting Charles Lane in his films, though Lane was one of the most ubiquitous character actors in film and TV.
Republic did do terrific serials. I never figured out how they faked the flying scenes in stuff like King of the Rocketmen and Captain Marvel. It's amazing how many films have been lost, or left to rot in film cans, over the years...and not just obscurities. Some major films have been lost, or harmed in this way. Soundtracks too.
There's always been a dispute about whether Harold Lloyd was really dangling so high above the street in Safety Last. Obviously it was supposed to look that way. On the other hand, when you see him clinging to the clock, the street in the background clearly runs behind, not in front of, the building he's supposed to be on. I've read that while he did do some climbing, and was indeed high up, he was never simply hanging on for dear life many stories above the pavement. The clock tower was a prop atop a building and had he lost his grip he wouldn't have fallen more than ten feet or so. Considering he had only three fingers on his right hand (after losing two when a prop bomb he was holding exploded in 1919), climbing up and hanging onto a building 20 or so stories high would have been even riskier than usual.
But forgive me, I didn't understand your reference about the 1001 movies to see before you die. You said the "answer" was 661, vs. Ebert's 983. Meaning...only 661 (or 983) are worth seeing? Or that's how many you've seen? I've heard of the book but never read it.
Is The Raid in it? I bet not. But I had to get some reference to our host film in this post!
Re 1001 Movies...661 refers to the number of movies in the book I've seen. I doubltchecked Ebert's number which is 943. The ones I haven't seen are mostly foreign films and documentaries, many of which I haven't heard of.
Speaking of documentaries, Kino has a double DVD package of Nightmare in Red, White and Blue which is a history of the American horror film and American Grindouse which is devoted to nudies, roughies, Nazis, bikers other genres of the exploitation cinema. NIghtmare is narrated by Lance Henricksen and Griendhouse is narrated by Robert Forster. I still remember walking past DC's Gayety Theater on 9th Street in DC and seeing posters for the "Olga" films or a theatee on NY Avenue which showed nudist camp movies in the 60's.
I talked to my niece yesterday, and Rebecca said the movies has been selected for the DC Film Festival this summer. She had one word for it "raunchy". Mark Blackman who wrote and directed it was a standup comedian apparently was inspired by his friends and neighbors to make the film. If you go the Website you can find film clips and trailers. There is a large dance riot scene in Times Square.
In The Nick of Time is a book on the serials covering the directors, writers, heroes and heroines, stuntmen etc. The only person interviewed is Tom London who goes back to The Great Train Robbery. Theodore and Howard Lydecker were in charge of special effects at Republic. Howard was in charge of the flying sequences you mentioned. If I remember they were a combination of a full size dummy and footage of David Sharpe.
Sharpe's career goes back to Fairbank's Zorro and continues through Blazing Saddles. I recently watched McLintock with the commentary. Maureen O'Hara said every stuntman in Hollywood wanted to be in the mudfight scene. Tom Steele, who was head of the Republic team, gets an extreme closeup when O'Hara jabs him with a hatpin. The Republic Pictures Story is dedicated to Steele whose career goes back to Captain Blood.
Ralph Tabakin was wounded in the back in the D Day invasion, and in his later years his screen time was limited but Leveinso always used him. In Wag The Dog he appears in one of Hoffman's tv spots and DeNiro asks where do they find these people?" I was working at a theater when Sleepers came out, and I asked Ralph if he could help promote the movie by making a personal appearance. When he came back from the premiere he told me his role as the warden had been badly cut and that his back was giving him trouble. I have Asberger's and always recommend Rain Man with its commentaries to people who want to learn more about autism and related disorders.
You certainly are a fount of great information!
I've heard of Kino's Nightmare in Red, White and Blue but knew little about it. It sounds interesting and I may seek out a copy. Thanks!
Also thank you for the info on the Republic (and other) stuntmen. Unheralded heroes, in my opinion. The more you become aware of individuals, or the stunt work performed, the more amazing it seems, and the more respect you have for the difficulties inherent in filmmaking.
I remember that William Holden hated dancing and didn't want to do the dance scene with Kim Novak in Picnic. He finally agreed -- provided they listed it as a stunt, and he was paid an extra $8000 for doing it! I think he also got fairly drunk beforehand to see himself through the "ordeal", though that wasn't called for in his contract. Nice work if you can get it.
Those two docs are part of a package that includes interviews with Roger Corman, Herschel Gordon Lewis, David Friedman and others as well as grindhouse trailers.
What does your interest in films stem from? Mine goes back to childhood where the first movies I remember seeing were A&C Meet Frankenstein and The Invisible Man Returns.
After the war we lived in Mount Rainier Md which is where the real life "exoricst" happened. The boy and I were of the same age and went to the same church where the exorcism was performed. I never heard about that until the book and movie came out. Kate Smith was from Mount Rainier which is across the DC line, and Jimmy Dean goes his start in local venues.
Re Jimmy Dean. The story I heard about for years and which I asked Dad to tell for my wife who's into country music was the night Dean and his band came over to my great grandmother's house circa 1955 to watch Andy Griffith in a live version of No Time for Sergeants. My parents had separated and Dad had moved back to live with grandmother. On Wednesday nights Dean and his band were the entertainment at a pizza joint. One night during the break went to the bar, saying he wanted to watch his friend Andy Griffith. The owner got mad and Dean asked if anybody lived nearby and had a tv. Dad immediately spoke up. His grandmother slept through the whole thing.
Dad won a baby contest when he was three and a movie contract. My grandmother was a local stage actress who tried to get into the Mack Sennett comedies, but my grandfather didn't like California and moved back East. "That was the end of my movie career," Dad used to say. "I could've been another Mickey Rooney." His stepfather Larry was Ty Cobb's second string catched and appeared in one or two of Joe e. Brown's baseball comedies, and his sister Pat went to dancing school with Shirley Temple.
Dad was a CW singer in the Phoenix area until his death last year. Years ago he met Acquanetta who played Paula Duprez the Ape Woman" in two Universal horror films. She had moved to Phoenix and married an auto dealer and was active in civic affairs. Dad said she was happy still remembered her.
My wife's getting ready for bed. Next time: my first screenplay.
Great story about Jimmy Dean...by whom, I take it, you mean the late CW singer, not the actor. Nice to have a TV handy!
It seems your family had its brush with the movies, as did mine. Actually, my only claim to fame on that score is that a cousin on my mother's side was the actor/dancer/singer Dan Dailey, whom I'm sure you'll remember from the movies he made in the 40s and 50s. Apart from once writing my own screenplay, at the urging of friends tangentially connected to the business, and which came to nothing (of course!), my interest has been as an observer and modest film historian (to use an exalted term).
We also seem to have vague geographical connections. My mother's family moved to the Phoenix area in 1956. They often visited Dan Dailey in California each year, which was easier doing than from NY. I also went to school in DC in the 70s (Georgetown) and was there when they filmed The Exorcist in the fall of 1972. The author, Wm. Blatty, was a GU grad from 1950 and his son Mike was a friend of mine in my class. It was kind of cool seeing the thing being made around campus. Many years later, I was at my then girlfriend's house in Phoenix when her brother called from DC. He had taken his kids to visit the nation's capital, and what was the first item on their sightseeing agenda? The "Exorcist" house! Flew all the way from California for that. He called me because they couldn't find it. It turned out they'd been virtually right next to it but didn't recognize it. (The filmmakers had had a fake wing added onto the real house, to get it closer to the climactic stairs.) Anyway, he didn't want his kids to bother with the Capitol, the White House, the Smithsonian or any of that stuff. He wanted them to see the Exorcist house. I always called it the Homer Simpson Tour of Washington.
My grandparents knew Acquanetta from Phoenix "society". She did ads for her husband's car dealership for years on local TV and raised money for charities and so on. I'm sorry I never had a chance to meet her. My memory of her, however, would be from the 1951 sci-fi film Lost Continent, which I believe was her last movie, in which she played a brief part as -- guess what -- a native girl, pointing Cesar Romero and party towards the "sacred mountain" where an atomic-powered missile had strayed, and on which they find dinosaurs. I love this movie. Acquanetta was the last-but-one credited member of the cast to pass away, in 2005 I believe. Sid Melton was the last, last year.
My interest in movies just came naturally. Ever since I was little I would watch movies on TV, and I think I was five when I saw my first film in a movie theater. Growing up in and around NYC, we had lots of channels showing lots of movies, and as teens a few of us formed an informal "club" where we'd watch movies in the middle of the night and talk about them later. I actually got a graduate degree in journalism, specializing in film reviewing and related matters, but then had to detour into the family business. But I try to keep my hand in, in a small way. But I guess I have picked up a lot of rubbish about movies over the years. People who come to my weekly classic films each summer say they like my talks before and after the movies even better than the films, which I guess is a compliment. I do like unearthing movies no one's familiar with. Last year I managed two or three such surprises, and after one of them (a Civil-War noir called The Tall Target), two of them came up to me -- separately -- and both asked the same question: "Where do you find these things?" Ordinarily that'd sound negative, but each one meant it as a compliment that I knew about somewhat obscure films they'd never seen.
Oh, well. Still working on this year's schedule. At the moment I'm in England with my wife (who's English), so off my timetable, which may also explain the time gaps between our exchanges. Time for lunch now! See you.
That much be chaotic being in London for the celebration. I still remember being in Union Station in DC when Bobby Kennedy was brought in from NY for burial in Arlington Cemetery and somebody tried to pick my pocket. My girlfriend had wanted to be there. Otherwise I would have stayed away.
Congratulations on your career in films and your classes and groups. I took a class Introduction to Film about seven years ago where we saw L'Atalante, Out of The Past, American Beauty as well as Sideways, Collateral and Jersey State among others. One film that was not available was Tight Little Island which I still swaar was remade by John Sturges as The Hallelujah Trail with Burt Lancaster. The British comedy was far better.
Our first exam in the class required us to select a film ahead of time and analyze it. Probably my favorite film is the noirish Little Big Horn(1951) with Lloyd Bridges, John Ireland, Sheb Wooley, Hugh O'Brian, Reed Hadley and Marie Windsor. Bridges is a cavalry officer who is determined to meet up with Custer at the Little Big Horn even if he has to kill everybody to do it. Very violent for its time. I said in Bells of San Angelo when Dale van Sickel and Dave Sharpe beat up Roy Rogers, you know Roy will be back to sing Happy Trails at the end. But when the Indians torture Wooley you know he won't be singing The Purple People Eater.
Speaking of Sharpe I recommend Touch of Evil which came out in a special edition a few years ago. There are three versions: the original theatrical version, the expanded version and the restored version based on Welles' 58 pages of notes. Heston and Janet Leigh do a commentary. Sharpe has a brief barroom brawl with Heston. Rusty Westcoatt, who doubles Welles, was a regular in the Columbia serials.
I only have two Dan Dailey films A Ticket to Tomahawk and Mother Wore Tights. I still remember seeing him on The Untouchables. I taped The Tall Target years ago.
When I was growing up there were two live shows from NY Tales of Tomorrow and Lights Out which featured old timers like Victor Jory, Veronica Lake and Lon Chaney Jr as well as newcomes such as James Dean, Paul Newman and Rod Steiger. Newman made his professional debut on TOT. Chaney played the Frankenstein monster and showed up drunk, not knowing it was live.
What I remember about The Lost Continent mostly was Sid Melton. He had one of the greatest mugs in movies. Speaking of memorable faces I also watched The Devil's Rejects recently which featured Danny Trejo, Michael Berryman and a third actor Dallas(?).
Usually I avoid such movies. Violence, gore and perversion are not my cup of tea. I am still very ambivalent about Takeshi Miike, some of whose movies revel in it.
Ah, the screenplay No More Room in Hell. Ordinarily I do not hear voices. Several years ago I was minding my own business when I heard a voice tell me "The Wages of Fear with women." I stopped and said "Now that's a very interesting idea. Why can't women do the job as well as men, if not better?" I had not seen the movie in some time nor Friedkin's remake. I wasn't even thinking about, and I have no idea where the voice came from.
So I sat down and watched the two films and made mental notes. The 86 page story I consider a black comedy and is filled with in-jokes and references to Peckinpah, Preston Sturges, Ford, HK Category III films, Italian cannibal movies and so forth. What I know about building oil wells comes from working as a field auditor for the Energy Dept and watching The Tiger Woman with Allan Lane, Duncan Renaldo and Linda Stirling who later became a drama professor.
But it was too short for a novel and too long for a short story. It took me the better part of two years to figure out how to write a screenplay using a computer program. One problem I have when writing is I don't have a very good visual sense. It is also structured like a serial.
The class I took required either an anaylsis of three fims by a director or a screenplay of at least 10 pages. I'd already written the screenplay before I took the clss. The professor thought it commendable for a first effort and gave me a B-. I was happy.
I rewrote it and submitted to a Hollywood contest, paying for an analysis. In 30 years of Toastmaster I have never seen such a thorough evaluation--7 pages, single spaced. One big trouble was they said it was a remake of a classic which would present legal problems.
I followed that up with a WWII story set on Iwo Jima that mixed John Wayne and Clint Eastwood with a Japanese monster movie. That was followed by Treasure Island with Zombies in which Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver return to retrieve the rest of the treasure only to find it guarded by zombies. I could never decide if they were George Romero zombies or zombies from the West Indies.
Enjoy your holiday. I went to London 40 years ago for a week through a Defense Department travel agency. $85 over from Kennedy and $85 return, and you could stay as long as you wanted. Frankfurt was $135 each way.
I must say your screenplay ideas sound a lot of fun. "Zombies of Iwo Jima" sounds much better than "Zombies of Mora Tau"!
I never had any training in screenwriting, or really in writing of any other kind. It's something that just seems to come naturally. The professional people who read my screenplay all said I had a great ear for dialogue, and a strong visual sense as well, which helps. I even found it easy to edit a film on paper, which apparently also came through. But I undertook the effort only at the urging of people who thought I could do something interesting. Unfortunately they had very little ability to help it get made, and anyway looking back I have no desire to be part of the film industry as it exists today. Sixty years ago, yes, but not now. Hence my preference (though it's certainly not exclusive) for the "classics".
I know the movie Little Big Horn but don't think I've seen it in over 40 years. Now I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Your notion that The Hallelujah Trail might be a remake of Tight Little Island is really curious, something else I'll have to look into. Let's face it, recycling plots is hardly something filmmakers are averse to!
One of Dan Dailey's films was There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), about two generations of a showbiz family, which is pretty gaudy and somewhat awful in parts, but the interesting thing from a family p.o.v. is that Dan's wife is played by Ethel Merman, who before going into the business worked with my grandmother in an office somewhere in NYC in the 20s. I never knew whether she ever told Dan, on one of their visits to him in CA, that she also knew his "movie" wife from that film. An early movie of his was The Mortal Storm (1940), about the effects of Hitler's rise to power Germany, in which he played a supporting role as a Nazi. Actually he was pretty scary.
Touch of Evil was one of the films I ran for my group a few years ago. I chose the full-length original version over the so-called "restored" 1998 cut (a misnomer: you can't "restore" something that never existed in the first place; it was a recut supposedly in accordance with Orson Welles's wishes). I think the version I chose is the best of the three. Have you ever seen the movie Ed Wood, about the famous grade-Z director of the 50s? Near the end he has an (apocrophyl) meeting with Welles in a bar, where Wood complains about the interference from his backers over Plan 9 From Outer Space, while Welles complains about Universal insisting that for his coming film, he hire Charlton Heston as a Mexican -- at which Wood (Johnny Depp) blanches. The audience I saw it with in 1994 got the joke and laughed uproariously.
I'll leave you with one last story, about Lon Chaney, Jr. Besides being an alcoholic, he apparently had a phobia about starving to death -- certainly an odd concern. Anyway, the actor Robert Clarke, in his fun autobiography "To 'B' or Not to 'B'", wrote about working with Chaney and told of this bizarre concern -- and Chaney's solution to it. Evidently, Chaney had stored freezers full of meat -- some from groceries, some from wild game he had shot -- in hidden locations all over California, from which he could retrieve fresh food if he needed it. I don't know if he ever used any, or what happened to the meat, but you'd think that if he couldn't afford food, he also couldn't afford the gas needed to drive to each freezer location. Obviously this was some deep-rooted mental aberration of his, and I guess we all have something, but this one is certainly pretty weird.
Signing off for now. Luckily, we're not in London (more than an hour outside of it), and are keeping well clear of any of the madness. It's on TV right now, and it is impressive, but such things don't hold much intrinsic interest for me. Still, I hope that nothing bad happens to Prince Philip, who's taken ill since Sunday. It would be a terrible let-down after all the celebrations. He once rescued my wife from the Queen's corgis, who had driven her onto a chair in St. James's Palace, so he's her hero. (True story. My wife's met everybody here.)
Funny how this all started talking about The Raid!
Your mentioning Ed Wood reminds me of the antiques and collectibles shows here which used to have Hollywood celebrities come in. One of them was Conrad Brooks of Plan 9. He was the only one who made repeat visits and always seemed to remember me. Of course, his claim to fame was being in Plan 9. He would always try to get me to buy some of hils straight to video films, including a colorized version of Plan 9. "Does that improve it?" He also thought Ed Wood was a pack of lies.
Other celebrities: David Prowse and Peter Mayhew. One of the few times I've ever seen Prowse without makeup or his Darth Vader costume. I thought it impressive he could pick up Patrick Magee and a wheelchair and carry them in A Clockwork Orange since my wife needs to use one.
William Schallert who seems to have been around forever.
Stella Stevens was fun to talk to and had fond memories of Strother Martin. Peckinpah "had his demons."
Lana Wood emphatically denied Wayne had murdered her sister in The Searchers. Thhis was a theory I picked up in a book Celluloid Indians. The idea was Wayne had found his niece still alive after being raped and killed her because she would not be welcomed back into society. Watch Wayne's body language.
Mary Badham didn't have much to say about working with Duvall on Mockingbird because they had few scenes together. I saw Duvall several years ago at GWU. His personal favorites are Lonesome Dove and The Godfather.
June Lockhart, Edd Byrnes and Linda Harrision. Harrison was a former Miss Maryland and said she had a cameo in Burton's Planet of The Apes.
Mako of The Sand Pebbles. If you look closely during the auction scene in the bordello you can spot Frank Coghlan Jr who played Billy Batson in Captain Marvel. Older, balder and heavier, he still looks pretty much the same. I think he served in the Navy and was a liason with Hollywood after the way. Billy Benedict also of CM is prominently among the miners in The Hallelujah Trail.
Beverly Washburn. I remembered seeing her on Wagon Train with Lou Costello("he had trouble remembering her lines.") She couldn't believe I had seen Spider Baby with Lon Chaney, Mantan Moreland and Sid Haig. She didn't know it was out on video. That's the one where Chaney sings the title song.
The one I wish I had met was Henry Fonda when he was appearing at the Kennedy Center with Jane Alexander in First Monday . A friend of mine who knew Alexander from her Arena Stage days invited me to go with her, but I had class that night. I did meet Alexander a few years later when we went to see Monday after The Miracle.
Robert Mitchum and Fuzzy St. John. A friend of mine Art Mullins in the Navy agency where I was working had been in radio, tv and newspapers. Art said the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him was when he did a live, on the street interview with Mitchum when he was shooting Thunder Road. They had been out drinking the night before, and everybody knew Mitchum was in town. "Do you have any hobbies besides horses and planes?" "Yeah. Bourbon and (censored). What surprised Art was that nobody ever complained about it.
Fuzzy was Fatty Arbuckle's uncle and helped Buster Keaton get his start in films. He appeared in numerous westerns with Buster Crabbe, Bob Steele and Whip Wilson. When Art was a disk jockey in Tennessee Fuzzy came to town and was a guest on Art's show. Art was surprised by the response, but this was back when these old B westerns were regular fodder on tv. Fuzzy has a cameo in Arizona with Holden and Jean Arthur as well as a villainous role in The Outcasts of Poker Flats(30's).
pjw, this is all great stuff. One thing I don't undertsand is Lana Wood's remark about Wayne not "killing" her sister in The Searchers. Yes, clearly that was his first impulse, and he tried to, but Jeff Hunter blocked him, and in the end Wayne brought her home. There is no doubt or issue there.
If I may suggest, if we intend to keep up such conversations, we go the Private Message route. We're way off topic here and should leave this board to things pertaining to The Raid, and specifically Robert Easton. (Emphases added.) No need to impose our memories on others! If you agree, PM me sometime. Otherwise, it's been fun.
Accordingly, I hereby turn this thread back over to discussion of the aforementioned The Raid (not the bug spray) and/or the late, great Robert Easton...to whom thanks also for his terrific job as "Sparks" in the 1961 film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
I meant her sister Lucy.
I don't know what else I can add to The Raid since I haven't seen it in years. Been good corresponding with you.
You too. We'll speak again! Take care.
shareI know this is 2 & 1/2 years down the road but I just wanted to let you two know I thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts. I just got through watching The Raid on Fox Retro On Demand. It was a pretty good movie and I came here to see the remarks about it and learned a lot more than I planned.
I also love old movies, or classic films as they're called now. I'm so glad TCM exists and used to love the AMC channel till they changed.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know how enjoyable both your comments and stories were.
Say, thank you for your very kind words, lynnlady. I'm sure my friend pjwoodall-1 would concur in my gratitude. As to its being 2 1/2 years later, let's just say it's never too late for compliments!
I'm glad you saw The Raid and liked it. It's always fun to discover lesser-known (and good) movies. (Well, even bad ones, too.) I also like the fact that you're a fan of TCM -- and even that you share the same opinion of AMC and what's become of it.
I'm sure we'd enjoy conversing with you more, about this and other "old movies". Or "classic films"...since I'm sure we'd all prefer to sound educated rather than antiquated!
See you soon, and thanks again for taking the time to write such a welcome post.
It's even later for me but I, too, enjoyed the learned discourse about Hollywood celebrities. Now I have to go and watch THE SEARCHERS again.
Wisdom comes when one learns from one's mistakes (aka LEXYLADYJAX)
Thanks to you too, FD13. Glad you liked our little back-and-forth.
Ah, The Searchers. Overrated in my view, but certainly worth seeing. But I hope you liked The Raid.
Take care!
It's an unappreciated, well, not really a masterpiece, but it's certainly worth hunting up is The Raid. My spouse is an historian and I looked up the history of this incident. The Confederates didn't get far after their attack on the town. The Canadians put the arm on them as soon as they crossed the border. They spent the rest of the war in the stockade.
Wisdom comes when one learns from one's mistakes.
That's correct. Probably the reason no other such raids ever took place. But St. Alban's did further complicate US-British relations, already severely strained because of Britain's flirtation with recognizing the Confederacy and the vast amount of personal abuse heaped upon President Lincoln by many sections of the British government and press...all of which abruptly ceased when Lincoln was assassinated.
My wife is English and about three weeks away from becoming an American citizen. When I showed her this movie the other year I had some fun chastising her over her ancestors' efforts to aid the South's treason and attempt to sunder her new country!
Coincidentally, some of her family members live in St. Alban's -- in Hertfordshire, England.