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January 2011:
Anne Francis
by
John Gallagher
ANNE FRANCIS: Pop culture fans (and especially Baby Boomers) lost an icon on January 2, 2011 with the passing of actress Anne Francis at age 80. One of the last starlets of the studio system, this beautiful, spiritual artist graced some of the most seminal films of the Fifties, including BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1954), BATTLE CRY (1955) and especially FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956), and also enjoyed a lengthy career in television. Her TV series HONEY WEST (1965-66), in which she played a private detective, influenced an entire genre of shows from CHARLIE’S ANGELS and MOONLIGHTING to VERONICA MARS. I was privileged to interview Anne Francis during the summer of 1982 when she was in New York City to publicize her book Voices from Home:
JOHN GALLAGHER: Your show biz career started when you were a little girl. You were a model, an actress on radio soaps. Could talk a little about what it was like being in the business as a child?
ANNE FRANCIS: I grew up in upstate New York, I grew up til the age of six and then I came to the big city, good old Manhattan. I went from being a barefoot girl with the traditional shaggy dog by my side, enjoying the fields of upstate New York. Whenever I was hungry I just plucked a carrot or a cucumber from my mama’s garden and suddenly I was into the competitive world of modeling. My feet were encased in little black patent Mary Janes and my hair in braids with ribbons with the Cavanaugh hat box. I was a model for John Robert Powers. That’s how I started. Then I auditioned for radio when I was seven and did a show called COAST TO COAST ON A BUS with Milton Cross, a children’s program, and I did LET’S PRETEND, a Nila Mack show. I did early television, I did my first children’s TV show in 1939 at NBC then I did a daily show at CBS in 1941, just before the war. It was a show where this lady played my mother and she would read the children’s classics to me, and we would discuss and there was an illustrator there who drew pictures of the characters as we discussed the story, Around the World in 80 Days, some of the Jules Verne books. A neighbor of mine in Santa Barbara, Burl Ives, used to come in and do a segment right after we finished with our show. He would come in with his worn sweater, a pair of moccasins, and play guitar and sing. That was before Burl became hot. Then CBS television folded during the war and most of the work in TV waited until after the war, but I did do some of the first color tests in 1941 for CBS. I went on from there, I was in LADY IN THE DARK on Broadway with Gertrude Lawrence, then I went to MGM for a year and appeared in a picture called SUMMER HOLIDAY (1948), which Rouben Mamoulian directed, with Mickey Rooney, Marilyn Maxwell and Walter Huston, who had just recorded “September Song.” I only worked two days on that picture and the rest of the time I was in the MGM schoolhouse with Liz Taylor, Jane Powell, Dean Stockwell and Claude Jarman, Jr. I remember one afternoon during the picnic scene when we were waiting between takes, Walter Huston sang “September Song” to me and it was the first time I had heard it, it was just coming out at that time. Dear gentle soul, marvelous man. He gave me some advice, he said “Before you go into a scene, always take a deep, deep breath and that will carry you through,” and I used to use that quite a bit in my earlier days.
JG: As a child were you a big movie fan?
AF: Pretty much so. Somehow as I moved along working in it, I didn’t go to see as much. It’s the same with television today, too, I don’t watch that much television.
JG: How did it feel going to Hollywood and being on the same lot as Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy?
AF: The first time round I was just madly in love with Van Johnson and thrilled to get his autograph! That year was like being in prison because I was in my early teens and to sit around for one year after working so much in New York was hard. Seeing Clark Gable and the others was a thrill but I was glad to get back to New York again. I didn’t go back to Hollywood until quite some years later. I worked on some of those wonderful early shows like STUDIO ONE, LIGHTS OUT, PLAYHOUSE 90, that was an exciting period. I went back to Hollywood after doing a film here in New York, SO YOUNG, SO BAD (1950), the story of juvenile delinquents, and I played a prostitute, Loretta, with a baby. There was a scene in the film where she is made to confront this baby that’s she’s given up and she decides to keep him, she can’t be separated from him.
JG: It was unusual in that it was shot entirely on location in New York.
AF: It sure was and a lot of it on the run. It was a roughie. We really earned our scale pay on that show. It was in August and the streets of course were very hot and in these locations the director would get you in there fast, do the scene and get out before the police would come along and say, “What you’re doing?” There’s still a lot of that shooting on the run going on in New York.
JG: After your notices in that film you were back in Hollywood being groomed for stardom under the old studio system.
AF: Yes, I went back just toward the end of the really big studio era. I was there just as it was beginning its decline. I really didn’t want to leave New York, I wanted to pursue theatre. It was not easy for me to go back to Hollywood after having had that first experience but older minds prevailed and business minds prevailed and I went back really a rather reluctant success. I guess many of my friends thought I was rather insane. There was a much greater chasm at that time between the New York and the Hollywood actors and the profession itself. That has changed greatly here, it’s interchangeable now. As a matter of fact there are very few stars you would call Broadway stars any more. Broadway was really the challenge in those days for a young actor. Broadway seems to be calling for the Hollywood stars to bring in the out of town audiences and there isn’t that same mystique and glamour that was there with strictly the Broadway actors.
JG: At 20th Century-Fox you were dubbed “The Palomino Blonde.”
AF: Yes, I had a lot of interesting conjurings up by public relations people! I was also called “The Fragile Blonde with the Mona Lisa Smile.” How do you live up to that in an interview? It’s pretty difficult. In those days they were constantly trying to develop a personality. You as yourself could not possibly work. There had to be something they would try to make exciting about you and you had to go to these interviews where this pitch had been made about you and here’s this public relations man from the studio right next to you and you had to try to live up to this terrible lie. It’s impossible to live up to whatever was being written about you in those days. It was a very difficult thing to handle, crazy.
JG: You were fortunate as a contract player to do a variety of roles, like the bad girl in BATTLE CRY (1955), and the good girls of BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955) and THE RACK (1956).
AF: I was very fortunate. There were many who felt that was a detriment. There were many who felt it was most important to develop a particular style, a particular mystique and to stay with that. I never wanted that. I felt very blessed I did have the opportunity to play in many different ranges. I’m still thankful for that but there were many who felt it important to be a particular personality and stay that way down the road.
JG: You did two pictures with one of the greatest Hollywood directors, Raoul Walsh, A LION IS IN THE STREETS (1953) and BATTLE CRY.
AF: He was a marvelous, shy Irishman. He felt very comfortable with men. I remember after finishing BATTLE CRY, I raced after him at the party and threw my arms around him and thanked him for the wonderful gentleman he had been. He turned red-faced and flustered and said, “There, there, that’s alright, there, there.” He was so embarrassed at this display of affection from me. He really was the reserved shy Irishman underneath all this. I wouldn’t say he was macho, he was “hail fellow well met” with the men but very shy with women. I just adored him.
JG: What was Raoul Walsh like on the set?
AF: Extraordinary. He is the only director I ever worked with who when you start a scene walks away from the camera, disappears to the back of the soundstage, stares up at the ceiling, and when you’re done comes back and asks you, “How did you feel about it?” It kind of threw me except he was very casual and relaxed about the whole thing. The scene that Johnny Lupton and I did on the ferry boat in BATTLE CRY, when he did that he came back and I said, “There’s a couple of things I think I can get better, a couple of lines.” He said “OK, try it again.” He said, “Roll camera,” and walked away. He always rolled his cigarettes, so he was rolling a cigarette as he walked out of my view. We went ahead and did the scene again, he came back and said, “OK, everybody happy?” “Yeah, I felt pretty good.” He said, “Fine.” I found out afterward that this was usually his way, that if a scene sounded right to him, then it was a print. He didn’t have to look at it, he could tell from listening whether it was playing well or not. He’s the only director I ever had who did that.
JG: On your other Walsh film, A LION IS IN THE STREETS, Jimmy Cagney played a Huey Long-type politician. What did you learn from working with him?
AF: I’ll tell you one thing he taught me. You know the energy that man has on screen, absolutely incredible energy, and between takes, he would sit down in his chair next to the camera and just absolutely let go of everything in his body and just practically go off to sleep. He said, “This is a trick you must remember. Always do this whenever you have a free moment, absolutely relax, don’t move, don’t do anything.” It’s a great saver, it really is, to learn not to expend that energy between scenes, and of course this is why he had so much going for him onscreen, because he just took care of his energy. He knew how to handle it.
JG: You were in some daring films during the Fifties …
AF: Considered daring in those days! Which ones in particular are you speaking of?
JG: SO YOUNG, SO BAD, THE RACK, in which Paul Newman played the Korean War veteran accused of treason, and of course the classic BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK.
AF: And BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. There was a tremendous stir about that. Our government at that time was very distressed that picture was made because they felt that it could and was being used as propaganda in Russia, showing how all our schools were in a frightful state, all of the kids in school were criminals. They were very upset about that film. BAD DAY I think was a marvelous social film, marvelous commentary on bigotry.
JG: Very unusual for a film like that to be coming from a major Hollywood studio.
AF: That was under Dore Schary (at MGM). This was man who very much wanted to touch society with some of the flaws that existed.
JG: What did you notice about Spencer Tracy working with him on that film?
AF: I should say probably more than anything else his amazing discipline of his intensity, incredible power, disciplined and sustained. When you were working with him you were absolutely mesmerized. Amazing energies flowed between you as if you were in a cave and there was nobody else there. You were riveted into a scene with Spencer Tracy.
JG: I understand he was uncomfortable on tough locations like BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK.
AF: It was a rough one for him. He was not a young man anymore and we were in Lone Pine, California, in August in 115 degrees. I was quite slim then and I lost ten or fifteen pounds on that film. You just didn’t want to eat it was so hot. And on top of that we had Kleig lights, we had not yet come into cooler lights, so we had Kleig lights on top of 115 degrees, which brought it up to about 125 or more. It was very difficult for him and he was incredible to handle it.
JG: You’ve made three films directed by John Sturges -; BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, THE SCARLET COAT, and THE SATAN BUG. How is your working relationship?
AF: Very comfortable, very warm, very easy. John is more a director for men, doesn’t really get himself involved in the women’s point of view, so he would just let me play it from within myself. Strange when I stop to think about it but BAD DAY, SCARLET COAT and SATAN BUG were all men’s films, really. Of course on BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK I worked with so many brilliant actors and I was the only gal in the show which was really a lot of fun, Spencer Tracy, Bob Ryan, Walter Brennan, Lee Marvin, Ernie Borgnine, just a great group of actors.
JG: Did you think that FORBIDDEN PLANET would become such a cult classic?
AF: No, I don’t think so. See, through much of that film … we were reacting to things that weren’t there that were later added. (Even though it was an MGM picture) Disney did many of the special effects for that film. It is a cult science fiction film. I just was awarded the Golden Scroll of Merit for my book from the National Academy of Science Fiction. I picked up my award at USC a couple of weeks ago and at that time they showed a clip from FORBIDDEN PLANET and extolled the film highly. It is fascinating how it was the forerunner of so many things … the first hologram was shown in FORBIDDEN PLANET before holograms had been developed. The idea of that Krell mind that existed twenty miles square on this particular planet Altera where something mysterious was going on and to realize that mind was creating this invisible monster which eventually destroyed its creator Dr. Morbius was way beyond what people were accepting in those days whereas today many people realize that what we entertain in our mind becomes our own beast which eventually comes back and attacks us. The artwork in the film, the scuplture that Joshua Meador did, the beaming down, there were so many things in that film. I wasn’t aware then that it would stand for so many years and still be considered one of the finest science fiction films ever done.
JG: Did you have any problems with your co-star Robby the Robot?
AF: We did have a problem one day. Robby was inhabited by a short gentleman, jockey size, and one day this young man had a few martinis at lunch and for the first shot in the afternoon Robby was supposed to come off this jeep-like thing that he fit into and walk down this ramp and you never saw 15 grips move as quickly as those 15 grips ran to grab that drunken robot before he fell flat on his face at the bottom of the ramp! It was pretty scary cause that was a million dollar property walking down that ramp drunk. The young jockey was replaced by someone else for the next scene.
JG: Science fiction fans also hold you dearly in their hearts for THE TWILIGHT ZONE episode “The After Hours” with the department store mannequins.
AF: Oh that was such fun.
JG: What was the schedule like on that?
AF: We had time to rehearse, a number of days rehearsal before you went in and shot. They don’t do that anymore, only on shows where you have three camera live, then of course there is rehearsal all week, and you do a dress rehearsal with an audience and then the final show and they take the best of each (take). TWILIGHT ZONE was one of the few, (THE ALFRED) HITCHCOCK (SHOW) was another one that would rehearse before shooting. You usually had three or four days rehearsal before you went in to shoot and I still think it’s a far superior way to work, because you have fully explored everything, you know where you’re coming from, where you’re going to, it’s a great luxury. I think in the long run it would save a lot of money in production if they went back to that.
JG: Even though it only ran one season, HONEY WEST (1965-66) is a much beloved show, and it earned you a Golden Globe.
AF: I actually first did the character in an episode of BURKE’S LAW for Aaron Spelling, and it spinned off into its own show. It was so much fun but very grueling, and I had to take training in Okinawa-Te karate. As you probably know, I worked every episode with John Ericson, who played my brother in BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK. It was the first TV series starring a woman as a private detective, but when we wanted to switch from black-and-white to color, ABC decided it was too expensive and replaced us with an imported show from England, THE AVENGERS. I do think HONEY WEST was perhaps ahead of its time. To this day many young women come up to me and tell me I was their role model because of HONEY WEST!
JG: How would you contrast live TV to today’s medium?
AF: It may be just nostalgia but I did love live TV, because the challenge was really supreme. That little red light would go on on that camera and that was it. You had to play it through no matter what, a scene where you were supposedly on the 19th floor and a stage hand walks past the window, you know and there’s a skyscraper behind him. There were all kinds of wild and woolly things that would happen but the challenge was there and the audience was there enjoying it so much because they knew right at this moment that they were feeling what you were feeling in a scene. They were living it with you and they knew there was no time gap between what you were playing and what they were seeing at that moment, and they accepted these crazy things that might happen and they enjoyed the “liveness” of it and I just don’t think that excitement is often met on tape. I understand the necessities for it (but) the excitement is not there because you know when you’re watching a show if they had one bad take … many times a scene was playing magnificently will be stopped because a hunk of an actor’s hair is in his eye. So what if a hunk of an actor’s hair is in his eye and the scene is playing? On tape they’ll stop it and say “Please put a little more powder on Miss Francis” … these things that get in the way can destroy a certain energy that is working so magnificently and can’t always be recaptured immediately. With production not having time they’re not gonna wait for it to be recaptured. So live, by George, you got out there and you did it and fall on your face or whatever, it was there.
JG: Is there a particular favorite among your movies?
AF: Each one of them had its own challenges, each has had its own complexion, each has been its own experience. I would say as far as an actress in film, it would be GIRL OF THE NIGHT (1960, available from the Warner Archive Collection) which at the time was considered a very dangerous subject because it was about a prostitute going through analysis. Of course there wasn’t a single licentious scene in the film. It was an in-depth study of the psyche of this young woman. I was going through analysis myself at the time so in a way I was playing myself being myself doing the analysis myself in front of the camera. It was quite a grueling experience and I felt good about the performance. I felt it was true, it was there. As far as any one film, no, cause I’ve had so many marvelous experiences, so many beautiful people I’ve met and worked with, so much sharing. You see, to be an actor or actress you have to be a good psychologist. You learn much about yourself and about each other as you’re acting. You learn to really love life, that invisible essence that is there that performs itself through you when you let it.
JG: What prompted you to write Voices from Home, which is emphatically not a show biz memoir?
AF: It probably started with a near death experience when I was four. I nearly drowned and it was an incredibly beautiful experience. As a matter of fact I was most angry to be pulled out of the water and taken from it. I don’t think I realized it at the time but I feel now in retrospect that perhaps there was much more to me than meets the physical eye. The experience of near drowning is more real to me than many things that have happened to me in the worldly environment. There’s always been that search in me and I don’t think I’m too different from most people in that respect. I wanted to share in the book much of what has happened to me, things that some people call miracles and others call “coincidence.” I wanted to hopefully encourage the reader on a one to one basis to have a greater belief in themselves and in the integrity that is their inheritance, that has been born into them, to hopefully if not convince, at least have them begin to think of the possibility that all of what is going on in this planet is not evil. There is much beauty, there is much joy, there is much love and much healing here, but first we have to begin to tune into it. We have to accept the fact that perhaps that is a reality and that everything the world tells us may not necessarily be the truth. If we are told that we are no good or not worthy then it’s almost impossible to perform a worthy act. We come into life quite innocent, quite clean, quite pure, and before we’ve had very long time on this planet to do much thinking or conjuring we are told to be fearful, we are told not to trust the other fellow, get him before he gets you. We’re told that we are suckers if we give, if we care, and people will tramp all over us. This is not true, but if we believe it is the truth, we behave in that manner. There is absolutely no psychologist who will argue with the statement that it is done unto you according to your belief and if we are going to change our immediate environment which then touches other environments, we’re going to have to change some of our beliefs. That is if we want love and peace, and I am firmly convinced that when those on this planet who are greedily living out the sale of arms and all of these other things that are destructive, when they can come to the realization that peace is far more profitable to them than war, it’s gonna be incredible what mankind’s gonna be able to do, absolutely incredible. FORBIDDEN PLANET? Can’t even touch it!
KINO has released Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s two-strip Technicolor silent adventure THE BLACK PIRATE (1926) on Blu-ray, mastered in hi-def from a 35mm negative. Eighty-five years later it’s still a thrilling swashbuckler, featured Fairbanks at his prime, readily demonstrating why he was probably the greatest movie star of the Twenties. Like all of his productions, no expense was spared to bring the bloodthirsty buccaneers to the screen, and the movie is full of images inspired by Pyle and Wyeth’s pirate art. The Blu-ray includes the original score, audio commentary by Rudy Behlmer. 18 minutes of outtakes with Behlmer commentary, 29 minutes of additional outtakes from the Library of Congress, photo gallery, and a 75-minute talkie version with orchestral score and narration by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT gives Rita Hayworth the star treatment with THE COLLECTORS CHOICE: FILMS OF RITA HAYWORTH, featuring five of the most memorable movies from Columbia Pictures’ top star of the Forties and early Fifties. Charles Vidor’s COVER GIRL (1944) was a smash hit Technicolor musical, with songs by Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern, a cast including Gene Kelly, Eve Arden and Phil Silvers, and an introduction by Baz Luhrmann. Victor Saville’s TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT (1945) is a Technicolor musical drama about a musical show that defies Nazi bombs over London and performs amidst the attack, with an introduction from Patricia Clarkson. Charles Vidor’s GILDA (1946) is perhaps Rita’s best known movie, a film noir triangle featuring her sultry signature performance of “Put the Blame on Mame;” the title includes introductions by Martin Scorsese and Luhrmann, and commentary by Richard Schickel. Curtis Bernhardt’s MISS SADIE THOMPSON (1953) is a remake of Lewis Milestone’s RAIN (1932), with Rita in the titular Joan Crawford role as the South Seas prostitute involved with a Marine and a minister, here with a Patricia Clarkson intro, while William Dieterle’s SALOME (1953) is a cut-rate Biblical epic with wonderful Charles Laughton as King Herod in a cast including Stewart Granger, Judith Anderson and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. All five titles from the archives of Columbia Pictures are in exceptional shape.
SHPE’s ROBERT RODRIGUEZ DOUBLE FEATURE: EL MARIACHI/THE DESPERADO Blu-ray is a great one-two punch, the $7,000 indie that established Rodriguez as one of the ‘90s most exciting indie directors (EL MARIACHI), and the near-remake-on-a-big-studio-budget (DESPERADO) that is one of the decade’s best genre movies. EL MARIACHI (1992) reveals a strong directorial hand even on guerilla terms, while DESPERADO (1995) is a blast, starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Joaquin de Almeida, Cheech Marin, and in fun cameos, Steve Buscemi and Quentin Tarantino. Both are remastered in hi-def with some terrific extras: commentaries by the director, his short doc TEN MINUTE FILM SCHOOL (1998) and his student film BED HEAD (1991), a Los Lobos music video and more.
WARNER HOME VIDEO: Sergio Leone’s long awaited gangster spectacular ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, his first movie since 1971’s DUCK, YOU SUCKER, was a major flop upon its initial release in June 1984, thanks to some wholesale butchery in the editing room. Restored to the director’s original vision in October of that year at the New York Film Festival and briefly re-released, it was still a commercial disaster, but has since been recognized as one of the great crime films, its reputation growing greater every year. Robert DeNiro, James Woods, William Forsyth and James Hayden play Jewish mobsters on the Lower East Side, in a saga spanning five decades and an original running time of 229 minutes. Leone’s period set pieces, Ennio Morricone’s evocative score, and a cast including Elizabeth McGovern, Jennifer Connelly (as the young McGovern), Joe Pesci, Burt Young, Treat Williams, Danny Aiello and Tuesday Weld, all contribute to the artfulness of the movie. In the Blu-ray released by WHE, it becomes an incredible cinematic experience, well worth the investment of time. Extras include an excerpt from the documentary ONCE UPON A TIME: SERGIO LEONE, and commentary by Richard Schickel that is light on production history, heavy on analysis.
The Warner Archive Collection continues to release Warner Bros., MGM, RKO and Allied Artists/Monogram product at a steady pace. Greta Garbo’s final film, TWO-FACED WOMAN (1941) is among the latest to be made available on DVD-on-Demand and download; it’s an infrequently shown, entertaining romantic comedy that strives for the sophisticated Lubitsch touch of 1939’s NINOTCHKA (re-uniting her with that film’s romantic interest Melvyn Douglas), but lacking Lubitsch and a Wilder-Brackett script. The MGM-manufactured screenplay is a variation on THE GUARDSMAN, with Garbo playing her own twin to liven up the romance with husband Douglas. There’s the usual MGM production values, and a lovely supporting cast including Constance Bennett, Roland Young and a young Ruth Gordon, but Metro house helmer Clarence Brown, though a fine director, was more at home with drama (THE RAINS CAME, INTRUDER IN THE DUST, THE HUMAN COMEDY, OF HUMAN HEARTS, early Joan Crawford melodramas, seven films with Garbo, including FLESH AND THE DEVIL, ANNA CHRISTIE, ANNA KARENINA).
Warner Archive has remastered one of Vincente Minnelli’s most fascinating and neglected dramas, 2 WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN (1962). Ten years earlier he had directed Kirk Douglas in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, produced by John Houseman and written by Charles Schnee, an uncompromising look inside a Hollywood producer who tramples people underfoot in his climb to power. Not technically a sequel, 2 WEEKS reunites director, star, producer and writer (adapting an Irwin Shaw novel), not in Los Angeles but in Rome, where runaway American productions were the order of the day. Douglas plays a washed-up movie star just out of rehab, who goes to Roma to star in a movie directed by another damaged artist, brilliantly played by Edward G. Robinson. Minnelli direction’s is perfect, his mise-en-scene, compositions, and use of color impeccable. As an insider’s look at the industry, 2 WEEKS has few rivals (speculation has been made that Kirk’s character was based on Tyrone Power, Cyd Charisse on Power’s wife Linda Christian, and Claire Trevor on Darryl Zanuck’s wife Virginia). In his definitive study Directed by Vincente Minnelli (1989, Museum of Modern Art/Harper & Row), Stephen Harvey calls the movie “lurid … fairly bursting with depraved females … catches fire whenever Minnelli drops the off-the-set agonies to concentrate on the everyday craziness of putting a movie together. Having suffered through enough such crises in his time, his gibes at the language-gap vagaries of runaway production has the comic ring of truth.” Warner has remastered the film, something they’re doing more and more (WarnerArchive.com).
Two new titles in OLIVE FILMS’ ongoing series of releases from the Paramount vault: Buzz Kulik’s intense prison drama RIOT (1968), starring Jim Brown, Gene Hackman, Mike Kellin and Brown’s DIRTY DOZEN co-star Ben Carruthers, filmed entirely on location at Arizona State Prison and featuring many of the inmates in the movie; and the compelling WUSA (1970), starring Paul Newman as an alcoholic disc jockey who goes to work for a right-wing extremist hate radio station in New Orleans, reuniting him with COOL HAND LUKE director Stuart Rosenberg and wife Joanne Woodward in the eighth of their twelve movies together. WUSA takes on an added significance 40 years later with perhaps the first depiction of hate radio in American film.
VSC has unearthed some rarities with JOHNNY LEGEND PRESENTS TREK STARS GO WEST, a two-disc set of pre-STAR TREK TV appearances by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan. Highlights include Nimoy’s Comanche in an episode of TATE (1960), co-starring 24-year-old Robert Redford in one of his first acting gigs, and his Lenny-from-OF-MICE-AND-MEN turn on a 1960 BONANZA; Shatner in a two-part OUTLAWS (1960) with Cloris Leachman, Jack Warden and Victor Buono; Kelley in the first regular episode of THE LONE RANGER (1949) with Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels; James Doohan in two episodes of HAWKEYE AND THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1957), with and without mustache, co-starring Lon Chaney Jr., Jon Hart and future Elvis star Joan Blackman. Shatner stars in a bonus feature, WHITE COMANCHE (1968), a psychedelic spaghetti Western made on break between STAR TREK’s first two seasons.
JOHNNY LEGEND PRESENTS DENNIS HOPPER: THE EARLY WORKS presents the young actor in three TV guest spots from January (MEDIC, as an epileptic), February PUBLIC DEFENDER, as a juvenile delinquent, directed by veteran Erle C. Kenton), and March, 1955 (THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW, as a spoiled rich kid). There’s also an hilarious episode of PETTICOAT JUNCTION (1964), with Hopper as a Greenwich Village beatnik slacker romancing one of the Junction girls; Curtis Harrington’s haunting cult film NIGHT TIDE (1961), one of Hopper’s finest early performances, plus trailers for NIGHT TIDE and KEY WITNESS (1960).
John Gallagher
jgmovie@gmail.com |
