Via The Ticket:

On the heels of presidential candidate Herman Cain’s win in the Florida straw poll last weekend, the radio host Dennis Miller announced Monday that he’s endorsing Cain for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Miller, who mentioned his support for the Cain campaign on his national radio show, will headline a fundraiser for Cain in Los Angeles and has donated to the campaign, a Cain spokeswoman confirmed.

Full piece here.

Remember the monster hit video “The Great Schlep,” from late in 2008 by Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman.

If Barack Obama doesn’t become the next president of the United States I’m gonna blame the Jews. I am.

Florida can make or break an election. I’m making this video to urge all of you to schlep over to Florida and convince your grandparents [Nana, Papa, Zadi, Boobie, et.al.] to vote Obama.

It was oh, so hip and cool in a Comedy Central/MTV sort of way. Nearly 2 million views. And as we all know, Obama did squeek by in Florida.

And now from political analysts Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (Politico), via AZCentral.com “Obama adviser: Numbers grim for ‘12 campaign” Aug. 4:

Obama’s electoral map from 2008 will be tough to duplicate, with all three perennial bellwethers — Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania — once again up for grabs.

[Obama] may have been hurt in Florida by unhappiness in the Jewish community about Obama’s handling of Israel…

And this from the NY Post, “Jews won’t vote for Obama again,” July 13:

American Jews will stop voting against their own interests and abandon the Democratic Party. A new poll, Tevi Troy argues… Pat Cadell and John McLaughlin’s bipartisan survey shows that only 43 percent of respondents plan to vote for Barack Obama next year.

Consider, 78% (!) of Jews voted for Obama in 2008.

And now get ready for a stunner.

Politico reports:

Sarah Silverman: Loving Obama ain’t easy

Is Sarah Silverman falling out of love with Obama?

On Thursday, the comedian who‘s been a big supporter of the president tweeted a link to the song “Trying My Best to Love You”

Losing Silverman now?

Maybe in retrospect Sarah, it might have been better to have endorsed that other (rumored-to-be) Jewish Sarah in 2008. At least Nana would have been happier.

I love the way the Palins navigate Sarah’s fame. I watched Todd and Sarah at the Searchlight and Boston events this year. They looked like they were on a date. He had his arm around her protectively as they slinked through the column of bodyguards worming their way to the stage, where he watched her shine and then embraced her back into the SUV of safety. That is Feminism. A feminine woman achieving goals with the blessing of her man, while she simultaneously supports his career endeavors and celebrates his masculinity. I read her book. They are in love and enjoy mutual respect with a splash of sexiness. There is a fire there. You gotta love it.        
        
Now, I watch other women bragging about their single parenting. They “don’t need a man.” They can buy a baby. They can do anything a man can do. Well, they look stupid and desperate to me. First of all, women and men are very different and personally, when I’m being chased by a murderer/rapist/what-have-you, I’d rather have a big, strong man protecting me than a woman. I had a cop once, who came to the site of my car accident. She had long, blonde hair blowin’ in the wind, and two inch long, bright pink, fake nails. I mean, really. How do you get your finger through that hole to pull the trigger? I can’t even button my blouse with fake nails. Yeesh!

I’ve struggled with the career/family thing my whole life. I only came to Hollywood in 1980 because I  was single, and I knew that it would be the only time in my life when I could chase a whim. I gave up an engagement ring for it and my true love married someone else. I got the career, but I gave up something. When I got reunited with my true love ten years later, I had to choose again, between career and husband. His job was across the country. This time I chose the husband. It was so painful to give up the career I loved, that I got a tattoo. It was a permanent, physical symbol of the emotional pain I was going through. What was the tattoo? My husband’s initials. P.W. The tattoo artist said, “You want a P.U. on your butt?!” I said, “NO! P.W.!!”      
      
The joy of motherhood and the hot, husband time gradually dulled the
absence of the cheering crowds, and the creative stimulation, but the career monster lurked in the shadows ready to seduce me given the chance. 15 long years went by.

When one daughter got married, the ambitious monster popped out again and my long-suffering husband commuted from FL to LA for three years, keeping his job, financially supporting me and letting me give it a shot. I lived in LA with my teenager and she tried not to miss her friends and family back home.

I got a few roles. ..even at age 50. I got a great part playing the wife of Jeff Fahey in a Pureflix film called Marriage Retreat. Ironically, my lines all reflected my personal struggle.

My character had to look deep into Jeff’s intensely ice blue eyes, and reply to his question about moving. He said, “… what do you want to do?” My character’s line was, “You are my home.” Hmm. I guess I took the part home with me because I promptly told my family I’d leave my beloved friends and adventures in LA and move back to Florida to be the Grandma to my upcoming first grandchild due Jan. 1, 2011. That’s what they all wanted.  So, you see I understand the Feminist Dilemma.      
        
I see ambitious women splattered about naked, and well, pornographic on TV, in movies, in magazines, on billboards and everywhere.        

—–

I see women falling for the lie, even Baptists like me. I used to get asked to play nudity a lot in my twenties. Strangely, that isn’t a problem anymore! No one asks! But, my daughters see and feel the emphasis our society places on sexuality. My teenager’s behavior changed when I transferred her from a secular school, to a Bible based school. Her clothes and her conversations changed. Her face brightened. When her daily MTV watching and junk food changed to cheer practice on a team that included prayer and Bible study, her face began to glow with health and joy and she quit asking for piercings and drawing magic marker tattoos all over her arms and legs.  (I know, I’m a bad example.)      
        
Now that women have the opportunity to have it all, (excluding Muslim women who have no freedom), we have difficult choices. Back a few years, I took my small kids to LA for an experimental year to see if I could get some acting work. Daddy commuted. I got one episode of The X Files. ( I did get to kiss David Duchovny, well, my character did, but maybe I should say I “had to” kiss David, instead of I “got to”….now that they say he’s a sex addict!…you know… germs…) We had a family meeting of sorts. On a balancing scale, I held one X Files episode in one hand, and missing Daddy/Husband for a year in the other hand. I chose to go back to Florida and be The Housewife. The kids were happier.        
        
The last month of my LA leased apartment, I got a pilot with Sofia Vergara, Joey Lawrence, and Jon Lovitz. (It ultimately landed in the garbage can but I got a nice check.). My family was back in Florida so I wrote this sad song;       
        
Two Weeks Away        
        
There’s a cat litter box with no kitty poop in it.      
There is silence in every room.       
There are toys here and there,       
But no laughter anywhere.        
Shadows dance as I wade through the gloom.        
        
I stop and stare at pictures on the wall.        
They seem to caaaaalll out my name.        
But when I touch their precious faces        
It’s just paper and glass in a frame.        
        
I tell myself I’m not sad, this is good, it’s not bad.        
I must work, they are safe, I’m just an airplane away.        
But after a while, I just can’t fake a smile,        
I’ll go back, I’ll go back, I’ll go back.        
        
One’s at the computer.        
One watches cartoons.        
Mommy’s cooking spinach,        
Daddy vacuums.        
        
Just to know they’re nearby       
Is the joy of a home.        
In the corner of my eye watching them play,       
Is the bliss that I miss at a moment like this,       
So I cry, so I cry, so I cry;       
        
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine        
You make me happy when skies are gray        
You’ll never know dear how much I love you        
Please don’t take my sunshine away.        
       
Feminism. Such a strange word. When I hear it I first think of the most
masculine and angry women, women with not a shred of femininity. Funny
how words are. Then, I think of the meaning they want it to hold. And
that word is Sarah Palin.

How hostile is Hollywood for fundamental Christians that they would be ramping up productions in places like rural Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and especially central Florida? Mel Damski, director of several David E. Kelly hits, told me Kelly hates all religion but especially despises Christians, and that he misses no opportunity to “put them in the pit” of one of his dramas. The mini drama between David Duchovny and Victoria Jackson is another example.

I had a small X Files part on an episode that guest starred Jackson. She is a well known conservative Christian who left the Saturday Night Live cast after six seasons of being ridiculed for her religion, she said. Having worked as an SNL extra during the early 90s, I can personally attest to the derision of her by many on the show. But back to X Files.

Between takes, atheist star Duchovny, a very smart guy in terms of an SAT test with degrees from both Princeton and Yale, made fun of Jackson by baiting her with cleverly worded, condescending questions about God, Christianity, sex and politics. To her credit, she did not respond in kind. But no matter what she said, Duchovny was right back on her with another sly sarcastic put down. Every so often, the torment would cause  Jackson to exclaim “I’m a Christian woman!” That just whetted  Duchovny’s appetite for more, of course, and he’d then begin needling her anew.

Now, the only difference between what Duchovny was doing and what goes on almost every day in Hollywood is that he was expressing his disdain openly. The stuff I and maybe you hear weekly at some conservative Christian’s expense is done passive-aggressively behind their backs — and yes, such sentiments do translate into cancelled projects  and lost work opportunities even for the likes of billionaire Christian conservative  Philip Anschutz. 

Disney pulled out of its deal with Anschutz’ Walden Media to film C.S. Lewis‘ complete three book Christian message Narnia series. Disney had profitably financed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian but gave no reason for dumping the third book.  Could jokes made by some at Disney about Jesus being a lion and less flattering comments have had something to do with the decision? Others, like my director friend Charlie Carner, do manage to have a career, but I have no doubt he’d be getting more greenlights if he were not an openly conservative Catholic who stands up for both his religion and American exeptionalism. “You got a problem with that?” I watched him growl at a liberal heckler during a Directors Guild presentation Carner was giving. Others just prefer “to get the ‘L’ out of Hollywood,” as Florida filmmaker De Miller puts it. “We’d like Central Florida to be ‘Holywood,‘” he adds.

Should Hollywood be worried? Could a Holywood turn out to be a Roger Corman type filmmaking factory that spawns faith-oriented equivalents of  Corman protégés Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich and James Cameron who may not only prefer to film in non union Florida, but who also want to put stories on the screen that skew popular culture away from the edge of what fundamental Christians see as a Tinselltown enabled moral precipice?

That’s unknowable at the moment, of course, and there’s no savvy, Christian version of Corman that I’m aware of. But every reduction of Hollywood’s constantly shrinking audience share has to be a concern to all but the most fiscally foolish who avoid reading the proverbial writing on the wall. Sure the faith-based films are made on micro budgets, often with with donated labor, locations and gear.  Sure they almost never feature name actors and maybe the writing and camera work are the stuff of Hollywood sneers. But they are in a learning curve and the available evidence indicates conservative Christians are a growing segment of America whose entertainment dollars are profiting their own.

“Fireproof,” a Christian film made by the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia made 40 million dollars and cost waaaay less than 1 million to make. The filmmakers themselves, the Kendrick brothers, are both Baptist ministers. Great as their number are, I suspect a pitch by those guys to Harvey Weinstein would not be well received and they know it. So they and others are looking to make the Orlando area their own filmmaking capital for some very sound reasons.

The weather is good all year and “there’s all this acting talent, thanks to the theme parks,” says David Nixon, co-director of “Letters to God.”  That local talent includes some retired and snowbird name actors. Gary Burghoff of TV’s “M*A*S*H” winters on Florida and has worked on a couple of projects. “We have A-list crews who don’t get the chance to showcase their work very often,” adds “The Whisper Home” director Jaime Velez-Soto. “They want the chance to make movies here, and not in L.A. or wherever, so they help you out.”

Then there are the churches.

Central Florida, like the South in general, is chock full of conservative Christian churches who want to evangelize on a broader scale. “We’ve always wanted to minister outside the four walls of the church, to the whole world,” said Pastor Matthew J. Shaw of the Faith and Power Worship Center in Apopka. It’s the church behind Faith and Power Pictures. “Movies seem like a better way of spreading our message.” That point is not lost on many other churches who are starting their own production companies in hopes their films may eventually reach theaters.

That may seem like a big stretch, but do remember that the Hebrews trained in the wilderness for a long time before emerging as a force to be reckoned with in Canaan.

The man who would become one of the most popular movie stars of the last quarter century was born in 1936, the son of a small-town police chief in Florida. He grew up handsome and tough, randy and reckless — by fourteen, he had lost his virginity to a much older woman, and soon after knocked up the prom queen (his attempts to cajole her into marriage were rebuffed by the girl’s society-maven mother, who forced her daughter to abort the baby). Such antics were an early harbinger of both the charismatic charm and voracious, self-destructive appetites that would define (and sometimes decimate) his later career (a typical joke — Q: Why didn’t Burt Reynolds ever take Loni Anderson out to dinner? A: He made it a rule never to date married women.)

Like John Wayne thirty years earlier, an injury ended Reynolds’ budding college football career, and in 1955 he turned toward acting. Future stars like Joanne Woodward and Rip Torn were early friends during his New York salad days, and the connections he built there ultimately allowed him to journey west in the late Fifties to seek his fortune in Hollywood. At the time he bore an uncanny resemblance to superstar Marlon Brando, and along with new pals like Clint Eastwood he spent long, disheartening years scrambling between minor roles in various television shows such as Riverboat and Gunsmoke. He even served as a contestant on The Dating Game. “I spent a long time playing the third Indian from the left,” he says ruefully of those early jobs.

From the start of the “swingin’ Sixties,” he seldom felt at home among the young, self-important thespians who would eventually rule the industry. “I don’t belong in places like New York or Los Angeles,” he insisted when pressed. “I should be on a farm with a few cases of good beer.” Reynolds’ first marriage, to the English actress Judy Carne, disintegrated when he couldn’t bring himself to join the never-ending drug-infested parties she presided over with an assortment of heroin-addicted hippies and Charles Manson rejects.

While many of his friends tried to emulate the new hip stars of that decade and their space-cadet ways, Reynolds was drawn to a different world, one to which his pal Hal Needham provided the gateway. “One time,” Needham remembers, “[Burt] mentioned that he didn’t know much about motorcycles, so I suggested that he come over to my place and practice. I had motorcycles and a tree where we used to do high falls. Every weekend there were fifteen or twenty stunt guys practicing. Burt started coming around every weekend. He got along well with all of the guys.”

In that way, over a long period of association, Reynolds’ persona became more of a stuntman than an actor — and for the most part, that was fine by him. The rarefied careers of emotive twerps like Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino didn’t interest him. “There are two or three young actors around,” he once said in his heyday, “I won’t mention any names — who if I see them painfully staring at the rug in one more picture, I’m gonna puke.” I imagine Reynolds shares that thought, then and now, with a vast swath of the nation’s movie-going public. The Needham/Reynolds friendship grew over the course of fifteen years, and Reynolds never forgot the way his pal shared his contacts and expertise.

By the end of the 1960s, Reynolds was an established television personality, but his early work had stereotyped him as a serious, angry, morose action star, a role that didn’t jive with his true nature. Something important was missing from the mix: humor. The venue Reynolds ultimately used to introduce his jocular side to the public was novel. “The beginning of almost everything good that ever happened to me,” he says, “was a result of my being on the Tonight Show.” His first appearances there were a revelation, creating a pop-culture electricity that today is hard to fathom. “The guy on Evening Shade [his successful early 1990s TV sitcom] is who I am and always was,” Reynolds feels. “The guy on the Tonight Show is who I was after seven vodka and tonics, which is generally what I had before I walked out.”

Whatever he drank, his stints on the program utterly transformed his persona in the eyes of the public. Instead of the usual actors taking themselves ultra-seriously, mumbling about how much effort and technique and skill they put into their roles, Reynolds would cheerfully call his latest film a flat-out turkey, poke fun at his lack of top-flight acting ambition, and shamelessly play the part of a rich, sexy, fun-loving Hollywood star who was enjoying the wild ride like no one else.

The following 1974 appearance on the Tonight Show, made while promoting The Longest Yard, gives the modern viewer an idea of the early swagger that he would later parlay into the films that made him the top box-office attraction of the late Seventies and early Eighties:

Soon the fairly unknown TV star was Johnny Carson’s hottest guest, to the point where Carson often had Reynolds guest host the show for him. The fame gained from these appearances rocketed him out of the Hollywood doldrums. For the first time, the name BURT REYNOLDS on a marquee opened movies all by itself, and he now had his choice of what kind of projects to do.

But crucially, rather than go the usual route of chasing Oscars, he opted for a more personal direction. “My friends all wear cowboy hats and have horse manure on their boots,” he said. “They ask me if I knew John Wayne, and I say ‘no,’ and that’s the end of the show business talk.” So with his new-found clout he began doing Southern “hick flicks,” many of which (Deliverance, White Lightning, The Longest Yard, Gator) became popular, making him a beloved figure throughout flyover country. Tellingly, these projects were spaced out with other, more mainstream roles, many of which weren’t popular at all. Reynolds was getting stereotyped again, but this time as a character America was warming to.

In the mid-Seventies, with Needham still living in Reynolds’ guest house after his divorce twelve years earlier, the chance finally came to pay back a karmic debt to his old friend. “One day,” Reynolds says, “[Needham] gave me a script he’d written. Titled Smokey and the Bandit, it was scrawled on a yellow legal pad in his own handwriting. Cheap bastard hadn’t even had it typed.” He read the script and was underwhelmed. “Now Hal and I had one of the tightest friendships in show business. He’d directed second-unit footage and coordinated stunts on six of my films. My God, we’d lived together longer than either of us had lived with any of the women to whom we’d been married. So it was hard to tell him I thought it was the worst script I’d read in my life.”

Nevertheless, he saw some potential in the tale — its outlaw, Robin Hood conceit might be greatly appealing, if the dialogue and scenes could be spruced up to match. Various agents and hangers-on told Reynolds he would be crazy to star in a madcap, low-budget screwball comedy. He needed more movies, they argued, like Deliverance — parts that could further his reputation as a serious actor. “Every single one of my advisers and friends,” Reynolds says, “went down on their hands and knees begging me with tears in their eyes not to make that film. Mind you, if you had read the original script, you’d probably have done the same.”

But beyond Reynolds affinity for the basic plot and the Southern atmosphere, he felt he owed his friend a good turn. Hal Needham was in his forties and nearing the end of his useful life as a stuntman, and Reynolds well knew of his desire to move into directing. So, when Needham tried and failed to get any of the studios interested in the picture, Reynolds made it known around town that he would be willing to star as the Bandit. Instantly, studio doors opened wide, and Needham found his previously derided script in demand. It was, Needham later admitted, “the biggest thing anyone has ever done for me in my life.”

If Reynolds had saved the script by putting his potent box-office muscle behind it, Needham himself added some necessary guts to the package. Reynolds remembers how

[film executive Mike] Medavoy wanted to make a movie with me — but not Smokey. Instead, he handed Hal the script of Convoy and said he could direct that one if I starred. Hal, who’d never directed, considered the bigger-budget offer and said, “No, it’s mine or nothing.” That’s the reason I love Hal. He’s a hell of a man.

It would have been easy for Needham to fold his hand, toss away his script, and try to make someone else’s movie. But he perceptively decided that Convoy had none of the charm, authenticity, or raw excitement that his own Smokey and the Bandit tale promised, and he held firm under withering studio pressure.

Looking back, Burt Reynolds epitomizes not only the best but much of the worst that movie stardom has to offer. Stardom often went to his head, something he freely admits in his autobiography. He’s known for having a short fuse. All the womanizing left him a twice-divorced, 73-year-old lonely bachelor. Vanity led to cadaverous plastic surgery (compare Reynolds’ futile attempt to still look 40 to the gracefully aged visages of contemporaries like Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood). Many of his films are now derided as junk, projects he undertook even as he rejected such choice roles as James Bond, Trapper John in M*A*S*H, Han Solo in Star Wars, the (Oscar-winning) astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment, John McClane in Die Hard, and many others.

In 1996, the former superstar’s spendthrift ways caught up to him, and he was forced to file bankruptcy with assets of $6.65 million against debts of $11.2 million — a pathetic pittance of an estate for a four-decade member of Hollywood royalty. Reynolds suffered his share of plain old bad luck as well: acute hypoglycemia in the Seventies, a horrible case of temporomandibular joint disorder in the Eighties. He once mused wryly that when life-threateningly ill, “you make a hundred bargains with God. But as soon as you feel better, you break them.”

But there’s another side to Burt Reynolds: the stand-up guy, full of graciousness and generosity to fans and friends. Note that he never has built his personal politics into a wall between himself and the public. One incident in particular hammers this home for me. Back in 1985, when AIDS was first entering the nation’s consciousness, the activist group AIDS Project Los Angeles asked Elizabeth Taylor (a close friend of the then-dying Rock Hudson) to organize a fundraiser that would help create mainstream awareness of this feared disease. Taylor called everyone she knew asking for help, but according to her virtually everyone balked. “The people in this town didn’t give a damn!” she remembered many years later. “That made me cynical about Hollywood. What a sad lesson. It’s a very sad comment on this town.”

Actually it’s par for the course — today many of those same people fly private jets while lecturing the rest of us about carbon emissions. But it says a lot that — with Rock Hudson having only weeks to live, and everyone else afraid to attend an AIDS fundraiser that might hurt their careers — Burt Reynolds was one of only a small handful of stars to say “yes” to Taylor’s request. Not only that, he took upon himself the most thankless task of the event: reading aloud the pledge of support that the hated Republican President, Ronald Reagan, had generously sent from Washington. Let it be noted for the record that, on September 19, 1985, actor Burt Reynolds stood up at Taylor’s event and read Reagan’s letter, while being roundly booed by a mass of angry activist attendees. That counts for something in my book.

(as an aside: at a similar event some time later, Reagan showed up in person to once again graciously pledge his support for AIDS research. The same classless ingrates from ACT UP who had booed Reynolds began doing the same thing to the President. To Elizabeth Taylor’s everlasting credit, she grabbed the mic and shut them all down, yelling, “I don’t care what your politics are, I don’t care how you feel about the President or what he’s not doing, he is still the President of the United States of America and you owe him some due respect, so shut the f*** up!” Properly chastised, the buffoons did shut up, and Reagan was able to give his speech.)

In light of all of this, I’ve got a question for you: do you know if Burt Reynolds is a Democrat? A Republican? An Independent?

No clue, right?

Good.

“Most of my friends are very political,” Reynolds admits, “and they were chagrined when I wasn’t active during the 1976 Presidential campaign.” He was making Smokey and the Bandit during that time, and could have joined the usual suspects in protesting and posturing and shrieking hate at ordinary Americans, all in an attempt to fit in with the Hollywood gang and grease the wheels of his career. Instead, he chose to “shut up and sing.” As conservatives and as movie lovers, we should give him due credit for that gift of silence.

Hal Needham dismisses those in Hollywood who think of Reynolds as a jerk, and reminds us that, “Without Burt, I’d never have had a chance. Burt has this capacity for loyalty and caring. He has made it and he doesn’t forget anyone he has ever cared for, man or woman.” That caring extends not only to friends like Needham, but to all the people who have enjoyed his films over the years. On September 24, 1981, at the height of his fame, Reynolds immortalized his hand and footprints in the famous forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. He took the opportunity to scratch a simple line into the moist cement, one that speaks for itself and that modern Hollywood would do well to emulate:

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers: The Great One. ’Nuff said.

Previous posts in the series “Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and Smokey and the Bandit”:

Part 1

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

If you ever find yourself in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale/West Palm Beach area, you might consider taking a detour to Jupiter, Florida to visit the Burt Reynolds Roadside Museum, located in an old bank building and filled with memorabilia, autographed pictures, awards, and other items.

After making such a point about Reynolds’ laudable decision to keep his politics to himself, I should mention that NewsMeat: America’s Most Popular Campaign Donor Search Engine lists a mere two political contributions from Burt Reynolds: one to Florida Senator Bob Graham way back in 1986, and one to Bill Clinton during his first run in 1992. Both Democrats, but also Southerners who Reynolds might have known and felt obligated to help on grounds other than raw politics.

To balance the scales, the entry for Smokey and the Bandit director Hal Needham lists three donations, one for the Dems and two for the GOP. Poke around the site and examine their celebrity donation lists — you might be surprised to find out how many of your favorite stars are closet Republicans.

Reynolds’ My Life is one of the better celebrity autobiographies out there. Like all such volumes it is more than a bit self-serving, but overall it lays bare the ups and downs, and gives some crucial insights into the blessing/curse of fame. If you haven’t seen Reynolds’ excellent four-hour-long one-man show An Evening with Burt Reynolds (alas, it’s not available on DVD, and who knows how many more times the seventy-three-year-old Reynolds is going to perform it live), reading this book is the next-best thing.

Like Barbara Walters’ painfully inane TV specials, Inside the Actor’s Studio has long been a safe place for actors and directors to preen like peacocks, cry like children, and indulge in the fantasy of being a thoughtful intellectual. Nevertheless, excepting perennially vacuous questions like “What sound or noise do you love” and “What is your favorite curse word,” this Bravo TV show occasionally teases enough insight and anecdotage out of its subjects to make it worthwhile. Here are four YouTube videos (part 2 has been deleted by YouTube, probably because of the Smokey clips) showing Reynolds braving host James Lipton’s Lamb’s Den.

Part 1 | Part 2 (missing) | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Back in the states he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and over the next three years served in many capacities before finding his way to the Pacific theater, where he met John Bulkeley and became his executive officer. Montgomery commanded a PT boat in many battles, and eventually headed up to Normandy as an operations officer for a destroyer squadron. While preparing for D-Day, he remembered later, “I saw Bulkeley on his PT Boat and waved to him. There was another man on the bridge with him. I had no idea then it was Jack Ford.”

Soon after D-Day, Montgomery was felled by a serious bout of tropical fever and was sent back stateside. In four years of war he had earned, among other decorations, the Bronze Star and a Chevalier ranking in the French Legion of Honor. All in all, Ford’s kind of guy. When it came time to cast the Bulkeley part in Expendable, the choice was obvious.

Montgomery arrived in Florida not having acted in four years, and the prospect of stepping in front of the camera again terrified him and triggered debilitating panic attacks. But Ford — capable of immense kindness when least expected — treated his problems with understanding, and over a period of several days gently coaxed him back into the acting groove. Ultimately, They Were Expendable would become one of the actor’s best performances, quietly understated but richly nuanced. Montgomery later said that

Ford had a great crew; they all knew him and they were all fiercely loyal. They’d have defended him to the death. They gave me as good . . .

So little of what I did in Hollywood gives me any pride of achievement. Three or four pictures out of sixty-odd. It’s not very much. Ford was the best I’d ever worked with: the only one I’d call creative. After Expendable I’d cheerfully have signed a contract to work with him exclusively. I don’t know that the idea would have appealed to him, of course. But I’d have been happy. He was a genius.

The respect was mutual. Near the end of filming, Ford took a nasty fall off of a studio scaffold and fractured his leg (“Jesus Christ, you clumsy bastard!” Wayne yelled when he and Montgomery found Ford writhing on the ground). When M-G-M called him frantically in the hospital, wondering who could possibly step in on short notice to finish the picture, Ford christened Bob Montgomery as the man who would direct the few remaining scenes.

After Expendable, Montgomery went on to a fruitful later career, first as a director of several well-regarded noir films, then as a popular television personality. His then-twelve-year-old daughter Elizabeth would later grow up to be a star, too — most famous for playing the madcap enchantress Samantha in the 1964 television series Bewitched.

Donna Reed (1921–1986), was just coming into her own as a young actress in 1944, and like so many others before her she was putty in Ford’s hand. In the beginning Ford deliberately didn’t speak to her for weeks, and his rudeness served to build up the hardened exterior she would need for playing her opening scenes in the hospital, stoically assisting meatball surgeons. Later on in the production, however, the wily director changed tactics.

Right before the scene where she is treated by Wayne and his unit to a charmingly improvised candlelight dinner, Ford suddenly softened her up with a string of lovely pearls, ostentatiously presenting them to her in front of the whole crew as a sort of tribute to the nurses of Bataan. This gift from the fearsome, crotchety director was so unexpected that her face lit up with a radiant glow which carried over into the scene, lending genuine conviction to her reactions throughout the dinner, the serenade, and all the way up to her tearful final line, “They’re just such nice guys!”

Film critic Bosley Crowther, the Roger Ebert of his era and no fan of stridently patriotic movies, would write in the New York Times that, “Donna Reed is extraordinarily touching in the role of an Army nurse who figures into the story in a brief romance which is most tastefully and credibly handled.” This was the start of Reed’s career as a true star, and the very next year she would appear in her most immortal film role, that of Jimmy Stewart’s devoted wife in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Incredibly, after They Were Expendable was released, the real-life counterparts of the Wayne and Reed characters both sued for damages, claiming that — even though the names in the movie are all fictitious — the film insinuates that they had a romantic relationship in real life. How anyone could complain about being portrayed by the likes of John Wayne and Donna Reed is beyond me, but in the end they both won damages in court (a few thousand for the man, several hundred thousand for the woman). And so it was this film that prompted the widespread use of the disclaimer we have seen on countless movies ever since, about all characters being fictitious and any resemblance to real people “living or dead” being coincidental.

Throughout the decades in which he worked, John Ford collected about himself a motley assortment of character actors, stuntmen, ex-soldiers, and personal friends, people he particularly enjoyed working with. Together they became informally known as the John Ford Stock Company, and over the course of thirty years they matured into an experienced acting troupe much greater than the sum of their parts, to the point where you can usually judge the merit of a Ford film based on how many members of his Stock Company are listed in the credits. Astoundingly versatile, they were by turns raucously hilarious or deeply affecting, depending on Ford’s whims. For fans of the director’s films, the sight of one of their weathered, well-loved faces on screen is always a cause for rejoicing.

Along with John Wayne, the Company’s most prominent member was Ward Bond (1903–1960). Both Wayne and Bond came to Ford in the late 1920s as a pair of frat-boy college football players from USC looking for summer studio work as grips, stuntmen, whatever they could get. A hardworking character actor, Bond had a different kind of appeal than the Duke, but one no less important to Ford’s films.

Bond was a human bulldog — pug-nosed, round-bellied, big-assed. He looked like someone’s father or brother, eminently blue-collar and dependable, with no guile in his face whatsoever. This allowed him to stand in front of a camera and bring lines to life that in other mouths would have sounded shamelessly corny:

“It means service — tough and good.”

No fancy wordplay, no flowery prose. Just honest sentiments, presented with all the simplicity you would expect from a rugged sailor searching for a manly way to express himself to his buddies. In Ford’s oeuvre, Bond continually grounds scenes in reality that might otherwise become too saccharine, as when in They Were Expendable he serenades Donna Reed (a scene that both Bond and Reed would repeat the very next year in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, with Bond playing Bert the Cop).

Like Wayne, Bond also didn’t serve during the war — rejected due to his epilepsy — and so instead became an air-raid warden in Los Angeles. In July 1944, he suffered a horrible accident while riding his motorcycle on Hollywood Boulevard. According to fellow John Ford Stock Company member Harry Carey Jr.:

He was hit by a car, and his left leg was torn to shreds. The story is that one doctor wanted to amputate it because it was evidently hanging by a thread of flesh, but Duke Wayne threatened to annihilate the doc if he did that. Somehow, after months and months of treatment and skin grafts, the leg was saved. Ward wore a huge brace on it much of the time, but covered it so well you could hardly tell. One part of his leg never did heal. He always had to wear some kind of dressing on it.

With Expendable filming at the end of that year, Bond was in no condition to play such a physically demanding role. Yet like with Robert Montgomery’s panic attacks, Ford reacted to the news with kindness. He kept his friend in the cast and worked around the injury, blocking his scenes so he wouldn’t have to walk more than a step or two in any one shot, and later having his character injured in the script so he could hobble around on a crutch.

It was a good choice — Bond is one of the highlights of They Were Expendable, providing generous helpings of pathos and comic relief in equal measure. One indication of the respect Ford had for his abilities is that Bond was paid more than any other actor on the picture aside from Montgomery and Wayne — $37,000 all told, compared to Montgomery’s $170,000 and Wayne’s $80,000. (For the record, Jack Holt made $30,000, many of the other second-tier actors brought in $15,000 or so, and Donna Reed got $5000 for her few days of studio work.)

In addition to Wayne and Bond, the two giants of the Stock Company, They Were Expendable relies on the talents of other longtime members. Russell Simpson (1880–1959) is “Dad” Knowland, the aged mechanic who refuses to abandon his forty-year home in the Philippines, and is last seen sitting laconically on his doorstep, totally alone in the jungle, cradling his shotgun and a jug of whiskey, waiting for death at the hands of the soon-to-arrive Japanese vanguard. And Harry Tenbrook (1887–1960) portrays the lovable lug “Squarehead” Larsen, the unit’s cook, who ever pines for “the Arizona to come steaming up the bay with her fourteen-inch guns blazing, and the best cook stoves in the Navy.” Neither of these actors were household names, but Ford gave them small, key moments to hold up in the picture, and as always they shine.

(Stuntman Frank McGrath (1903–1967) — a Ford favorite who over a decade later would become a star in the hit television show Wagon Train with Ward Bond — can also be spied as an unnamed sailor in a late scene. He’s the one who tells John Wayne “Glad to see ya back, Mr. Ryan” after Wayne’s character finds Brickley and his men once again.)

Special mention must be made, however, of Stock Company regular Ronald J. “Jack” Pennick (1895–1964). In They Were Expendable he plays Doc, the old weeping sailor being put out to pasture in the clip we saw earlier, but who ultimately stays behind to fight alongside the doomed Army on Bataan. His is a name few people remember today, but anyone who professes admiration for the movies of John Ford needs to know it. Jack Pennick meant a great deal to the director, so much in fact that he holds the honor of appearing in more Ford pictures than any other actor.

Pennick was a two-bit Hollywood trouper when he first met Ford in the late silent era, and he appeared in several of the then-youthful director’s pictures in the late 1920s and early 1930s. A particularly kind and gentle man under his rough, hangdog exterior, it impressed Ford greatly to later discover that Pennick was also a lifelong soldier — a tough-as-nails former Marine drillmaster who had fought in both World War I and the “Banana Wars” of the 1920s. As if that wasn’t enough, over the years he also educated himself into becoming one of the foremost experts on soldiery and military history that Ford or anyone else had ever met.

The two men got on famously, and soon Ford adopted Pennick as his all-around, ever-present aide-de-camp. He did virtually everything for the director, from waking him up each morning on location and hand-delivering his first cup of coffee, to tucking him into bed unconscious after a long night of drinking and poker. The man Ford affectionately called “the big six-foot-four-and-a-half mick” also served with him during World War II, devotedly following him around the world and supposedly (according to professional bullshitter Ford, so take it with a huge grain of salt) even winning the Silver Star. “Wild Bill” Donovan, the founder of the OSS, once reverently said of Pennick, “There is the most perfect soldier I have ever met.” To the end of his days, whenever John Ford would exit a car or enter a room, Jack Pennick would jump up and snap off a perfect salute to his benefactor.

All of this appealed greatly to Ford’s boundless sense of drama and history and duty, and he reciprocated Pennick’s loyalty many times over in the post-war years. In all the director’s greatest movies you can see the winningly ugly ex-soldier appear in some minor role, usually as a sergeant or barman. He was much more useful behind the scenes, mercilessly drilling pampered actors and teaching them how to comport themselves as real servicemen. Anyone wondering how it must have felt for John Wayne and the rest of the John Ford Stock Company to be worked over by ol’ Jack Pennick need only check out this little clip from Ford’s Fort Apache (1948), which has a funny scene of him whipping some green cavalry troops into shape:

My guess is that, given his druthers and some recalcitrant recruits, he could have given R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket a run for his money.

Pennick was also kept on hand to ensure that all the military costumes and lingo were as accurate as possible. It was he who famously walked into West Point during Ford’s filming of The Long Grey Line (1955), took one glance at an old coat-of-arms on the wall, and nonchalantly proclaimed it inaccurate — the swords hanging in the display, he assured the docents, were upside down. When they checked their manuals they discovered to their astonishment that he was right — the display had been hanging wrong for decades until Pennick tipped them off.

When today’s filmmakers, flush with the power of CGI and modern camera techniques, declare their gloomy anti-war films more realistic and thus superior to the hokey military movies of yore, I can only think of guys like Jack Pennick, men who infused old movies with their patriotism, optimism, loyalty, and expertise. One of John Ford’s greatest gifts to posterity is his immortalization of such people on screen, reminding future generations of their caliber.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we conclude our coverage of They Were Expendable with a look at John Ford’s postwar legacy, and his place in film history as a champion of the American spirit.

Previous posts in the series “John Ford, John Wayne, and They Were Expendable”:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING

Company of Heroes: My Life as An Actor in the John Ford Stock Company by Harry Carey, Jr. For those wishing to learn more about the group of Fordian actors mentioned above, there is no better source than this volume of delightful stories by Mr. Carey (who as of this writing is 88 years old and still hale and hearty). There are many laugh-out-loud (and some cringe-worthy) moments featuring John Ford, John Wayne, Ward Bond, Jack Pennick, and all the rest. A must read if you watch the films of John Ford — it will add layers of meaning to each picture, and make them that much more satisfying.

The Earl of Hollywood: a nice website dedicated to the life and career of Robert Montgomery. Lots of rare pictures, including ones of Montgomery as an ambulance driver in France, and in uniform on the cover of various magazines. Well worth perusing.

MOVIE TRIVIA ANSWER: Looks like no one came close to getting the answer to our trivia question last week. Future film director Blake Edwards, in his early acting days, played an unnamed sailor in They Were Expendable, appearing in two main scenes. First, he shows up as a wet-behind-the-ears seaman in the bar during Doc’s farewell party (he’s the one who gets a “very small beer” from actor and former wrestler Sammy Stein).

Much later his character is seen again, this time as a bearded, now-veteran member of John Wayne’s dejected crew, attending an impromptu funeral for two comrades and then listening gravely as the radio in the bar heralds the fall of Bataan.

If you think about it, Ford here creates a shattered mirror image of the first bar scene. Some of the same kids who cheerfully toasted Doc’s health with beer, sarsaparilla, and ginger ale are now at a much different tavern, this time drinking hard liquor, having in the interim become seasoned, war-hardened sailors fully aware of the meaning of “service — tough and good.”

All of these scenes were shot on Hollywood sound stages as opposed to on location in Key Biscayne, Florida, which explains why Edwards doesn’t appear in any outdoor shots.

Other movies the young Blake Edwards can be seen in include The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), where he plays a corporal at the ATC (Air Transport Command) counter in the beginning of the film (“Guess I’m goin’ to Cleveland,” he tells Andrews). He also played the lead in several schlocky B films, including the immortal Strangler of the Swamp (also 1946).

This weekend, Cyrus Nowrasteh’s “The Stoning of Soraya M.” continues to expand its theatrical run, including the entire state of Florida. As brave Iranians once again take to the streets chanting, “Death to the dictator,” there’s no better way to put that plea into context than with a screening of this powerful and unforgettable film.

Big Hollywood’s reviews can be found here, here and here.

For more information on where Soraya’s playing, please go to the website.

For those of you living in Florida, starting tomorrow, “Soraya” can be seen at these locations:

Aventura Mall 24 Theatres Aventura, FL
Shadowood 16 Boca Raton, FL
Delray Beach 18 Delray Beach, FL
BMC PGA Cinema 6 Palm Beach Gardens, FL
Hollywood 20 – Sarasota Sarasota, FL
Veterans Expressway 24 Tampa, FL
Winter Park Village 20 Winter Park, FL

What does it say about the state of popular music that aspiring acts turn to petty crime rather than singing lessons to establish their musical bonafides? Stephen Gilmore allegedly robbed the Super Stop Food Store last Friday night in Gainesville, Florida, shooting the clerk in the head with a BB gun in the process. An earlier heist at Hungry Howie’s restuarant allegedly netted Gilmore and his confederates $900. But he didn’t rob for the money. His motive was streed cred. You see, Gilmore is an aspiring rapper. And like Vanilla Ice, Akon, and Rick Ross before him, Gilmore gets it that to get over with the crowd that “keeps it real” it’s best to keep things fake.