Tuesday, June 9, 2015

GET MEAN SCREENING AT SILENT MOVIE THEATRE WITH STAR TONY ANTHONY

Met up with amigo Tom Betts and had a great time at the screening of GET MEAN at the Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood last night. Such a pleasure meeting Tony Anthony and Lloyd Battista...both very very friendly and affable and each with a great sense of humor. Tony regaled us seriously and humorously with wonderful anecdotes about how he got started in movies and all the trials and tribulations he went through getting the "Stranger' movies made. Since the three "Dollar" movies with Clint were already in the can and were going to be released one after the other, MGM wanted more than one "Stranger" film so they could do the same, but when it came time to release SILENT STRANGER Tony's man at MGM was no longer there and the new regime totally buried it and put it on the shelf to die. GET MEAN took a long time to get made, mostly money problems and Tony said, at one point, he even had to borrow $50,00 from the director (Ferdinando Baldi) to keep the production going. They would get some money shoot a few scenes and then have to wait for more money to do some more filming. GET MEAN was the 4th in the "Stranger" series and he had hopes of taking the character and putting him into all kinds of different settings and locations....but sadly that never happened. The evening was made possible by William Lustig of Blue Underground which will be releasing....in October.....GET MEAN on Blu-ray with commentary by Tony and Lloyd along with last night's Q&A moderated by Rob "WORD ON WESTERNS" Word. (Tony also said that COMIN' AT YA!" will be released on Blue-ray in November....but I'm not sure what company will be doing this.) Everybody in attendance...also there were fellow amigos Henry Parke and Chuck Cirino.....were given a poster of GET MEAN which Tony and Lloyd graciously signed. Tony is a fellow West Virginian and great to talk to. We exchanged a few mountaineer stories and he gladly signed my three "Stranger" posters as well as Lloyd did with my SILENT STRANGER one. (Interesting note..as mentioned Tony is a fellow Mountaineer and.....Lloyd is from Ohio like Tom and went to college at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) in Pittsburg just up the river from Morgantown and WVU where I went to college.) Tony said there probably will never be an official release of BLINDMAN since there are so many boot-leg copies out there. He further said that he is probably the most boot-legged person out there. Again a wonderful and most memorable evening.
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Saturday, March 14, 2015

ANDRE DE TOTH ON RANDOLPH SCOTT

Here's what Andre de Toth says about Randolph Scott in the book DE TOTH ON DE TOTH edited by Anthony Slide......"I believe Randolph Scott could have gone further as an performer. But he did not have the ambition to step up,to be better in anything except golf. Golf was all that counted. He was a handsome man; took showers twice a day, I believe. He was a man whose shoes shined. But he had a tremendous inferiority complex about his acting ability and that made him so stiff. You had the feeling that if Scott picked up a feather from down on the floor, he was going to crumble. He creaked. In cases like his don't try to bend the actors because they will crack And that's a mess. Good actor he wasn't. He was Randy Scott. Which had advantages, but no surprises." Randy appeared in 6 features directed by de Toth...MAN IN THE SADDLE (51), CARSON CITY (52), THE STRANGER WORE A GUN (53), THUNDER OVER THE PLAINS (54), RIDING SHOTGUN (54) and THE BOUNTY HUNTER (54). On Harry Joe Brown Randy's producing partner and Randy...."He (Brown) made a lot of films and drank a lot, even for those times. Scott drank a lot too...sasparilla...and they understood each other because instead of reading scripts they read "The Wall Street journal". They had financial interest together. Neither of them knew much about stories. It was a good combination. They didn't fight about story points. They were both gentlemen, nice people. Oh, they cared about money all right, but unfortunately they didn't care enough about films. Ours was a strange relationship....I cared so much for something they cared so little about at that time. Later they discovered they should have been more concerned about stories." Caption under a pic of ol' Randy hisself...."Randolph Scott, who could beat a man with "The Wall Street Journal" in his back pocket a Cold .45 strapped on his hip...and who knew how to use both. What do you want, acting too?"