The Irishman: A Crushing Disappointment

[James DiEugenio]

John Wayne delivered the eulogy at Bond's funeral.

[Ron Ecker]

3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Ron, if you want to see a great Abe Polonsky movie, see the idiosyncratic film noir Force of Evil, with John Garfield.

 

I remember when Garfield died. I read about in the paper and had never heard of him. Of course that was 1952, long before TCM and other movie channels on TV. I don't know if we even had a TV set. The earliest things I remember watching on the tube are "Howdy Doody" and "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet." I even sent off and got a Space Cadet ID.

 

 

[David Andrews]

40 minutes ago, Ron Ecker said:

I remember when Garfield died. I read about in the paper and had never heard of him. Of course that was 1952, long before TCM and other movie channels on TV. I don't know if we even had a TV set. The earliest things I remember watching on the tube are "Howdy Doody" and "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet." I even sent off and got a Space Cadet ID.

 

I read in an entertainment gossip site that not only was John Garfield badly troubled by the HUAC pressure, but that unfortunately he had a cocaine habit, both of which contributed to his early, sudden death.

[W. Niederhut]

22 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

I think my favorite line in "Blazing Saddles" is "Work, work, work, work, work, work." (I wonder which writer came up with that.)

My second favorite is "It's twue! It's twue!"

 

 

 

      I went to see 93 year old Mel Brooks at a screening of Blazing Saddles here in Denver in 2018, and he said that his favorite line in the movie was when Slim Pickens rode up to the toll booth in the desert and said, "We're going to need a shixtload of dimes!"  Honorable mention went to, "Bart, we thought you was HUNG!"  ("I am," etc.)

     Mel also mentioned a line they had to cut from the scene in the dark with Madeline Kahn where Sheriff Bart said something like, "You're sucking on my arm."

[Ron Ecker]

34 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

 Honorable mention went to, "Bart, we thought you was HUNG!"  ("I am," etc.)

   

Wow, I've seen the movie several times and I don't remember that line. That means I've got to watch it again.

 

 

[Norman T. Field]

It's heard when Bart re-unites with his railroad companions. IIRC, the reply was, "And you heard right".

[Ron Ecker]

33 minutes ago, Norman T. Field said:

It's heard when Bart re-unites with his railroad companions. IIRC, the reply was, "And you heard right".

Thanks. As good as "Blazing Saddles" is, I have to say that my Brooks favorite is "Young Frankenstein." I guess because I loved those old horror movies so much as a kid. Brooks captured the atmosphere perfectly.

Frankenstein's monster was probably my favorite movie character, although Roy Rogers was my hero.

I remember looking in a mirror as a little boy and asking my mother if I didn't look just a little bit like Roy Rogers. 

 

[David Andrews]

When the saloon fight spills over onto the next soundstage, where a Busby Berkeley-style musical is being filmed.  When the snitty director expresses outrage, Slim Pickens says before punching him, "P*** on you! Ah work for Mel Brooks,"

Now I have to download this.

Edited February 19, 2020 by David Andrews

[Ken Davies]

David Niven in his autobiography ,The Moon Is A Balloon , says that John

Barrymore's body was taken from the funeral home and propped up in a chair in Errol Flynn's living room.

I guess it was easier to borrow bodies in those days!😪

[David Andrews]

1 hour ago, Ken Davies said:

David Niven in his autobiography ,The Moon Is A Balloon , says that John

Barrymore's body was taken from the funeral home and propped up in a chair in Errol Flynn's living room.

I guess it was easier to borrow bodies in those days!😪

It was Raoul Walsh and John Huston.  They could open tombs in those days.

[Joseph McBride]

In my 1999 BOOK OF MOVIE LISTS, I have a list of "The Ultimate Movie Collectible: 4 Actors

Whose Bodies Were Stolen": John Barrymore, Charles Chaplin, Eva Duarte Peron, and George

Tobias; and I could have added Bond.

[David Andrews]

21 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

In my 1999 BOOK OF MOVIE LISTS, I have a list of "The Ultimate Movie Collectible: 4 Actors

Whose Bodies Were Stolen": John Barrymore, Charles Chaplin, Eva Duarte Peron, and George

Tobias; and I could have added Bond.

Remind us who snatched Bond. wouldja?

[Ron Ecker]

22 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

In my 1999 BOOK OF MOVIE LISTS, I have a list of "The Ultimate Movie Collectible: 4 Actors

Whose Bodies Were Stolen": John Barrymore, Charles Chaplin, Eva Duarte Peron, and George

Tobias; and I could have added Bond.

I have a screenplay in which Eva Peron doesn't die but becomes a vampire. Juan thinks she just ran off (she was sick of him) and fakes her death with a body double to avoid the humiliation. (It's a horror comedy)

 

[Joseph McBride]

It's not known who stole Bond's body. He made

many enemies. Ford's daughter Barbara revealed this episode.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Joseph McBride

[Joe Bauer]

Ward Bond and John Wayne.

Big burly rugged tough guys. Real men! Super patriot gung-ho war hawks. 

Yet neither served in World War II outside of a few month long USO tour by Wayne.

Was John Wayne a draft dodger?

Dear Cecil:

In your book The Straight Dope you were asked whether John Wayne had ever served in the military. You said no--that though Wayne as a youth had wanted to become a naval officer, "during World War II, he was rejected for military service." However, it may be more interesting than that. According to a recent Wayne bio, for all his vaunted patriotism, Wayne may actually have tried to stay out of the service.

 

Il

Cecil replies:

John Wayne, draft dodger? Oh, what delicious (if cheap) irony! But that judgment is a little harsh. As Garry Wills tells the story in his book John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity (1997), the Duke faced a tough choice at the outset of World War II. If he wimped out, don’t be so sure a lot of us wouldn’t have done the same.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, Wayne was 34 years old. His marriage was on the rocks but he still had four kids to support. His career was taking off, in large part on the strength of his work in the classic western Stagecoach (1939). But he wasn’t rich. Should he chuck it all and enlist? Many of Hollywood’s big names, such as Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Clark Gable, did just that. (Fonda, Wills points out, was 37 at the time and had a wife and three kids.) But these were established stars. Wayne knew that if he took a few years off for military service, there was a good chance that by the time he got back he’d be over the hill.

Besides, he specialized in the kind of movies a nation at war wanted to see, in which a rugged American hero overcame great odds. Recognizing that Hollywood was an important part of the war effort, Washington had told California draft boards to go easy on actors. Perhaps rationalizing that he could do more good at home, Wayne obtained 3-A status, “deferred for [family] dependency reasons.” He told friends he’d enlist after he made just one or two more movies.

The real question is why he never did so. Wayne cranked out thirteen movies during the war, many with war-related themes. Most of the films were enormously successful and within a short time the Duke was one of America’s most popular stars. His bankability now firmly established, he could have joined the military, secure in the knowledge that Hollywood would welcome him back later. He even made a half-hearted effort to sign up, sending in the paperwork to enlist in the naval photography unit commanded by a good friend, director John Ford.

But he didn’t follow through. Nobody really knows why; Wayne didn’t like to talk about it. A guy who prided himself on doing his own stunts, he doesn’t seem to have lacked physical courage. One suspects he just found it was a lot more fun being a Hollywood hero than the real kind. Many movie star-soldiers had enlisted in the first flush of patriotism after Pearl Harbor. As the war ground on, slogging it out in the trenches seemed a lot less exciting. The movies, on the other hand, had put Wayne well on the way to becoming a legend. “Wayne increasingly came to embody the American fighting man,” Wills writes. In late 1943 and early 1944 he entertained the troops in the Pacific theater as part of a USO tour. An intelligence big shot asked him to give his impression of Douglas MacArthur. He was fawned over by the press when he got back. Meanwhile, he was having a torrid affair with a beautiful Mexican woman. How could military service compare with that?

In 1944, Wayne received a 2-A classification, “deferred in support of [the] national … interest.” A month later the Selective Service decided to revoke many previous deferments and reclassified him 1-A. But Wayne’s studio appealed and got his 2-A status reinstated until after the war ended.

People who knew Wayne say he felt bad about not having served. (During the war he’d gotten into a few fights with servicemen who wondered why he wasn’t in uniform.) Some think his guilty conscience was one reason he became such a super patriot later. The fact remains that the man who came to symbolize American patriotism and pride had a chance to do more than just act the part, and he let it pass.

 Cecil Adams

Some might wonder why Ward Bond didn't serve in the military in World War II like say John Wayne and other stars in Hollywood did back in those days? The answer to that is because Ward Bond was an epileptic, and he was rejected by the draft board during World War II.

Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda and Clark Gable all served. And they were the same age group as Wayne and Bond. Bond was 37 in 1940.