The 2004 Williamsburg Film Festival was again held at the Holiday Inn Patriot in Williamsburg, Virginia. Among the guests this time were William Smith, Robert Fuller, Joe Canutt, Kim Darby, Kay Linaker, Steve Mitchell, Betsy Palmer, Ann Robinson, Lucky Bill Parrish, John Alderson, John Calvert, Alex Cord, Tommy Farrell (who, sadly, died shortly afterward), and Ted and Ruth Reinhart. I highly recommend this lovely, cozy, friendly film festival to anyone who enjoys movies (and some TV) from a gentler era, even though they are mostly from well before my own time. I just wish I could go every year.
You will note I have only a few photos for this page because, unlike my 2001 visit, I didn't go entirely overboard with my picture-taking. I cannot take much credit for this restraint—my camera's battery died, and since my car had likewise died upon arrival at the hotel I couldn't go out to buy a replacement. Besides the photos, though, I also have a number of terrific memories, like:
Lucky Bill Parrish tirelessly entertained us every day, and performed of course at the banquet on the last night. He's not only very good and a lot of fun, but a real nice guy besides. I greatly enjoyed lunches in the hotel bar with Lucky Bill singing his Western songs, particularly since we were encouraged to sing along when we knew (or as we learned) the words. He was also involved in one of my favorite stories of the weekend: During William Smith's Q&A, someone in the audience mentioned that his poems would make good Country & Western songs, to which he replied that he didn't know any Country & Western singers. What he didn't know was that someone (conspiring with his wife Joanne) had already smuggled one of his poems to Lucky Bill, who had set it to music and performed it at the banquet—to Mr. Smith's astonishment!
Speaking
of William Smith, he remembered me from three years ago—and Joanne,
his wife, actually remembered my name! This astonished me, not least because
when they last (first) saw me I had hair long enough to sit on, should
I have taken the notion to do so (which, actually, I tried to avoid),
and my hair is now quite short. Considering the hundreds of people they
met last time (and this time), and all the hundreds or thousands of people
they must have met at other festivals in the interim, remembering one
particular person is a feat I certainly couldn't equal. As far as impressing
me goes, it's right up there with his most spectacular motorcycle stunts.
I
didn't want to be so much of a pest this time, but I did take a couple
of pictures of him at the autograph table, including one with Joanne.
Then Joanne asked if I didn't want to have my picture taken with Bill.
I assured her that no one wants a picture of me, but Bill
took a hand then and said he did. There was no refusing
that. Joanne took a picture of me with him, and the funny thing is that,
as pictures of me go...I don't hate it. As a memory, I treasure it. That's
my hair and shoulder on the left side of the photo.
Stuntman Joe Canutt, son of legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt, showed us footage of some of his and his family's more famous stunts, matter-of-factly giving us details of how they were done that made them seem all the more remarkable to me. We saw him dissect the chariot race in Ben-Hur, and the famous scene from The Wild Bunch in which a group of men and horses on a dynamited bridge fall into the river below. I don't think I'll ever look at movie stunts the same way again—the stuntmen make it all seem so easy, and they don't seem really impressed with themselves, but there are a lot of things I thought were a lot simpler and a lot safer than they are.
The
Alex Cord-Robert Fuller show should go on the road. These two have apparently
been buddies since their very earliest days in Hollywood, and they're
a lot of fun to watch together as they reminisce and tell stories on each
other. By comparison, Alex Cord is the quieter and slower talking man,
and I thought perhaps even a little bit shy. Try though I might, I haven't
found the photos I took of him; they're somewhere in the house. Quiet
or not, he's very funny and, I think, a skilled storyteller.
Robert Fuller is a very lively, funny guy, even perhaps a bit of a kook,
with the most unbelievable silly smile. This was totally unexpected since
I've never seen that in any of his roles. And he gave me a kiss as I was
leaving his Q&A because I asked him a good question no one ever had
before! (I can point out the exact Robert Fuller-kissed spot on my right
cheekbone.) He made it clear he loved doing Westerns, and would love to
do them again. He also talked with spirit about what in his opinion had
killed the Westerns on TV in the late 60s-mid 70s.
John Calvert was simply amazing in his sheer energy after some 70 years of performing as a magician and, upon occasion, as an actor. Though 92 years old, he was jumping around with more verve than I could ever manage. He was very funny, and I loved his magic act. He did one routine involving cigarettes and explained that, while he performed it for decades with the cigarettes lit, he no longer does so because he doesn't want to encourage smoking in any way. It still makes a neat routine, but as I watched him perform I realized I could see right before my mind's eye the same performance, with the smoke from lit cigarettes, on a black-and-white TV. Up until that moment, I thought I had never heard of him before, but then I realized that I had indeed seen him perform several times on television when I was a kid.
Kay Linaker related an amazing experience she had making one of the Charlie Chan movies—she was tied up in a chair and an actor was supposed to strangle her from behind. What no one realized was that this actor was having a psychotic break and was really trying to kill her. She pled for help as well as she could while being choked to death, but of course everyone on the set thought they were both simply doing a really, really good job of acting. Finally someone realized she was actually turning blue and stepped in to rescue her. (The actor who got carried away was committed shortly thereafter.)
I was watching an old episode of Gunsmoke in one of the screening rooms when the door opened; glancing around, I saw two women enter. Since I was in the dark and they were silhouetted against the lit hallway, I couldn't see them beyond their basic outlines. And yet, I was quite certain that one of the silhouettes was Kim Darby, and watched a few moments to see if I was right; I saw as she sat near the projector that it was indeed she. (Okay, I'll admit it, I had seen a recent picture of her and her hair was the same as it was in the picture.) (And, besides, she was due in by the end of the Gunsmoke episode to talk about it.) In any case, just as she sat down, her character came onscreen. She had been approximately 18 years old when she did the episode, and hadn't seen it lately. Her jaw dropped open as she gasped, "Is that me?!" I actually did get a photo of her, but I managed to get her with her eyes closed, which is why it isn't here.
I had a flashback moment myself as I was speaking to entertainers Ted and Ruth Reinhart in the autograph room. He chanced to mention—and don't ask me how it came up—that in the late '60s he was a disc jockey on the WEAM radio station in Arlington, Virginia. As it happens, I grew up in Arlington, and in the late '60s-1970 WEAM was the cool radio station for everyone in my age group. Talk about a small world! (After that reminder of the happiest time of my life, I had a tremendous urge to search the 'net to locate some of my childhood friends. That's another story, however.)
And of course there was the closing banquet, where I enjoyed not only the show and the aforementioned special moments, but also getting acquainted with a group of Laramie fans and three guys named Bubba (would I make this up?).