GETTING SHOTGUN LOADED by C. COURTNEY JOYNER

A Civil War doctor loses his family, and his right arm, to a group of psychopaths who’ve come to rob them, and leave everyone dying or dead. The doc replaces the missing limb with a double-barreled shotgun, and goes after them.

That was the flicker of a movie idea I had, and I figured if I pitched the script, with a little luck, someone might make it as a wild, low-budget western.

That did not happen. Many times.

What did happen: on December 3rd, thanks to editor Gary Goldstein, Pinnacle Books released SHOTGUN, a mass-market paperback, from a first-time novelist, but not first-time writer.

And the process only took fifteen years.

My one-armed avenger started dogging me while driving from California to North Carolina. An amicable divorce had amicably cleaned me out, and I was taking a break from the world of “B” movies where I was earning enough to keep the lights on, and buy a round of drinks when needed. I was taking a “break,” but it wasn’t by luxurious choice.

To play off the old saying, I probably could get arrested in L.A., but as far as my screenwriting, producer’s interest had waned, and so had the enthusiasm of the folks representing me. A lot of freedom can come from having nothing to lose, so why not do what you love? This was years before DEADWOOD, and when I told my agent about my exciting plan to start a western, he looked at me like I’d shot his dog, then run it over to make sure. There was a mumbled “good luck,” and I hit the road.

Crossing state lines, with Ennio Morricone blasting, I noodled the script. Deep into Euro-westerns like A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE, and wanting to attempt that tone, I banged out a story treatment on a PC at the public library, and FAX’d it to producers, positive they’d think it great.
Responses ran the gamut from a polite, and puzzled, “No,” to an outraged phone message demanding to know why the hell it had been sent.

Life went on, even if the screenwriting didn’t. A teaching gig fell through, so I became the oldest trainee at a hundred-seat movie theater in Nags Head, North Carolina. As the low-man, my big job was scraping gum off the auditorium seats with a screwdriver, giving me a lot of time to think about shifting gears.

Screenwriting isn’t really a primer for other types of writing. The demands are unique to the form; words often have to be spare, while getting over a lot of information. Descriptions, clinical, and dialog the focus.

My bookshelf, sagging with westerns, taunted me about SHOTGUN. I’d devoured George Gillman’s THE EDGE and Joe Millard’s Man with No Name books, between re-reads of Elmore Leonard. Series titles, movie tie-ins, and the classics, all got equal quarter, and I wanted to attempt something of my own, but I didn’t see my little idea as prose fiction.

A story hangs around your neck just so long before it has to be put down on paper, and I’d gone way beyond the limit. Years passed, I was back in Los Angeles, nailing a few screenwriting gigs with a job at a video store filling in the gaps. And SHOTGUN kept nagging me. The movie idea was dead, but I wanted it to exist somewhere.

I went for the comics.

I wrote a comic book script, and partnered with veteran artist Gerald Forton, who drew five great sample pages. Forton had worked for Marvel and DC, and comic publishers loved the project. If we delivered a finished book on spec, which would be hundreds of pages of art, they’d put it out, but wouldn’t commission it. SHOTGUN faded again.

During this time, I’d managed to get accepted into The Western Writers of America, because of my movie journalism, and went to my first convention in Springfield, Missouri.

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It was an eye opener. Not only did I meet great writers I’d admired for years, everyone was amazingly generous with advice, and patient with my newbie questions. New friends, who became lifers, and some legends of the genre gave me encouragement, and pointed me toward short fiction.

I also met Kensington editor Gary Goldstein for the first time. Gary knew about my old horror flicks, and we talked movies and more movies. He opened the door for me to work on a few cinema books, then asked me about my plans for fiction. Through the efforts of Matt Mayo and Larry Sweazy, I’d now been anthologized a few times, and wasn’t quite as unsteady on my feet as I’d been. Gary placed my short story “Two-Bit Kill” in LAW OF THE GUN.

I decided to take a new look at SHOTGUN, and the years of material I had on it. That’s when I had one of those mental lightning strikes that changes lives: this could be the first animated spaghetti western!

A lot of work went into that presentation, before it limped into its own grave.

A few conventions later Gary casually asked about fiction, and I sent him every single piece of artwork, breakdown for every TV episode, issue of the comic book, and movie treatments. Considering all the reactions I’d had for more than a decade, I was stunned when he sent an e-mail saying, “We’re in business.”

You’d think with all that preparation, the writing would be a breeze, but it was a struggle to get to the end. The curve was damn steep, but with my editor’s patience and the advice of great writer friends, I learned how to shift gears.

Lord only knows what the reaction is going to be.

This journey wasn’t about amazing resilience on my part, but rather that ideas have a way of sticking with us, of pushing their way through, until they find their own best home. It might happen in a day, or in fifteen years, but there’s no way to say that the trip isn’t worth it.


POSTSCRIPT: This piece was written for TRUE WEST Magazine, and appeared four weeks before SHOTGUN’s release. The book hit the shelves at Target, Walmart, and Books-a-Million, and sold well. In some places, actually selling out, which was an astonishing surprise. Now, I’m slogging through the sequel, a little better equipped for the task, and very grateful for another chance.

GET YOUR COPY OF SHOTGUN HERE:
http://www.amazon.com/Shotgun-C-Courtney-Joyner/dp/0786032324/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389929987&sr=1-3&keywords=shotgun

A.C. LYLES – “GENTLEMAN OF THE WEST” PART II by C. COURTNEY JOYNER

When A.C. Lyles and I sat down for our first chat, none of the budget westerns he’d made for Paramount in the 1960’s had been made available on cassette (which shows how long ago this was!), despite their continued popularity on television.

The westerns he produced were a strange mixture of old-fashioned white hat v. black hat fodder, mixed with some darker elements, often brought by the casting of veterans with long histories in front of the camera, who didn’t always wear their age well.

But that was part of the magic formula. We were re-visiting old friends, a little greyer or a little fatter, but still the stars who had thrilled us years before, stepping in front of the camera for the producer who valued them in the same way that we did.

In all my talks with A.C., his love of the movies was always present, in his memories, and his enthusiasm for new product. Who would guess that this traditionalist, when he was over 80, would be the consulting producer on DEADWOOD, the HBO series that shattered so many of the genre conventions.
Here, he again speaks lovingly of the greats and near-greats, like Barry Sullivan, Dana Andrews, Scott Brady, and Jane Russell that he cast, to remind us all that their talents hadn’t dimmed; that beautiful Virginia Mayo was still a saloon gal to be reckoned with, and that badman Leo Gordon was still mean as a rattlesnake.

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I’m sure a lot of these vets were happy for the chance to stay in front of the camera.

Everyone was always very gracious, but again, I felt like they were doing me the favor because I had so little money to work with.

Could you remember a bit on a few of your actors, and their work? John Ireland?

Well, I’d seen John, he’d worked with the biggest stars and directors in the business, Howard Hawks, all of them. And I just thought he was fine. And I had a picture with a couple parts in it that he liked. I did it the same way with Scott Brady, who was a good friend of mine. Scott could play a loving husband, as he did in one picture, or a gunslinger in another - he did it all. One of the best friends I ever had at the studio was Brian Donlevy. I came to the studio in thirty-seven, and for a number of years, Brian was the star of some of the biggest pictures made. I mean, big pictures, starting out with - so many pictures - with Preston Sturges and Bill Wellman. So we always became friends when I started making these pictures. We were having lunch one day, and he said, “I’m going to start making these pictures.” And he said, “Now, I’m going to be in as many of them as you want. And you just call me, tell me where you want me, and I’ll be there.” And that’s the way it was, he did that for me all the time. And Richard Arlen of course, was one of the stars of Wings (1929), the first picture to win an Academy Award, and when I came as an office boy, he was already a big star and befriended me very much, and did so many nice things for me, that when I started producing, Dick was in every picture that I could do. And Leo Gordon –


Leo Gordon was quite an accomplished writer, (TOBRUK, THE TERROR, ADAM-12, etc.) did he ever work on any of the scripts?

No, he didn’t - he never worked on any of the scripts, he worked for me strictly as an actor. He is a good actor however. And he always made a great heavy, and he’d come aboard and do things like that. And Robert Lowery, my gosh he had - before I started making the westerns, he had appeared in some Pine-Thomas pictures that I was associated with, and I got to know him pretty well. And John Agar, I was in his wedding party when he married Shirley. I was an usher for the wedding party, and he’s a good buddy of mine. And Virginia Mayo and Jane Russell, the same way. I knew both of them for a long, long time. I started making these, and I’d call Virginia, or I’d call Jane, and they were so wonderful, came right aboard, and they did a number of pictures for me. As did Dana Andrews, and Bruce Cabot was a good friend. I got to know him through John Wayne. They were good buddies, and I got to know Bruce through him. And Bart MacLane - my gosh, everybody in town knew him. And Bob Steele - I’ve been a big fan of Bob Steele’s when he was making all those westerns, and my gosh, I just loved to watch him ride, he was such a great horseman.

It was such a great group in film after film, could you ever pick a favorite performer? That would be tough!

I tell ya, everybody I worked with did so much for me, and I was so honored to have them aboard. And I’d go on the set each morning just to see all my friends. And it was like a family reunion every day on the set. And I just had the wonderful advantage of being their pals, and they just worked so hard to make everything right for me.


YOUNG FURY – An A.C. Lyles film about “The west’s first teenage gang!” meant that the kids had to slug it out with Lon Chaney and William Bendix.
You co-wrote YOUNG FURY with Steve Fisher. Could you talk about the origins of this one? It’s one of your few writing credits.

I did that with Steve - we co-wrote that - and it just came about because I kept hearing about, at that time, how young gangs would get together and take over communities, or go into a store and take it over, or something like that, and I just thought that there was a story there about a group of young hellions, and invading a town when all the able-bodied men were away at war, and they took it over. And it was - the idea for it was as simple as that, and we wrote it and put a bunch of young people in it, and we had Rory Calhoun and Virginia Mayo - bless her heart - in it and people like that, and it turned out pretty well. And the title helped it quite a bit, YOUNG FURY. And it did very big on television when it came into that.

Chris Nyby was another TV veteran; of course, he also directed the original THE THING.

I knew Chris when he was a top-notch film editor (for Howard Hawks), and then by the time we worked together, he had already established himself beautifully as a director. And I was pleased when Chris could get away from his other assignments and do that picture.

You used Rory Calhoun in many pictures…

What a fine guy he was. And that was when he was in (the TV series) THE GUNMAN, and coming into that. If I had the right scripts, with people like Rory and Dana Andrews, and so forth, where the roles are simply - it was pretty much we just would write the script, and sometimes, in my mind, I would say, “You know, Dana can do this, or George Montgomery can do it, or Smokey could do that - Smokey was a nickname we gave Rory Calhoun because of his jet-black hair - and I knew that among all of my pals, we could get someone interesting, and well-known for the lead parts. I say the lead parts, because we had so many well-known names in the cast of our pictures, almost all the people had done lead roles, and were well known. So we just got our little troupe together, and we used to call ourselves a stock company, and we’d say, “Hey, do you want to do this?” “I’ll do that,” “What about this?” “Oh, I’ll do that one, Joe you can do -“ So it was an even thing. It was like a family at a big dinner table dishing out food, saying, “Hey, I’d like some potato - “ or whatever it was. It worked very, very well.

Just how tight were your budgets and schedules?

(laughs) Actually, you never reveal your budget and your schedule. And I guess I say that because we didn’t have a generous amount of shooting days, or a generous budget. And I think it’s whatever you get on the screen. If you make a picture for five hundred thousand, and it looks like a million dollars, you have a million dollar picture. But if you make a picture for a million, and it looks like five hundred thousand, you got a five hundred thousand dollar picture. So we did everything we could to put all our money on the screen, and I think that’s why a lot of those pictures were so popular.


Linda Darnell starred in BLACK SPURS for you in 1965. That was her last film, wasn’t it?

Linda Darnell had been a friend of mine from the days when she was at Twentieth Century-Fox. One of their biggest stars. And we used to go out together, and catch movies together and things, and I just adored Linda. She was a wonderful friend all the way back from nineteen - probably I met her, well, before the World War - probably forty-one or something like that. Yeah, I guess it was forty-one, maybe forty. She was a big star, and she hadn’t done anything, and I talked to her about coming back, and she didn’t have too much interest in coming back. I don’t think she’d made a picture in five, six, seven years. And I just called her one day went out and said, “Hey, are you going to do this picture?” And I must say, she had fun, we had fun, and what a wonderful person she is.

Director R.G. Springsteen was a vet of westerns at Republic; he was one of the few older, more veteran directors you hired.

R.G. Springsteen, better known as “Bud”, was out of Republic, and just did so many fine pictures there, and he was just the kind of director that I needed so much, who could do pictures well, and do it on a reasonable budget and schedule. Bud was a very quiet, interesting man who could do more than just shoot the script, he always added to the script.

TOWN TAMER was written by Frank Gruber from his novel. Did Paramount own this property and assign it to you?


TOWN TAMER was a picture that was a book first. And Frank was a good friend of mine, and we had lunch one day, and in his briefcase he had some books, and I picked up Town Tamer and read it, and I bought it the next day, and (Frank) did the screenplay. One of the best times I ever had was working with Frank Gruber. He was a master at writing, and he could write a book as fast as he could type. He was phenomenal. And he did wonderful scripts, and he developed so many properties for the screen and TV, like TALES OF WELLS FARGO and CIMMARON CITY, and all those that he did.
He was also very involved with the SHERLOCK HOLMES series at Universal.

Yeah, he was. He could do it all, and do it so well.

Lesley Selander directed; he had a very long history at Paramount, going back to the silent days.
Good old Les Selander, my gosh, (he goes) all the way back to the Buck Jones days, and the HOPALONG CASSIDY pictures. I knew him when he was doing those pictures, and I knew him when he was working with Bill Boyd on the “Hoppies.”


LES SELANDER DIRECTOR – Portrait of veteran Paramount director Lesley Selander, who helmed the first A.C. Lyles productions.

He, like Bud (Springsteen), was just marvelous at making pictures, and improving on the script - and on the short schedule things, it isn’t always easy to do that. But, boy, every script he got, he improved on it. He was one of the easiest men to work with, with that wonderful sense of humor, and that burst of laughter. They all had a lot of input on the scripts. They’d all come in and Bud would say, “When I did such and such a thing,” and “When I did Hopalong Cassidy, we had a situation like that, and Joe Blow did that, or whatever, that might work here.” And we did it. And on the casting, they all would come and say, “A.C., you know so many people in town, you’re all friends with, and I know you’re going to get me good professional people and things.” Or they’d come in and say, “You know who I ran into the other night? I saw Joe Blow, or Mary Smith, and they aren’t doing anything. And they could do such and such a part,” and I’d know them, and they’d say, “Hey, that sounds good, give them a call and say ‘come in Thursday, and we’re gonna start the picture.’”


APACHE UPRISING really benefits from the supporting work of Arthur Hunnicutt and Lon Chaney. They’re both great and grizzled, and you had three great heavies…


Oh, yes. There was very strong supporting work from Arthur Hunnicutt, and Gene Evans, and John Russell, and DeForest Kelley, and they, too, were good buddies of mine. And Deforest Kelley, De and his wife Carolyn, last year celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and I knew them before they were married. So that’s how long I’ve known DeForest. I knew De before he became an actor, and he was trying to become an actor. So a lot of the people in our picture, like John Russell, and Arthur Hunnicutt, I knew when he first came out of here, and Gene Evans. They were all buddies of mine over the years. So we would just call them, and say, “Hey, we’re starting a picture, so come in, and we’ll pick out a part.”

Novelist Max Lamb was one of the writers.

Max had a writing partner, and I think the original title was WAY STATION, and it was really, really a good, tight script that had a lot of action.

The sequence in the way station is good; very claustrophobic.

That sequence had very strong tension; where the hostile Indians are outside, and they're inside, waiting for the storm to subside, thinking that there would be an attack any minute. And the scenes in there with De, and Gene Evans, and Lon, and Robert Harris, - well, it just presented itself really well, I liked that (suspense element) very much.

You were making these films on a regular basis, did Paramount expect a certain number of pictures from you per year?

Yeah, I really was expected to deliver a number of films. For about four years, five years, whatever it was, I made more than half the pictures shot on the Paramount lot. All those westerns! (laughs) And I would just make them, finish them, and ship them to New York, and we’d start right in preparing for the next one. I never had a “Make six this year,” I just kept making them, and I’d say, “Do you need some more?” They’d say, “Yeah, we need another one - we need another two - to round out the schedule.” Or I’d start working on the scripts for the next year.

Because you were doing so many westerns, and they were your specialty, was it ever anybody’s intention for you to work with (John Wayne’s company) Batjac, since they were located at Paramount at the time?

Well Batjac came in later, when Duke moved his company on the lot. As a matter of fact, he owned the picture HOSTILE GUNS, he owned the script, he and James Edward Grant. And he was going to make a picture called THE WAR WAGON, which was a little similar, I guess, and I was having lunch with Duke one day, and he told me different scripts he had, we just discussed it, and he came across HOSTILE GUNS and I knew that I could make it for a budget. And so I bought it from Duke Wayne and we did it. It had some sequences in it that were just a little expensive for me. So Steve Fisher came in and together we jumped the story - we didn’t cut any scenes or anything, we just brought it down a little bit. And that’s how we got a James Edward Grant piece, because it belonged to Duke, but he let me make it. And Duke was one of my best friends. He and I won the Spurs Award in nineteen sixty-six. And I admired him so much, and he was absolutely wonderful to me, he was a very, very good friend. Every place that his pictures played, we played.

Our pictures were very big in Italy, they were big in England, they were very big in Germany, and France. They played all over the world, and we had a lot of play dates, a lot of play dates. And I remember one time being in Palm Springs, and driving back, and there were three different theaters, just driving back from Palm Springs - which is a hundred and twelve miles - I had three pictures showing, and all of them were different pictures. It wasn’t three prints showing of the same picture, they were three different productions, I could see on the screen and the marquis coming back. One time we had a flood of pictures out there.


JOHNNNY RENO was another Steve Fisher script. Would he come in and pitch ideas to you or would you hand him an outline or spitball ideas?


JOHNNY RENO – One sheet for A.C.’s second film with Dana Andrews, and Jane Russell as the shady lady in question.

I worked on all the scripts with Steve, and often times would come in with the idea, and Steve would nail it down, and say, “You know, you should take credit on this picture,” or something. And he would suggest it, and we would do (the picture).

WACO was another Max Lamb piece. Max was primarily a western novelist, was this also done as a book?

No, it seems to me that this was an original script. Max Lamb wrote with a fellow that was very good named Harry Sanford. And Harry worked next door to Paramount, at Desilu, and I got to know him, and through him, I got to know Max Lamb.

Wendell Corey was quite good as The Preacher. I always thought he was under rated as an actor, even after THE RAINMAKER.

I knew Wendell quite well because Hal Wallis had brought him to Hollywood, and Hal was on our lot, and through Hal I got to know Wendell. And we were having lunch and talking one day, and I said, “What are you doing right now?” And he said, “Oh, I got some free time before I start doing -“ whatever picture it was. And I said, “Hey, you want to come over and do a part?” And he said, “Sure.” So he came in and did it. And what a fine actor, what a fine actor, Wendell Corey.

Your next production in 1967 was RED TOMAHAWK. Wasn’t Betty Hutton supposed to star?

Well, she was indeed going to do it, and when Betty Hutton was on the lot, she was one of our biggest stars, and one of my closest friends. And I admire her, and have tremendous respect for her abilities, and she was going to do it. She hadn’t done a picture in about five years, and she came in and saw me, and she was going to do RED TOMAHAWK, but unfortunately, she took ill on the first day of the picture she wasn’t feeling well, and I re-cast her with Joan Caulfield who had been in pictures for me before, and again was a good friend. When Betty was ill, Joan happened to call me about something else, and I said, “I got a problem,” and she said, “God, I’m sorry to hear that.” And I said, “Could you do the picture?” She said, “Of course!” And I sent her the script and she came in the very next morning and we did it. I just talked to Betty - I talk to her every two or three months back east, and I’m very fond of her.

How did James Cagney come to narrate ARIZONA BUSHWACKERS?


ARIZONA – Poster for ARIZONA BUSHWACKERS, which was narrated by A.C.’s old pal, James Cagney.

Jimmy was up at the house one night having dinner, and near the end of dinner I had a telephone call from the editor who reminded me that we needed narration on the film. And I think it was Sunday night, and he said we have to do it Tuesday afternoon. And I said, “Okay, I’ll put a note down that we have to do the narration Tuesday for the picture.” And he said, “Well, who’s going to do it?” And I said, “I don’t know whose going to do it yet, but I’ll get someone tomorrow (meaning Monday) and I’ll let you know, and we’ll set up a date. How about two o’clock Tuesday?” And he said, “That sounds good.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll let you know tomorrow who it’s going to be.” I went back to the table, and Jimmy said, “You got a problem?” And I said, “No, not particularly, Jimmy. We finished the show, and we need narration, and I’ll have to get someone tomorrow.” And he looked at me and laughed, and said, “I’m not good enough, huh?” And he looked at me, and said, “Well, you didn’t ask me.” And I said, “Do you want to?” And he said, “Sure.” So he came and did it. But I purposefully didn’t put his name on the screen, or announce that he was going to do it, because I thought that would have been taking advantage of a good friendship, and I was just grateful he wanted to do it. Of course, all the reviewers noted that he did that. Because it was well known that Jim and I were the closest of friends. So they put it in.

When the movie plays on television, TV Guide mentions it.

Isn’t that wonderful? ‘Cause he’s so well known, and you can’t help but know who it is when you hear it. But I didn’t announce it, nor did I put it on the screen. But by association, our friendship, people knew about that.

Did you two ever talk about his directing one of the westerns?

No, we never did. He directed that one picture for me and I think that cured his directing bug. I thought he did a very good job, of course, but his directing never came up again.

NIGHT OF THE LEPUS is one of your more notorious credits; a sort of hybrid of western, science fiction and horror…

BUCKSKIN – The last round-up. A.C.’s final western for Paramount, although he’d soon make the notorious NIGHT OF THE LEPUS at MGM. Badmen Leo Gordon and John Russell can be seen giving Barry Sullivan a hard time.

Metro borrowed me from Paramount to do that picture, and we never made the special effects for it, there were supposed to be a lot of special effects in it, because of a change of regime and things, we never put all that in and I think the picture suffered for it. And I went to MGM, that was somewhat of a loan-out deal, because I was with Paramount - I’ve been always with Paramount - I just went over there, and I came right back.

You still used your stock company of DeForest Kelly and Paul Fix and Rory Calhoun.

Again, it was a case of working with friends and I always tried to do that if I could.
You’ve had such close relationships with your casts, yet you also used the same technical people over and over. Phil Lathrop shot many of these pictures. You were almost running a studio within the studio.

That’s very nice, I love that phrase, you call it a studio within a studio.

Well, we had a good working team, and when someone joined the “family,” I would just fall in love with them, and knew that they knew they were professional, they knew what they were doing, and they knew my particular needs, and my particular routine of making movies. So we just worked them together. We used cameramen, we used editors, we used assistant directors, we used grips, prop men, electricians, wardrobe people, and we had the whole little stock company of people, above the line, below the line, meaning in front of the camera, and in back of the camera. And it was indeed like a family, and everyone had only one purpose in mind, that was to make the picture, and make it as good as we could with the proponents we had. And I thought they turned out well, and they were a very, very successful series of pictures.

Every experience you’ve related has been a happy one, so can you pick a favorite of the westerns you made?

You know, it’s tough to answer in a way, because they’re all like your children. They’re all a little different, they’re all presented different accolades. They all presented different prides, they all presented different problems, and I had very few problems, very little to speak of. There was something in each one I liked, there was something in each one where I would say, “Gee, I wish we could do that over.” Of course LAW OF THE LAWLESS was wonderful, because that was the first one I did. But so many of them, I look back over them, and going over the list of questions you sent me reminded me of a lot of the incidents, and places and things that we did, and it brings back memories.

DEADWOOD – Swearengen swears! Ian McShane was brilliant as the baddest of the bad in Lyles’ shattering western series for hbo.
As a producer, you could have chosen any genre to concentrate on – gangster films, horror; what attracted you to the westerns?

I think it was a wonderful moral story to tell, with the good against the evil, and the good always winning out. And in that confine, in that framework, you could always put in a lot of action, with the good always winning out. And it’s a universal story. The first movie ever made was THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, a western. And you look back over the top pictures all through the years, and you’ll find the western was always up there. I think people identify easily with the western also. The story transfers to all languages in the world, they all can follow the western very, very easily. Oh, sure, I’d love to do some more westerns for TNT, The Family Channel and things like that, and most of those cable shows have used the movies I’ve produced, the westerns. Turner has played them over and over again, and they’re all over television now, and I would love to do some more. I have some very, very good scripts, and some books, I guess all told, seven, eight, ten projects - most of them in script form. And I would love to do, and maybe sometime I’ll talk to somebody, and we’ll do them. In the meantime, I’m at Paramount, I come in every day, I have a lot of different duties. I go out and speak a lot for the studio, I just got back from Jordan, I was at Florida State University, I was at Texas A&M. Last year I think I did fifty-seven appearances, either in front of a camera - talking about Hollywood and various people - or at dinners and luncheons and things like that. So I keep very active, and every place I go the people want to know about the westerns, and I’m always delighted to talk about them, because I’m very proud of them.


A.C.LYLES 2 – A.C. relaxing in the Paramount office he had for decades. The studio was his second home, and he was its goodwill ambassador.

PART ONE OF THIS INTERVIEW IS ARCHIVED FOR MORE GREAT READING!

A.C. LYLES: GENTLEMAN OF THE WEST BY C. COURTNEY JOYNER

A.C. AND ME – A reunion at CBS studios. It was about a hundred and ten degrees, and
I was falling apart, but A.C. remained cool and collected, as he always was.

I was fortunate in knowing producer A.C. Lyles for more than twenty years. I’d grown up watching his late-night, low-budget westerns that he made for Paramount in the 1960’s, and I knew that he was considered the studio’s “goodwill ambassador.”


We did many interviews over the years, and he helped me countless times, but this was his favorite, a lengthy piece that was eventually a chapter in my book THE WESTERNERS (McFarland and Co.)

Always dapper, always courteous, and always ready to step up, it was a real delight, and honor, for me that A.C. considered me a friend, and his death (at the amazing age of 95), is a loss for anyone interested in the history of Hollywood, because no one knew it like A.C. – because no one else had lived it the way he had.
******
Upon meeting producer A.C. Lyles, the first word that comes to mind is “gentleman.” Never the clichéd cigar-chomping huckster type of the 30’s (although he worked for them) or the screaming Joel Silver-styled producer of today, Lyles is Paramount Pictures’ ambassador of good will to the world. After sixty-plus years in the business, he seems to have known (and liked) virtually everyone and when one of the giants of the Golden Age passes, Lyles is the first person called for a comment.

Working his way up from office boy to Paramount’s director of publicity, Lyles's tenacity was rewarded and he became the studio’s leading producer of modestly budgeted films. He soon became known for a string of westerns marked by their veteran casts, “King of the B’s” directors and short schedules. At a time when the western was steering toward a darker horizon thanks to the talents of directors like Anthony Mann, Lyles embraced a classic, Saturday matinee-style for his films that seemed old fashioned even when they were made. Populated by stand-up sheriffs, snake-eyed outlaws and heart-of-gold saloon gals, these horse operas were endearing time capsules that are still popular today with western fans.

Using straightforward scripts and filling his casts with familiar Hollywood faces, Lyles created a niche that was uniquely his own. As Hollywood (and the world) changed in the 60’s, Lyles stuck to his traditional formula. While Peckinpah was breaking ground with The Wild Bunch, Lyles was on the backlot pitting good Marshal Barry Sullivan against black hat John Russell in Buckskin. If the westerns of the 50’s and 60’s reflected a harsher social reality, the optimistic Lyles would have none of it in his films. He is the Champion of the B’s; a filmmaker who believes in the kind of movies that assured front-row kids that good guys win out in the end and there is a law for the lawless.

The proceeding was written about ten years ago, when this interview was conducted. In the interim, I’ve gotten to know A.C. better, and have always found him to be gracious, full of wonderful stories, and the true ambassador of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

And, in his 80’s, he became the producer of DEADWOOD.

DEADWOOD – In his 80’s, A.C. lent his expertise as an advising producer on this ground-breaking, and sometimes profane, HBO western.

Created by writer David Milch, HBO’s groundbreaking western series, exploded taboos of language and violence. Milch wanted a “western man” as consulting producer, and went to A.C., who guided the show for two seasons. Ironically, DEADWOOD blasts apart all of the old values that A.C. held so dear in his series of Paramount films. It’s a fascinating contradiction, and one to keep in mind while reading the words of this old-world gentleman, who is still one of the most savvy and forward-thinking producers in town.

****
Could you talk about your first job at Paramount? Legend has it that you started as a messenger boy.


Legend? (laughs) Okay, Courtney, I went to work for Paramount in 1929 in Jacksonville, Florida, at the Florida Theater, which was Paramount owned. It was a Paramount/Publix theater, and I went there in twenty-nine, handing out handbills and things. And the next year - no, I went there in twenty-eight - and the next year, in twenty-nine, they put me on salary as a pageboy. And I was there from twenty-nine until thirty- seven when I came to the theaters. And how that came about is that I became a pageboy, and then I became an usher when I was fourteen. Adolph Zukor built the Jacksonville, and I met him, and he took a liking to me, and he told me to finish high school, and keep in touch with him. So I wrote him a letter every Sunday for four years, and then when I got out of high school, I came out. I got on a day coach and came here to Hollywood, I was seventeen - maybe I was eighteen by that time - and I got on the day coach and came here with two jars of peanut butter, and two sacks of clothes, and a sack of apples, I came here. I came to the studio, and Mr. Zukor remembered me, and gave me a job as his office boy. So that’s how I got started here at Paramount, coming here - to the studio - in nineteen thirty-seven, which is over sixty years ago.

You began working in publicity for Pine-Thomas Productions in the 30’s?

Well, I got different jobs on the lot. I went into publicity, and then became publicity director for Pine and Thomas - William Pine and William Thomas. And they left the lot, and when they left the lot, I started making the kind of pictures they did. Which was sort of the program pictures.
They were doing a lot of aviation pictures, with people like Richard Arlen and later, adventures like CAPTAIN CHINA with John Payne…

CAPTAIN CHINA – Lyles was a young publicity man for Pine-Thomas productions at
Paramount for more than twenty years, churning out ad copy and posters for second-tier
Action flicks.

Oh, yes. Well, they did aviation pictures, they did all kinds of pictures, and when they left, I started making the type of pictures they did, but instead of making aviation pictures, I went a different way (with) action, and got into the making (of) the westerns.

Wasn’t your first film as a full-fledged producer SHORT-CUT TO HELL in 1957, the remake of THIS GUN FOR HIRE?

The studio had rights to THIS GUN FOR HIRE and they wanted to re-do it, and they asked me if I’d be interested, and I said, indeed that I did.

How did James Cagney come to direct it?

My two closest friends in life had been Ronald Reagan and Jim Cagney, and they both attended my wedding forty-one years ago, and sort of stood up for me. And I asked (Cagney) if he’d like to direct it, and he said he certainly would. And he did do it.

It’s a good little picture.

Yes, I always liked that one. It was the one and only picture Jimmy ever directed, and he just did that to get me started producing.

Did that film lead directly to LAW OF THE LAWLESS in ‘64? That was the first of your western productions.

THE LAW OF THE LAWLESS was indeed the first picture, the first western that I made. But before I did that, to learn about westerns - the studio wanted me to learn about westerns - I went on sort of a loan-out, as a deal for CBS on a series they had sometime ago, and it became a big, big hit. And we had several - Eric Fleming was the lead, but in the other cast was a kid named Clint Eastwood that sort of took off, and the show was called RAWHIDE. So I did the first group of those, and then went back to the studio to start making my own westerns. And I did LAW OF THE LAWLESS, it was sort of like a pilot is for a television series. That was just to see if I could do pictures on a strict budget and a strict schedule, see what it would do, and it was very successful, and I just started making many, many more of them as a result of that.

Steve Fisher, who wrote DEAD RECKONING and some other great Film Noirs, was your primary screenwriter on those films.

Steve Fisher, who was an old friend of mine, did a lot of pictures like I WAKE UP SCREAMING - some Bogart pictures. And he had this script, and I bought it from him, and it became LAW OF THE LAWLESS, and as a result of that Steve was with me a number of years, just writing one western script after the other, and he became one of my good friends.

William F. Claxton directed. He was doing a lot of western television shows.

I’d always admired (Claxton) as a director. He had been working here (Paramount) on a series, BONANZA, which was very successful, and I knew Bill through that, so I asked Bill to direct this, and he did it and did it very well.

Around this time, westerns started becoming a bit darker in their attitudes; movies like APACHE, LAST TRAIN TO GUN HILL, the Anthony Mann pictures, and even Ford’s SERGEANT RUTLEDGE put aside a lot of black hat vs. white hat sensibility. But your films really stayed traditional in their approach.

I went back to doing a more traditional western, where the good against the evil, and the evil losing out and the good winning, and in all that confine having all of the action. Because the western, I think, is the most moral story you can tell. Good against evil.

APACHE UPRISING – Rory Calhoun and Arthur Hunnitcutt hold off Injuns in this typical Lyles production, co-starring Lon Chaney and DeForrest Kelly.


Your casting on these films was always fun. Could you talk about your policy of hiring all these veterans for your films? Even the smallest roles were played by familiar faces.

Why did I hire so many great veterans for these pictures? Actually, I didn’t honor them half as much as they honored me. They were very good friends of mine, and some people I never made a picture without them, like Richard Arlen, and Lon Chaney and a lot of people like that. Because they were my buddies, they were so good, they just knew what they were doing, and it was my honor to have them on the set. And as I said, we were buddies, and we just got along well, and it was like a family. And the pictures were quite successful, I don’t want to go into cost and budget and things like that, but every one of them did well for Paramount, and for me. But the main thing is, I enjoyed making these so much, that it just pleased me.

I think STAGE TO THUNDER ROCK really stands out among this series. That was originally an episode of the TALES OF WELLS FARGO television series, wasn’t it?

STAGE TO THUNDER ROCK – Belgian poster for my favorite Lyle’s western,
Starring Barry Sullivan and Ralph Taeger. I told A.C. that it was “Petrified Forrest as
A western,” and he hooted, “That’s it!”

Yes, it was. STAGE TO THUNDER ROCK was just a good, basic kind of picture that lent itself to the type of schedule and type of budget that I had.

It really was THE PETRIFIED FORREST goes to the way station, but the tone was different from some of your other films. It was darker, and there was more of an atmosphere of violence.

You know, you said that THUNDER ROCK was a darker, more violent story, and I just - looking at that and wondering about it - I guess at the time I didn’t realize that it was darker - I didn’t think of it as a darker or lighter script, I just did stories that I liked the theme for, and I liked the messages. And when I say “messages” I never made a picture for a message, but in the confines of the western you can get a lot of action. That was certainly a picture I enjoyed very much with all the people in it. And the script came in about forty pages too long, and I just went through it, and we never cut a scene, we just cut dialogue and things in it, and made it a little more crisper. And I thought it turned out well, and people in it did very well, and it did very well at the box office, and certainly on television.

Barry Sullivan was great as the wounded lawman.

Barry Sullivan had done a number of important pictures at Paramount years before and so I was lucky to have him. We were good friends, and I used him again in BUCKSKIN. I always tried to have parts (in my pictures) for a lot of my good friends, and things like that, and I enjoyed it very, very much. Doing that with people like Rory Calhoun, and all the others, and Marilyn Maxwell. There were so many good stars who would appear in my films, and they were good friends.

Lon Chaney did excellent work for you over the years.

Lon Chaney was in so many of the pictures, and years before - when he did pictures on the Paramount lot, he did pictures with Bob Hope, and everybody - I got to know Lon very, very well, and I admired him, and we had a good, warm friendship. And when I started these series, I certainly wanted him to be a part of it, and I called him, and I said, “Lon, I’m going to start these westerns, do you want to be in them.” And he said, “Hold on just a minute,” and I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “I’m packing my makeup kit, I’ll be right over.” And when he was available, he was in every one that I did.

Patsy Chaney said that her husband loved working in these pictures; that at this time in his life, they really bolstered his spirits, and morale.

Well I tell you, he boosted MY spirits, and certainly boosted my morale, because this man, I never saw him when he wasn’t professional. He arrived on the set every morning, he knew what he was going to do every minute of the day, and I would often times call him, and say, “Lon, I’m starting a picture in two weeks.” And he said, “Just send me whatever you got, and I’ll be there.” And he did it. Somebody (mentioned Patsy Chaney’s comment) to me, and Patsy I adored. Lon was just a remarkable, remarkable man, and he was the most interesting person, and he never caused me a moment’s hesitation of any kind of a part. He was the most professional actor. He was wonderful, and a good friend, and I just absolutely adored Lon. He and I were good buddies. And I’m happy that Patsy said that because that pleases me. The other way around was, when he was doing the pictures, he made me a happy fellow.

That’s great to hear. You worked with a number of actors who had pretty solid reputations as drinkers. Scott Brady, John Ireland, Lon Chaney and lots of others…

That’s true. Really, looking back at all the pictures, and we did have some actors who were known for drinking some, and even talked about it openly - I’m not telling anything out of school - and Dana Andrews later became a spokesperson, sort of, for Alcoholics Anonymous. And we had others, I remember one time on one picture, I went into one of the actor’s dressing rooms, and we were on location, and the five main actors on the picture were having an AA meeting. And I thought, “My god, boy, if these fellows ever decided to go on a toot, I would be in deep trouble.” (laughs)! But I mean this sincerely, I never had any problems with it. They were always so anxious to help me, knowing that I was making pictures on strict schedules and strict budgets and they just leaned over backwards to help me any way they could.

END OF PART ONE
Used By Permission of Joyner/McFarland Press

WILDEST WESTERNS BY C. COURTNEY JOYNER

It seems as if everything I post makes reference to FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine, and don’t dream that this one will be any different. For a movie kid in the 60’s, Forrest J. Ackerman’s magazine was a touchstone, introducing us to actors and films long-forgotten, and getting us excited to see them for the first time on TV on our local “Shock Theater” or The Late Show.

In 1960, FAMOUS MONSTERS was such a runaway success, that publisher James Warren was bursting with ideas for a follow-up. He was already re-launching horror comics in a black-and-white magazine format with CREEPY and EERIE, and later, their super-sexy cousin, VAMPIRELLA.

But what else could be done for the movie fans? Drug store magazine racks were heavy with monsters, with the rest of the space saved for MOVIE MIRROR and its gossipy cousins. Warren considered a lot of ideas, and put a few into production, including SPACEMEN, and MONSTER WORLD, but they seemed aimed at a target that Warren was already hitting.

Who he was missing were the adults, and they were watching westerns.

In 1960, John Wayne was marching into another decade as a top ten of box office stars, thanks to THE HORSE SOLDIERS and NORTH TO ALASKA, but at the same time, Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Richard Widmark, and Burt Lancaster were all hitting the saddle in major studio westerns, scoring major hits.

The “new kids,” Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, James Garner and even Elvis were hitting the trail with a vengeance, and it was only a few years away that the lanky co-star of RAWHIDE would travel to Spain to make the little movie that would change westerns forever.

Hoppy, Roy, and Gene were still part of our after-school afternoons, thanks to syndication, along with the real Masked Man, while Mom and Dad had their choice of more than twenty prime time westerns, including THE TALL MAN, EMPIRE, RIVERBOAT, THE RIFLEMAN, MAVERICK, CHEYENNE, DEATH VALLEY DAYS. BONANZA, and of course, GUNSMOKE.

There was no end to playsets, cap pistols, and cowboy outfits, rubber tomohawks, lunchboxes, coloring books and drinking glasses, all featuring our favorites.

It just didn’t stop – so what better time than now to put FAMOUS WESTERNS OF FILMLAND on the newsstands?

The problem was the competition was beyond fierce.

Westerns were also thriving in comic books and newspaper strips, with Marvel’s KID COLT OUTLAW, TWO GUN KID, and RAWHIDE KID, shooting it out with DC’s more serious titles, like Joe Kubert’s FIREHAIR. The independents were still giving us Lone Ranger, Tonto and Zane Grey four-colors, with those spectacular painted covers, and poor old Charlton Comics was having their run of BILLY THE KID.

If you weren’t allowed to stay up to watch THE IRON HORSE, it didn’t matter, since almost every TV show had it’s own book courtesy of Dell or Gold Key. And, once every couple of weeks, you got a comic book adaptation of a western movie, not to mention all those reprints.

That’s a lot of cowboys, and a lot of horse sh*t to pile through; so how could a magazine aimed for the same audience that was spending their nickels for everything else western set itself apart?

From the start, publisher Warren, and editors Harvey Kurtzman and Forrest Ackerman put their foot right in the pile. Kurtzman was a veteran of MAD MAGAZINE, and a cartoon genius of the first rank, and who better to devise an offbeat, comedic look at westerns, with parodies of all the old favorites?

Truthfully, almost anyone. The problem wasn’t a lack of talent from Kurtzman, it’s that the approach never should have reached the printing press.

The cover of the first issue of FAVORITE WESTERNS OF FILMLAND is almost staggering it’s so awful: a color shot of Richard Boone as Paladin, with a bloody bullet hole between his eyes, with the girl asking via dialog balloon if he’s feeling all right. Amazing.

The funny balloon over the movie still format was in wide use at the time, inspired by the television success of Jay Ward’s FRAKTURED FLICKERS, where serious silent films were given the jokey dialog and sound effects treatment. Usually, it was the monster magazines that took this approach (MAD MONSTERS, MONSTER LAFFS), but to go this way with a magazine to capture the western movie audience was astoundingly wrong-headed; you don’t make fun of our heroes.

The sales on the first issue were already cooked and served by the time the Number Two was going to press. But Warren and Kurtzman must have felt something of the fan backlash, making fun of the most popular genre around. They eased off on the funny in the second issue, that featured a wonderful Jack Davis caricature of Duke from RED RIVER as its cover.

There were funny captions in a piece on THE FIGHTING KENTUCKIAN, but straight stories on the making of the THE ALAMO, as “Duke’s next.” This stuff was straight from the publicity department, as was a feature on Clint Walker’s exercise routine while shooting CHEYENNE. Clint looks great doing his sit-ups, but the piece tells precious little about the hit show.

There was also a nice promo piece on the “current hit,” GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL, which was being re-issued by Paramount. The articles were flimsy, but had finally started to treat the movies with some respect, especially as they banged the drum for new releases.

One of Forrest Ackerman’s trademarks in FAMOUS MONSTERS was his constant use of puns. Dr. Akula from Horrorwood, Karloffornia couldn’t help himself, and he and Kurtzman created a character to act as host of FAMOUS WESTERNS, answer reader’s questions and letters, and be a trademark for the magazine ala Uncle Creepy or Cousin Eerie.

And so, Ramuda Charlie was born.

Charlie’s awful “yer darn tootin’” editorial comments are cringe-worthy now, but must have tickled Ackerman and company. Thankfully, the character became less prominent as FAVORITE WESTERNS started to go through some major changes.

Jack Davis drew Dennis Weaver as Chester, facing down Matt Dillon, as the cover of issue #3, declaring he wasn’t going to be “swabbin’ no more jail cells,” while the magazine declared its new name: WILDEST WESTERNS.

Harvey Kurtzman was easing back on his duties as editor, and the tone of the magazine started its shift with this issue. The funny dialog balloons were being replaced with pieces that were more serious, including “Jesse and Billy, Where Are They Now?” which was one of the first articles they ran detailing the lives of historical figures.

There was also a little stuntman profile that was behind-the-scenes stills, a look at CHEYENNE for the coming season, and a profile of “B” hero Whip Wilson. The “Last Minute Noose” page, about upcoming westerns, touted that Henry Fonda would actually start appearing in more episodes of THE DEPUTY, and hinted at a money conflict with Universal; none of this was the usual stuff we’d come to expect from WESTERNS, and the next issue would show us why.

Sam Sherman was a young film journalist, with an abiding interest in “B” movies, especially serials, who had been contributing to a number of Warren magazines when he was tapped to become editor of WILDEST WESTERNS. Later, Sherman would found Independent International Pictures and produce flicks like the biker hit SATAN’S SADISTS, starring Russ Tamblyn, and Lon Chaney’s last, DRACULA V. FRANKENSTEIN.

Sherman was a true western lover, and his influence is all over issue #4, the last to feature a cover by the great Jack Davis. The cover is an oddity; funny, with Lee Marvin in a police car, chasing down a cowboy, having wandered over from the set of M-SQUAD.

If the cover was an echo of Kurtzman, the rest of the issue purely for the serious western lover, starting with Sherman’s own interview with Buster Crabbe. There were on-set pictorials for YELLOWSTONE KELLY and THE COMMAND, and a nice look at Yakima Canutt’s horse training techniques. Sherman also paid attention to the many western film conventions that existed in those days, noting the appearances of sidekick Max Terhune, and upcoming events.

And as a bonus, artist John Severin (SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS) contributed a beautifully rendered piece on gunfighters. WILDEST WESTERNS had taken a turn for the better, and the next issue would be another improvement for fans.

The great Basil Gogos, renowned for his amazing cover paintings for FAMOUS MONSTERS, created a portrait of Nick Adams as THE REBEL for issue #5, to accompany a good feature article on the show. In the piece, the writer speaks to Adams, and REBEL producer/writer, Andrew Fenady.

This issue contains the obituary for star Ward Bond, and an interview with Republic star Bob Livingston. Sam Sherman was leaving his imprint on the magazine, which was gearing more and more toward the serious western movie fan, particularly if you loved the “B”’s.

Like other Warren publications, the back pages of WILDEST WESTERNS were filled with mail order goodies. Unlike FAMOUS MONSTERS or CREEPY, what they offered was everything western they could grab at the time: paperbacks, 8mm movies, replica guns, and autographed pictures of stunt men.
Although cartoonist Jack Davis would not be doing any more covers this issue advertised a series of prints of Jack’s own take on true western legends, such as Jesse James and Dull Knife. The drawings were finely rendered in pen and ink, with color highlights, and came three in a set for the whopping price of $1.49.

"Two of Jack Davis' drawing offered through WILDEST WESTERNS mail order for $1.49. Jesse James is on the left, and Wild Bill Hickock is on the right; stylized in the extreme, they're still killer!"

Despite the number of westerns in the theaters, and newer shows like THE BIG VALLEY appearing on the tube, WILDEST WESTERNS was failing. Their final issue, #6, was the best issue yet, and showed that the magazine could cover the genre in serious fashion, looking backwards for nostalgia, and at current releases.

Basil Gogos again painted the cover, and it’s considered one of his finest pieces. The stunning portrait of Marlon Brando from ONE EYED JACKS wads the perfect lead into a preview article about the making of the film. The other major feature was long and detailed coverage of BONANZA, followed by a profile of stuntman Herb Holcomb, and nice pieces on neglected cowboys stars, such as Buddy Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill, Jr.

Once again, WILDEST WESTERNS was bearing the stamp of its editor, who maintained a balanced focus on “B” heroes, television, serials, and The Duke. The magazine had hit its stride, and it’s end of the trail.

James Warren still believed in a movie magazine about genres other than horror, and took another shot with SCREEN THRILLS ILLUSTRATED, also edited by Sam Sherman. THRILLS embraced all types of action and adventure movies, serials, television and even radio. Westerns were included in every issue.

SCREEN THRILLS lasted 11 issues, almost double the run of WILDEST WESTERNS. When it folded, and attention went back to the monster magazines, writing about western movies was soon relegated to the fanzines and special publications produced by experts like Alan G. Barbour, if you could find them.

But for a brief time, if you loved westerns, all you had to do was wander into your local candy store or supermarket, to there would be a new issue of WILDEST WESTERNS, pages filled with heroes, sidekicks, ladies of the west, and some of the baddest bad men ever known, and all for thirty-five cents.

That’s about the cost of a shot of whiskey at the Long Branch, and for a young kid who loved westerns, a lot more satisfying.

I WAS A TEENAGE BUSHWHACKER: PRODUCER HERMAN COHEN'S RECOLLECTIONS OF LON CHANEY by C. Courtney Joyner

My first meeting with producer Herman Cohen happened almost by accident. Attending college in Los Angeles, time better spent studying was usually taken up with going to old movies, or better, meeting the people who made them.

One afternoon, I’d made my way to Raleigh Studios, the small lot opposite Paramount, to talk to Terry O. Morse about his directing GODZILLA with Raymond Burr. Walking to Terry’s office was when I saw a sign that read: COBRA MEDIA – HERMAN COHEN.

I had to knock on the door of the little bungalow, and at least try to shake hands with the man who produced I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. Herman was there, let me stammer my fan worship, and then we arranged for a lunch. Quite a few lunches occurred over the years following, always filled with tales of his work as a producer of legendary “B” flicks.

Herman Cohen produced the very first horror movie I ever saw in the theater (BERSERK! starring Joan Crawford), and even more movies I stayed up late to watch on Saturday nights: I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, KONGA, BLOOD OF DRACULA, and TROG. In the 80’s, he was distributing horror films (WATCH ME WHEN I KILL) through Cobra Media, rather than making them, but kept talking about getting back into production.


(PRODUCER HERMAN COHEN, WITH HIS STAR JOAN CRAWFORD,DURING THE SHOOTING OF ‘BERSERK!’)


Herman never made another movie, and died of throat cancer in 2002.

The following interview was done informally, as I was writing about Lon Chaney’s westerns for Gary and Sue Svehla’s MIDNIGHT MARQUEE ACTOR’S SERIES, and wanted Herman’s input. He’d told me these stories several times, but I needed them for the “official account.” He was always happy to oblige with a trip down memory lane.

Before creating his teenage horrors at American-International, Herman produced a number of movies for Jack Broder’s old RealArt company, three starring Chaney.

The first, 1951’s BRIDE OF THE GORILLA, with Chaney and Raymond Burr, remains an odd, interesting movie, despite its insane title. But the title is what sold it, and it became a moneymaker for the young producer, who was just getting his feet wet, and ready to move on to two westerns:


(POSTER FOR BRIDE OF THE GORILLA, HERMAN COHEN’S FIRST FILM WITH LON CHANEY)


HERMAN COHEN: All right, you’re going back a hell of a long ways, Courtney! You’re going back forty-five years ago. Have you talked to anyone else about these pictures? I don’t think anyone else is still alive! (laughs)

COURTNEY JOYNER: Your first work with Lon was on BRIDE OF THE GORILLA, when you were at RealArt with Jack Broder?

HC: When I worked for Jack Broder I did BRIDE OF THE GORILLA, that is correct. I did three pictures with Lon. That one also had Raymond Burr and Barbara Payton.

CJ: Even though he was working with his old pal Curt Siodmak, (writer of THE WOLFMAN), Lon was cast as the police inspector, rather than the guy who turns into the gorilla.

HC: Well, because we had Raymond Burr for that part.

CJ: Broder was putting so many of Lon’s Universal horror pictures back into theaters in the 50’s -

HC: RealArt was putting the old Universals into the theaters again (in the 1950’s) and doing well with them. Abbott and Costello, Maria Montez and the horror films…

CJ: It seems only natural that Broder would want to star Lon Chaney in his company’s first original horror film.

HC: Well, first thing, let me tell you something about Lon, like I said, I worked with him on BRIDE OF THE GORILLA, I was the Associate Producer on that because I was Jack Roeder’s executive assistant at that time. In fact, I wanted Lon Chaney to play Chief Pontiac when Jack wanted to do BATTLES OF CHIEF PONTIAC, and then of course THE BUSHWHACKERS was, I think, came first, and then The BATTLES OF CHIEF PONTIAC - but Lon was always professional, I mean whatever he had to do, he did. He had a reputation for the boozing, but I never saw it affect his work in any way, and I’ve worked with a lot of drinkers.

CJ: THE BUSHWHACKERS was Rod Amateau’s first film as a director, and Tom Gries (WILL PENNY, BREAKHEART PASS) co-wrote the screenplay?


(THE BUSHWHACKERS POSTER SHOWS CHANEY IN OLD AGE MAKE-UP THAT LED TO CASTING IN HIGH NOON.)



HC: With Rod, right. A terrific guy, and we gave him a break to direct the picture. It has a very good cast. Rod Amateau got along great with Lon Chaney, and John Ireland, Dorothy Malone. Those were great people for a cheap budget picture, believe me. We did THE BUSHWHACKERS out in the valley, at Corriganville, or one of the western towns. So we didn’t really get to know Lon on that, it was a fast shooting schedule, and you’re in and out, you know. We did THE BUSHWHACKERS in twelve days I believe, the entire picture.

CJ: Apparently it was THE BUSHWHACKERS that Stanley Kramer saw that made him want to bring Lon into HIGH NOON.

HC: Now that I never knew. Stanley is an old friend of mine. I met him because we had offices at the old Charlie Chaplin Studios. That’s where I did TARGET - EARTH, and THE MAGNIFFICENT ROUGHNECKS with Mickey Rooney and Jack Carson. And Stanley did NOT AS A STRANGER with Robert Mitchum, and Frank Sinatra -



CJ: Lon was in that, playing Mitchum’s father!

HC: Really? Everything brings us back to Lon Chaney! (laughs)

CJ: I always thought he was underrated.

HC: He was. He was underrated because he was Junior, because of his dad. He was so good in OF MICE AND MEN, I mean he was brilliant in that. It’s because of OF MICE AND MEN that I wanted to use Lon in the three pictures that I cast him for. Of course, we never mentioned his dad, because he had that all his life with people. But these were low budget pictures, and they were made fast. And when you have a picture like that, you don’t have time to know people, except for BATTLES OF CHIEF PONTIAC, I got to know Lon quite well because we went on location to Rapid City, South Dakota.

CJ: An old publicity release states that Lon was camping out, and staying with the Indians during shooting.

HC: It was the Sioux tribe that we worked with in Rapid City, and the fact that Lon was playing Chief Pontiac, they got a kick out of that, and he thought he was Chief Pontiac! (laughs) Lon wanted to get to know the Indians well, and the Indians, we had an encampment for them, and they were staying in tents, you see. And Lon had a room at the Hotel Alex Johnson, and many a night he would spend - we had a tent for him - and he wanted to sit and listen to the various stories from the old timers, in the Sioux tribe. He wanted to get to know the Indians better. And he really lived and loved that part. He loved that part.

CJ: Even in the press releases, he spoke very fondly of the part, and the fact that he appreciated finally being able to play an Indian, which he had always wanted to do.
HC: He loved the part. As far as he was concerned, he was Chief Pontiac. He had a great feeling for the Indians.


(BELGIAN POSTER FOR CHIEF PONTIAC, FEATURES A GREAT PORTRAIT OF LON CHANEY IN ONE OF HIS FAVORITE ROLES.)

Lon was no trouble. Let me tell you something about Lon - he was a very private person. Lon did not associate, and did not want to associate, with the director, the producer, members of the crew. I think he thought it would throw off his performance somehow. Like Chief Pontiac in Rapid City South Dakota, he wanted to be with the Indians.


(MEXICAN LOBBY CARD FOR BATTLES OF CHIEF PONTIAC,WITH LON AND LEX BARKER)

Where I got to know Lon is when we went out to Rapid City, South Dakota and he was there for about three weeks. He would come into the hotel to take a bath, or this or that once in a while. Lon had that thick, type of voice that was very commanding, but he was very funny! The Indians used to laugh with him all the time.

But being with the Sioux is how Lon wanted it, but boy, when we started shooting? He was always there, right on time, knew his lines, always had something to add to his part. I was still basically a kid when we made these movies, but Lon was a real pro, was great with me, and a hell of an actor.

SUPER 8 SUNSET: THE FADE OF THE SUPER 8 WESTERN--BY C. COURTNEY JOYNER

Holding a reel of film in your hand isn’t like holding a Blu Ray. The weight of the film, even in Super 8, gives a feeling of substance, and emulsion has a smell that the media bits of information on DVD’s just don’t. Those plastic reels remind us of movies in the theater, in the classroom, and at home. It’s the way they used to be, and are a intangible part of their appeal.

Throwing on the BluRay of HOW THE WEST WAS WON is going to give me the entire film, beautifully presented, with extras, and extraordinary sound. Threading up the eighteen-minute super 8 sound digest that MGM/Ken Films marketed in the late 70’s is an entirely different experience.

Not better, but different.

Watching that print, which has pinked with age, the projector on a coffee table, brought back not only the joy of actually owning the movie when we couldn’t just push a button for anything we wanted to watch and hear, but also is a reminder of just how big the market for Super 8 movies became in the mid-70’s.

The early history of Castle films is the history of the hobby, and when Castle lit the fuse for the 8mm explosion in the 1960’s, other film companies fell in right behind, with one becoming Castle’s major competitor that, ultimately, vanquished them.

While Castle was releasing 8mm titles like FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN and THE VIRGINIAN from the Universal library, Ken Films of Fort Lee, New Jersey decided to step into the marketplace with their own 8mm catalog, culled primarily from American International Pictures and Republic Studios.

Founded by Bob Lane, and named for his son, Ken Films was considered by many as the “also-ran” 8mm company. This was a bit of an unfair label, since Ken had to license bits and pieces of various movie libraries for home use, rather than have major studio backing, as Castle did.

Castle had Woody Woodpecker and Ken had Mighty Mouse, which was a pretty sad state of affairs, since I wasn’t a fan of either. But the Terrytoons Ken released were home movie favorites, and with their horror titles, the moneymakers for the catalog.

Initial Ken releases I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, WAR OF THE COLLOSAL BEAST and THE BLOB were big sellers, and were quickly followed by more horror titles starring Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre. It was hard to find Ken Films in retail stores, until years later, when they were displayed in their own racks at Kmart and Sears. Castle had their own shelving units for camera departments, with Chilly Willy and Dracula painted on the side. Now, that piece of particle-board is worth more than any 8mm film they ever came up with.

Rummaging the Republic library in the 1960’s, Ken put out special editions of serials in longer formats. Although silent with subtitles, MYSTERIOUS DR. SATAN and BATMEN OF AFRICA, starring Clyde Beatty, were available in eighteen-minute versions consisting of one two 200-foot reels, something Castle never attempted with their silent editions.

And with the Republic library came John Wayne. RIO GRANDE, THE FIGHTING KENTUCKIAN and DARK COMMAND were available in nine-minute, silent editions, along with THE QUIET MAN and SANDS OF IWO JIMA. The prints of the films were good and the editing adequate, particularly on RIO GRANDE, but the problem was that the box art for the Wayne titles was absolutely horrible.

Unlike the beautiful paintings that adorned Castle’s boxes, the Ken boxes looked cheap. Original poster art was sometimes used on other titles, but their westerns relied on incredibly slap-dash images that seemed to have been put together in two minutes.

John Wayne wasn’t the only one to get the short-end when it came to box art. Ken’s digest of HIGH NOON features an atrociously sloppy rendering of Gary Cooper. Where Ken excelled was in reaching out to studios, and they would soon have several enormous libraries for their Super 8 releases, with many classic westerns in color and sound. Interestingly, it wasn’t John Wayne who helped Ken jump the competition, but THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

At the time, Paramount Pictures had no home movie division, since their pre-1948 titles had all been acquired by Universal. It was this deal that allowed Castle to release THE VIRGINIAN with Joel McCrea, but the post ’48 titles were up for grabs and Ken grabbed them.

The silent digest of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS racked up amazing sales for the company, and was just the thing for families to watch between their home movies of days at the beach and high school graduations.

The fact was, by the early 70’s, more and more companies were bringing out 8mm films, and trying to yank Castle off their throne with newer titles and formats. While Castle continued to focus on digests of TEXAS ACROSS THE RIVER and THE HELLFIGHTERS, Ken’s impressive record with Paramount led to a deal with 20th Century-Fox that changed the Super 8 collecting hobby completely.

When Ken made a deal to release all five of THE PLANET OF THE APES films in Super 8 editions, they opened a floodgate. The films were available in the old, black and white silent format, or for a higher price, in color and sound.

The sales of the APES films was explosive, and soon Ken was releasing five and six Fox titles a month, with the first westerns being BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, Raoul Walsh’s THE TALL MEN, and JESSE JAMES.

The color/sound nine-minute version of JESSE was astonishingly beautiful. The film’s legendary Technicolor photography was stunning on my very exclusive bedroom wall, and was the best looking Super 8 release I’d ever seen.

Since the Fox films were available with color and sound in both the nine and eighteen-minute versions, Ken made an odd choice to add narration to the shorter ones, awkwardly filling in gaps of the story. It was a terrible decision that buyers hated, and the somber narration sometimes found its way into the longer films, simply because Ken didn’t take the time to remove it, even when it wasn’t needed.

I bought the long version of BANDOLERO! and it had this problem, but that didn’t stop me from watching it twenty times the first week after it arrived in the mail.

The Ken Films Fox releases were incredibly popular, forcing Castle Films to find newer titles from the Universal vaults. Feeling that the company’s brand name was too old-fashioned, Castle was re-christened Universal 8.

Universal 8’s focus would be on theatrically complete cartoons, newsreels, and the 400-foot digests of the classic Universal horror titles, with color releases of THIS ISLAND EARTH and SSSSS, as well as a 3-D version of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.

For western fans, they brought out long versions of HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, ROOSTER COGBURN, and a great digest of the Sergio Leone-produced MY NAME IS NOBODY, starring Henry Fonda. NOBODY includes the great “blowing away the posse with the nitro in their saddles” sequence, that’s preposterous in the extreme, but wonderfully shot. It was also the only true Spaghetti western that anyone was offering.

From a quality standpoint, I always found Universal 8/Castle to be the leader, with fine editing, rock-steady prints, clean sound and NO narration needed. On the negative side, with their new, “modern” look Universal dumped those beautifully painted Castle boxes, in favor of photo covers on hard plastic cases. They were more practical for storing film, but just weren’t as much fun.

Columbia 8mm had been in there pitching since the 1960’s, with the usual digests of horror movies and some select cartoons from Hanna-Barbara for home unspooling. One particularly interesting item was RIDING FOR A FALL, a behind-the-scenes featurette about the making of MAJOR DUNDEE. The short focuses on the stunt team, but Sam Peckinpah and Charlton Heston are very much in evidence.
With the success of the longer formats in the mid-70’s, Columbia jumped in with more than a dozen westerns, including the early Duke Wayne TWO-FISTED LAW, THE PROFESSIONALS, THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, COWBOY, GOOD DAY FOR A HANGING, MAJOR DUNDEE, CAT BALOU, and the Budd Boetticher films, BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE, and COMMANCHE STATION.

By the late 70’s, Super 8 collecting and filmaking had gone international, with companies around the world selling films and high-end equipment. My parents’ mailbox was always stuffed with catalogs and Super 8 Filmaker Magazine, a true sign of their tolerance, and every month brought at least a dozen new titles in the format.

Derran Films out of England became the largest distributor of Super movies in the world, offering not only all of the shorts from U.S. companies, but feature films like LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL and a variety of Elvis movies.

And then there was STAR WARS.

Because of their deal with Fox, Ken Films held the home movie rights to Hans Solo and Co. and made a fortune. It success brought them a deal with MGM, and soon were making available long-versions of THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE DIRTY DOZEN, and HOW THE WEST WAS WON.

Universal 8 and the rest just couldn’t keep up, and when Ken introduced the ABC Films library for sale, which included DUEL IN THE SUN, JUNIOR BONNER as well as a number of Alfred Hitchcock classics he’d directed for David Selznick. They weren’t cheap, but if you could scrape together the cash, then the features were yours (my choice was STRAW DOGS, which I still have).

And then there was VHS.

Although Beta had been introduced in the 70’s, it was the cheaper VHS that took over the home market, and drove a stake into the heart of the super 8 hobby. Who needed the digests, when you could have the whole film?

It took no time at all for the studios to close their home movie divisions or cancel deals, and the companies dried up one at a time, as the market for collectors got smaller and smaller, and then vanished. The catalogs and magazines stopped, as people looked to tape as the new miracle format to shoot in, and bring home the movies we wanted to watch.

The enthusiasts are still out there, trading precious boxes of Castle Films on message boards or through Ebay, preserving the time when to have a little piece of Hollywood in your home was very special. It seems particularly amazing that there was a time when those reels of film were how you enjoyed your movies, and the work that went into finding them, and showing them. Dad cursing an uncooperative projector was as much a part of movie night as popcorn.

It’s so much easier now, and better.

But sometimes the old projector gets hauled out of the closet, and I make the choice to thread up a spool of film instead of pressing a button on my DVD player.

The tape splicer is right there, in case of a problem, and the projector rattles on, the dialog and music coming from a speaker in its side, and I’m swept away by an old feeling of excitement; of opening a cardboard box, and threading up eight precious minutes of a movie I loved, to watch as many times as I wanted, before being ordered to go to bed.