OCR Text |
Show drizzly' set brings child star, veterans, accidental dirMditogether . K ATT By Rick Brough "It's the last day of filming," said a crew member, mem-ber, "and everyone's got the sillies!" They're finishing "The Capture of Grizzly Adams" on the top of Guardsman Pass. Two small film units are filming within a stone's throw of each other, and the production managers are yelling back and forth on their walkie-talkies: "Quiet! We're filming!" "No! You be quiet! We're filming!" And the atmosphere is a little bit like three hours before school lets out. Dan Haggerty is doing a close-up for a dialogue scene that was apparently filmed elsewhere. Grizzly Adams is on the run through the wilderness with his little daughter, played by Sydney Penney. Haggerty pretends to hear a noise in the bushes, raises his rifle, and then looks relieved when he recognizes his beloved grizzly. "Ben, you just about scared us to death," he says. (Ben is actually ac-tually not in the scene. Lucky for him!) Grizzly's daughter asks him about the bear. "Well, I first met Ben when he was a cub," says Grizzly. He was trapped on a ledge and I climbed down and rescued him. I bottle-fed him, and before I knew it he'd turned into a drunk!" Ho-o-o-kay! Let's try it again. Haggerty needs to have some shade over his face to match the previous footage. The crew tries a silk screen, which doesn't quite work. So a couple of crewmen are drafted to shade him with their parkas. Parkas with holes in them, yet. "This is really a professional operation," somebody cracks. We're off again. Grizzly hears a noise in the bushes, raises his rifle, sees who it is, and says: "Ben, you just about scared the s-t out of us! ..." You might think Sydney Penney is being corrupted by .aUL .tbjSjjnit her mother Chari is nearby, and takes the hi-jinks in stride. Sydney was on stage at age 3, said her mother, started doing commercials at hVz, and TV movies at six years of age. Before "Grizzly," "Griz-zly," she just finished a role in "The Patricia Neal Story" starring Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde. But the Adams movie is her biggest exposure yet. The Kristy McNichol of the 1990s? Who knows? The cast of the "Grizzly" film runs the gamut from child actresses to a couple of old pros like Noah Beery and June Lockhart. Both of them are known for their TV performances, per-formances, but their careers actually go back to the '30s. June Lockhart made her movie debut in the 1938 version ver-sion of Dickens' "Christmas Carol" playing one of the Cratchit children with her parents Gene and Kathleen Lockhart as Mr. and Mrs. Bob Cratchit. And, years before the TV series, she also appeared with the world's most famous collie in the 1945 film "Son of Lassie" with Peter Lawford. Noah Beery Jr., the amiable rustic character of countless movies and TV shows, began as a young hero in cheap Westerns. He even played a bargain-basement bargain-basement Tarzan in a '30s serial called "Jan of the Jungle." "That was on television a few weeks back," he recalled, laughing, "I called my kids into the living room to look at this thing." Both actors come from show business families. Beery's father, Noah Sr., was a popular villain in silent and early sound films, and his under was Wallace Beery. "That does, at times, create an entree for you into the business," he said. "But it takes a long time for you to become recognized for yourself. your-self. Until then, people will be asking you, 'Why don't you do it like your uncle, or your old man"'. He only worked with his uncle once, in a film called "Twenty Mule Team." Said Beery, "He flat out got me the job. They said it was the only time Wally Beery let the juvenile have a close-up." Lockhart's father, Gene was one of the finest character charac-ter actors in Hollywood's Golden Age, but young June , " : I I S .J c"y-mad 649 45 ;nx ry p T, - : -r - ! , - - s-- IS r"3 ( 0 i r mi: -kxrtt: JrAC- SM t& ;:;N; fi 1 ..' I' s . ;." ' ., m" rt:-'' - r ' "s- ' -i.u-i,',-t;f - 1 I 1 ' ' 1 ' 1 'J -i 1 June Lockhart peers over Noah Beery Jr.'s shoulder on 'Grizzly' set. That's in black, and Dan Haggerty in the beard. ' naturally wasn't expected to follow too closely in her father's footsteps. The kind of roles they could play were too different. Lockhart's daughter, Anne, An-ne, has gone into acting too; and the problems of having a show-business parent may be tougher for her. For one , thing, she bears an uncanny resemblance to her mother. (She's my clone, except for the eyes," said June.) Lockhart said her daughter may experience more problems than she did. "Nowadays, there are 500 people going for every part," she added. When we first saw June Lockhart, she was on the Western town set, rehearsing rehear-sing the tornado scenes, and was suffereing an early case of "the sillies." She spotted the head of Sunn-Classic Pictures Pic-tures on the set, and with mock-innocence asked the director, "Is this the scene where we run for the storm Sellier?" To which a grip replied, "It isn't too late to recast, is it, Chuck?" Even if she had been bounced, boun-ced, Lockhart would not have time on her hands. She's busy making semi-regular semi-regular appearances on a syndicated discussion show called "Leave it to the Women." "Every week, we really get our teeth into a subject. We've talked to Melvin Belli, Rita Jenrette. One week we did a show on rape," she said. She just returned from China where she made a film called "Peking Encounter," with a bi-national cast of actors ac-tors and production crew, with possibilities for a telecast on NBC, she said. The filming took place in surprisingly primitive conditions. con-ditions. For one thing, the actors often had no portable toilets during shooting, and it was hard to relieve oneself in other ways. "You couldn't just walk off into the woods. China has a billion people! And anytime we set up to shoot, we had 2-5,000 people watching us," she said. To avoid discomfort, the actors practically had to subsist on desert rations of water. In the morning, she said, they cleaned their teeth, and took just a sip of water to last them the whole day! "We had lots of bottled water," she said. The plot, Lockhart said, is about a group of tourists in China. Diana Cahova plays an American who falls into a tentative love affair with the ' conductor, of the Chinese Youth Symphony, ""which probably couldn't reaily happen," said Lockhart. There is also a middle-aged romance between Lockhart and Mason Adams, the editor from "Lou Grant." Lockhart has never worried about growing too ' old for leading lady parts, she said, because from Day One she considered herself a character actress. "I live in the present; I don't grieve for anything," she said. Beery, for his part, has played support to a Who's Who of actors, including an ' old-time player named Ronald Reagan. "He was a leader then, in a nice way," Beery remembered. "He had a clarity of vision. " He played in two TV series of the '50s. One, "Circus Boy," starred Mickey Dolenz, who went on to later fame as one of the Monkees. In the other, "Riverboaf," he was a replacement for one of the departing stars of the series a fellow named Burt Reynolds. j , But he said the -widest public recognition came when he played "Rocky r" James Garner's father in the "The Rockford Files." And yet when he was first offered the part, he confessed he couldn't see there was even a character there to play. But the script writers worked out some interesting twists on the father-son relationship. "There were times when the roles were reversed, and Rockford provided the guidance and protection for this old guy," Beery said. Now that "Rockford," is off the air, Noah Beery is doing what he always did best bouncing from one character role to another. And Garner? He's working on a revival of "Maverick;;; v Speaking of revivals "The Capture of Grizzly Adams," a movie for NBC, may mark a return ior the : V - -'US:-'-! short-lived series of some years ago. Don Keeslar, who directed "Capture," had done some episodes of the old "Adams" series. "They were talking about me doing 11 episodes the next year. But that was the year they canceled it," he said. He said he has also directed a "creature feature" called "Bog." Keeslar said he just fell into in-to picture-making. "I grew up in a Missouri town of about 300 people, and had a hillbilly accent you could cut!" he said. After a stint in the Air Force, he was hanging around Chicago when a man offered him a job with an industrial film concern, Wilding Pictures. "I thought, 'They don't have movie companies in Chicago they're all in California." But Keeslar took the job as a shipping clerk with the firm. When the Korean War broke out, it was the military life again for him, but with a twist. An Army officer saw his resume, noted that he worked for Wilding, and assumed, "This guy knows how to make movies." So Chuck Connors Keeslar the shipping clerk ended up in the Spcial Section Sec-tion Film Branch! When he returned to Chicago, he became a direc-' tor of commercials. At one time or another, we've all probably seen a Keeslar ad for One-A-Day vitamins, vita-mins, aspirin, or those cartoon chuckwagons being chased by terriers across the kitchen floor. Commercials, he said, teach you to watch for the details the right lighting, costuming, whether the label of the product is facing the camera. "During 'Grizzly,' I walked on a set and I could spot right away that the pictures pic-tures on the wall weren't right for the historical period," he said. Koedar makes it sound like he's pampered working with Taft. "On commercials, you learn to do everything on the crew," he said. "Here, you're surrounded by professionals." The combined result of all their efforts let's remind you one more time is called "The Capture of Grizzly Adams." And it's scheduled for NBC. I Park City Retail and Commercial Center Superbly located on Highway 248 1 block from Alpha Beta Available November 1, 1981 Site of new Post Of f ice's Annex On site basement storage Excellent rear loading dock facilities Call 649-7685 for further information We cooperate with brokers 1 (Qtauanbestaurant HTnow j M NOW OPEN 6-11 7 days a week 412 Main Street 649-8211 iponum i i ".1 ft' 5 if 2 |